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Orkut was nothing like current social networks. It didn't have any kind of feed. You had to manually visit user pages if you were looking for something. Also, u

Orkut was nothing like current social networks. It didn't have any kind of feed. You had to manually visit user pages if you were looking for something. Also, user pages had no "blog space" for posts, just main description, "testimonials" (for friends describing you) and scrapbook (like a public email inbox, later turned optionally private). Oh, and a photo gallery. Another thing that was massive in orkut - but still niche as most users didn't use this feature - was community forums. It was great to be able to read and talk about any topic using the same account, in the same website and the same layout. Worldwide, what filled this gap was obviously Reddit, but it's still English-only for most subjects. Also the format is different, Reddit is not a typical flat internet forum.

Morthanc 4y ago
I agree, but I think it depended on the community. Some communities had very active forums and others were barren. This is not something negative, some communities were just some witty or funny title and others to have genuine discussions.
- sintapilgo 4y ago
  For most users, communities were just another way to describe yourself, as the list of communities you were in was public. For instance, the community with most members was "I hate waking up early" (Eu odeio acordar cedo). That's a useless community, there's nothing to discuss in it. You could find very active communities about every imaginable subject, it was super useful just like Reddit, but in a typical flat view internet forum and, most important: in Portuguese. In the last days of orkut, when all the users looking for the "social" thing moved to Facebook and Twitter, all the activity was in communities because still today there's nothing like that. After the end, some communities just disappeared, some migrated to own solutions like php forums and some, mainly football related, moved to VK, the Russian Facebook, which also has community forums almost exactly like orkut. I believe that 95% of activity in VK discussion boards are Brazilians, Russiand don't use that feature.
doliveira 4y ago
Community forums were huge in Brazil, they were one of the main reasons people used the website. They were so much better with actual paginated discussions instead of the mess that are Facebook continuous threads, a simple timeline instead of algorithmic blackboxes and encouraged actual discussion instead of self-promotion like the current social networks. Such a shame that we all jumped on the Facebook bandwagon.
Dangeranger 4y ago
My memory of the first version of Facebook was that it too didn't have a feed. I have fond memories of having to visit all my friends manually to see what they were up to in the last day. This made me more conscious of who I was thinking of and who I wanted to see the most. A side effect was seeing the comments of other people who were commenting about my friends updates, and then naturally diving into their profile pages. This changed dramatically following the introduction of the timeline. [EDIT]: I personally believe that humanity has been conditioned to expect, perhaps even crave, a timeline/feed based social network, and therefore a non-feed based social network will be up against a general "expectation" of what a social network is by the populace. This expectation is driven in part by an "addictive" feeling that networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat have fostered over the past decade.
- Fargoan 4y ago
  The newsfeed was added later. They integrated it from a company they bought. I almost quit Facebook when it was added. In retrospect, it was so much better than what we have now. It has an end, was in chronological order, wasn't filled with spam and propaganda
  - mysterydip 4y ago
    The feed has been a hinderance to groups. So many people asking the same questions because you can't find the posts where they've been answered over and over.
  - smartbettor 4y ago
    FriendFeed! It was great. Pre-facebook you could build a feed using RSS from all your sources or comments off other sites. It was chronological and it excluded any algorithms. - If you subscribed to your friend feeds all the data slid into a chronological feed on your main site. It was the best, initially FB kept most of these features but in the end slowly killed them.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - 4y ago
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
"You had to manually visit user pages if you were looking for something. Also, user pages had no "blog space" for posts, just main description" I mean, this sounds exactly like Friendster. And then MySpace.
- yojo 4y ago
  And The Facebook. Even the wall wasn’t there at launch. You had some form fields to fill out, a picture, and that was it.

Morthanc 4y ago

I agree, but I think it depended on the community. Some communities had very active forums and others were barren. This is not something negative, some communities were just some witty or funny title and others to have genuine discussions.

sintapilgo 4y ago
For most users, communities were just another way to describe yourself, as the list of communities you were in was public. For instance, the community with most members was "I hate waking up early" (Eu odeio acordar cedo). That's a useless community, there's nothing to discuss in it. You could find very active communities about every imaginable subject, it was super useful just like Reddit, but in a typical flat view internet forum and, most important: in Portuguese. In the last days of orkut, when all the users looking for the "social" thing moved to Facebook and Twitter, all the activity was in communities because still today there's nothing like that. After the end, some communities just disappeared, some migrated to own solutions like php forums and some, mainly football related, moved to VK, the Russian Facebook, which also has community forums almost exactly like orkut. I believe that 95% of activity in VK discussion boards are Brazilians, Russiand don't use that feature.

doliveira 4y ago

Community forums were huge in Brazil, they were one of the main reasons people used the website. They were so much better with actual paginated discussions instead of the mess that are Facebook continuous threads, a simple timeline instead of algorithmic blackboxes and encouraged actual discussion instead of self-promotion like the current social networks. Such a shame that we all jumped on the Facebook bandwagon.

Dangeranger 4y ago

My memory of the first version of Facebook was that it too didn't have a feed. I have fond memories of having to visit all my friends manually to see what they were up to in the last day. This made me more conscious of who I was thinking of and who I wanted to see the most. A side effect was seeing the comments of other people who were commenting about my friends updates, and then naturally diving into their profile pages. This changed dramatically following the introduction of the timeline. [EDIT]: I personally believe that humanity has been conditioned to expect, perhaps even crave, a timeline/feed based social network, and therefore a non-feed based social network will be up against a general "expectation" of what a social network is by the populace. This expectation is driven in part by an "addictive" feeling that networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat have fostered over the past decade.

Fargoan 4y ago
The newsfeed was added later. They integrated it from a company they bought. I almost quit Facebook when it was added. In retrospect, it was so much better than what we have now. It has an end, was in chronological order, wasn't filled with spam and propaganda
- mysterydip 4y ago
  The feed has been a hinderance to groups. So many people asking the same questions because you can't find the posts where they've been answered over and over.
- smartbettor 4y ago
  FriendFeed! It was great. Pre-facebook you could build a feed using RSS from all your sources or comments off other sites. It was chronological and it excluded any algorithms. - If you subscribed to your friend feeds all the data slid into a chronological feed on your main site. It was the best, initially FB kept most of these features but in the end slowly killed them.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 4y ago

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

"You had to manually visit user pages if you were looking for something. Also, user pages had no "blog space" for posts, just main description" I mean, this sounds exactly like Friendster. And then MySpace.

yojo 4y ago
And The Facebook. Even the wall wasn’t there at launch. You had some form fields to fill out, a picture, and that was it.