4 ms·

This is nonsense. There were tons of things that made the web easy to write before FB. That is not what made FB successful. It was a combination of a lot of lit

This is nonsense. There were tons of things that made the web easy to write before FB. That is not what made FB successful. It was a combination of a lot of little features plus the big innovation that your profile had to be your real life identity early on. That was the thing prior social networks didn't do. It enabled the uniquely Facebook experience of being able to find past friends and more distant family.

jrm4 4y ago
What technology IN REALITY, raw numbers, got more people to "type something into their computer for the purpose of multiple other people to read?" Facebook, and nothing else much comes close. (Again, I say this as someone who mostly hates it)
- greenthrow 4y ago
  Now you're moving the goalpost. You originally implied FB making the web easy to write was the major innovation that lead to its success. I pointed out that simply giving people a dirt simple text box had been done many times before. There was nothing special about that part of FB. I am not dumb enough to argue that FB wasn't hugely successful, so your attempt to shift the argument away from your original point is silly.
  - ozim 4y ago
    I have to agree with jrm4 - all the things you pointed out don't explain why FB groups and markets are so popular. There is also bunch of businesses that don't have their own website, just FB page - which is not comparable to "giving people simple text box". It is simplified web experience from point of business owner, just drop logo, type in your company name and you have web presence - which happens to be where people are because they had friends/family there anyway.
  - jrm4 4y ago
    No, you're misunderstanding the difference between "what you believe to be easy" and "what actually was easy." Popularity is better objective proof. You believe that a text box was easy, but still, people weren't using it. Facebook is actually what got used.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Getting people to do something is very different from making it easy. There's overlap but that overlap is just a fraction.
richardfey 4y ago
> It enabled the uniquely Facebook experience of being able to find past friends and more distant family. This came afterwards. In the beginning it was just a showcase of life moments to share with others. Lots of fun and lots of cringe.
pessimizer 4y ago
> the big innovation that your profile had to be your real life identity early on. This came after facebook was wildly successful, so not early on. I also have never met a single person who was attracted by it, or was confused as to who their friends were before it existed. That being said, tying real names to online identity allowed facebook to buy data from brokers to fill out the sliced up audiences they sell to advertisers, so maybe it was important to their profitability. What made FB successful was that it was a platform that other developers could program for, so it filled up with games and quizzes. Farmville, "Which Harry Potter Friends Spice Girl Are You?" etc. was all the edge that it took to kill myspace, a site which seemed to stop any sort of development about 10 minutes after launch. But, as you say, even myspace made it very easy to write on the web. You could scribble on other people's "walls", put whatever you wanted on your own page, and every profile came with a blog. Against what you say, however, is the timeline where you could just post random crap and all of your friends would see it and comment on it; the dopamine stream. There's no easier way to write than to spit out a random sentence or upload a random picture, and broadcast that instantly to hundreds of people.
- necovek 4y ago
  > This came after facebook was wildly successful Official requirement came later, but people were de facto using their true identities in large numbers, which allowed to find old friends and family easily. You know, the fact that it invites you to consider it a "yearbook" of sorts.
- Izkata 4y ago
  > What made FB successful was that it was a platform that other developers could program for, so it filled up with games and quizzes. Farmville, "Which Harry Potter Friends Spice Girl Are You?" etc. was all the edge that it took to kill myspace, a site which seemed to stop any sort of development about 10 minutes after launch. Even before that, it was a combination of exclusivity and social groups. When people found out there was a social network they weren't allowed into (when it required a *.edu email address to sign up for), they were curious and wanted in. For the people who could get in, Facebook had network pages tied to your email's domain so you had an immediate social group of people going to the same college/university as you, which was used for all sorts of things like planning events, coordination, sharing campus information, I believe it even had a full-on calendar for students to put things on. The loss of the network pages was when I first started losing interest in Facebook.

jrm4 4y ago

What technology IN REALITY, raw numbers, got more people to "type something into their computer for the purpose of multiple other people to read?" Facebook, and nothing else much comes close. (Again, I say this as someone who mostly hates it)

greenthrow 4y ago
Now you're moving the goalpost. You originally implied FB making the web easy to write was the major innovation that lead to its success. I pointed out that simply giving people a dirt simple text box had been done many times before. There was nothing special about that part of FB. I am not dumb enough to argue that FB wasn't hugely successful, so your attempt to shift the argument away from your original point is silly.
- ozim 4y ago
  I have to agree with jrm4 - all the things you pointed out don't explain why FB groups and markets are so popular. There is also bunch of businesses that don't have their own website, just FB page - which is not comparable to "giving people simple text box". It is simplified web experience from point of business owner, just drop logo, type in your company name and you have web presence - which happens to be where people are because they had friends/family there anyway.
- jrm4 4y ago
  No, you're misunderstanding the difference between "what you believe to be easy" and "what actually was easy." Popularity is better objective proof. You believe that a text box was easy, but still, people weren't using it. Facebook is actually what got used.
Dylan16807 4y ago
Getting people to do something is very different from making it easy. There's overlap but that overlap is just a fraction.

richardfey 4y ago

> It enabled the uniquely Facebook experience of being able to find past friends and more distant family. This came afterwards. In the beginning it was just a showcase of life moments to share with others. Lots of fun and lots of cringe.

pessimizer 4y ago

> the big innovation that your profile had to be your real life identity early on. This came after facebook was wildly successful, so not early on. I also have never met a single person who was attracted by it, or was confused as to who their friends were before it existed. That being said, tying real names to online identity allowed facebook to buy data from brokers to fill out the sliced up audiences they sell to advertisers, so maybe it was important to their profitability. What made FB successful was that it was a platform that other developers could program for, so it filled up with games and quizzes. Farmville, "Which Harry Potter Friends Spice Girl Are You?" etc. was all the edge that it took to kill myspace, a site which seemed to stop any sort of development about 10 minutes after launch. But, as you say, even myspace made it very easy to write on the web. You could scribble on other people's "walls", put whatever you wanted on your own page, and every profile came with a blog. Against what you say, however, is the timeline where you could just post random crap and all of your friends would see it and comment on it; the dopamine stream. There's no easier way to write than to spit out a random sentence or upload a random picture, and broadcast that instantly to hundreds of people.

necovek 4y ago
> This came after facebook was wildly successful Official requirement came later, but people were de facto using their true identities in large numbers, which allowed to find old friends and family easily. You know, the fact that it invites you to consider it a "yearbook" of sorts.
Izkata 4y ago
> What made FB successful was that it was a platform that other developers could program for, so it filled up with games and quizzes. Farmville, "Which Harry Potter Friends Spice Girl Are You?" etc. was all the edge that it took to kill myspace, a site which seemed to stop any sort of development about 10 minutes after launch. Even before that, it was a combination of exclusivity and social groups. When people found out there was a social network they weren't allowed into (when it required a *.edu email address to sign up for), they were curious and wanted in. For the people who could get in, Facebook had network pages tied to your email's domain so you had an immediate social group of people going to the same college/university as you, which was used for all sorts of things like planning events, coordination, sharing campus information, I believe it even had a full-on calendar for students to put things on. The loss of the network pages was when I first started losing interest in Facebook.