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Facebook was absolutely not first. MySpace had a HUGE lead. Facebook came in with a superior product and won on its own merit. If you want to claim first perso

Facebook was absolutely not first. MySpace had a HUGE lead. Facebook came in with a superior product and won on its own merit. If you want to claim first person advantage, you should definitely point to Friendster though in the US or Orkut in South America. However, for all the dozens of social networks trying to unseat the behemoth MySpace, they all collapsed under their own weight. Turns out building a scalable network of social connections is a very hard problem to solve.

rconti 7y ago
I think parent's point still stands. They're saying it's hard to compete now I don't think it was intentional on Facebook's part, but in retrospect it would have been a brilliant strategy. MySpace was largely populated by a high school/shortly-post-high-school crowd. Facebook came along and your college had to be added/invited (since residence halls and class schedules were curated). Nothing drives demand like exclusivity. Now all of MySpace's former demographic was clamoring to get in -- either by graduating HS and moving to college, or by having their existing college added. And then the floodgates opened.
- jarjoura 7y ago
  College-only Facebook would have died after everyone graduated and it really took off after they decided to compete with Twitter's feed. The model of having a stream of news of people complaining about what they had for breakfast allowed grandparents to get massive FOMO and join to see what their grand kids were up to. Zuckerberg for all his flaws has always had an eye for what the next big social media wave is and went after it.
  - rconti 7y ago
    Agreed, but I think a(n unintended) side effect of college-only was to drive the demand. Things we utterly hated, like turning a pull-only format of "let me view my friend's profile" (which later became "what's changed is in yellow") into the push style "newsfeed", and requiring real names, really made it what it is today. Obviously there are still fake accounts, and people aren't all using their real names anymore, but it's so much closer to a "real" profile than anything else out there. But yeah, especially the newsfeed. Making users poll friends' profiles never would have resulted in the engagement they require. Frankly, the platform would have died because user interest/engagement would have gone elsewhere.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
enobrev 7y ago
I used to agree that Facebook was superior, but I don't anymore. Myspace allowed people to far better express themselves with design and music. It was a shit show, but so are we.
jshevek 7y ago
Parent addressed this when they said "with first I mean to first capture the large swath of people that wasn't techies nor young people"
MisterTea 7y ago
> Facebook came in with a superior product and won on its own merit. I don't know about superior but it didn't allow one to butcher their page with custom themes such as yellow text on white background. It became a cesspool of awful web design. Facebook was simple and clean.
- jeegsy 7y ago
  Awful or not, the ability to customize themes etc encouraged a lot of folks to learn basic web dev. The level of 'control' goes a long way towards the general point the article is making. All that has been lost for the sake of a 'simple' and 'clean' interface.

rconti 7y ago

I think parent's point still stands. They're saying it's hard to compete now I don't think it was intentional on Facebook's part, but in retrospect it would have been a brilliant strategy. MySpace was largely populated by a high school/shortly-post-high-school crowd. Facebook came along and your college had to be added/invited (since residence halls and class schedules were curated). Nothing drives demand like exclusivity. Now all of MySpace's former demographic was clamoring to get in -- either by graduating HS and moving to college, or by having their existing college added. And then the floodgates opened.

jarjoura 7y ago
College-only Facebook would have died after everyone graduated and it really took off after they decided to compete with Twitter's feed. The model of having a stream of news of people complaining about what they had for breakfast allowed grandparents to get massive FOMO and join to see what their grand kids were up to. Zuckerberg for all his flaws has always had an eye for what the next big social media wave is and went after it.
- rconti 7y ago
  Agreed, but I think a(n unintended) side effect of college-only was to drive the demand. Things we utterly hated, like turning a pull-only format of "let me view my friend's profile" (which later became "what's changed is in yellow") into the push style "newsfeed", and requiring real names, really made it what it is today. Obviously there are still fake accounts, and people aren't all using their real names anymore, but it's so much closer to a "real" profile than anything else out there. But yeah, especially the newsfeed. Making users poll friends' profiles never would have resulted in the engagement they require. Frankly, the platform would have died because user interest/engagement would have gone elsewhere.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

enobrev 7y ago

I used to agree that Facebook was superior, but I don't anymore. Myspace allowed people to far better express themselves with design and music. It was a shit show, but so are we.

jshevek 7y ago

Parent addressed this when they said "with first I mean to first capture the large swath of people that wasn't techies nor young people"

MisterTea 7y ago

> Facebook came in with a superior product and won on its own merit. I don't know about superior but it didn't allow one to butcher their page with custom themes such as yellow text on white background. It became a cesspool of awful web design. Facebook was simple and clean.

jeegsy 7y ago
Awful or not, the ability to customize themes etc encouraged a lot of folks to learn basic web dev. The level of 'control' goes a long way towards the general point the article is making. All that has been lost for the sake of a 'simple' and 'clean' interface.