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I don't even remember what my ICQ number was. It was the first social network I joined.
by xeckr 2y ago
I don't even remember what my ICQ number was. It was the first social network I joined.
- vaylian 2y agowhy should ICQ be a social network?
- halfdan 2y agoIn the purest sense of those two words it was a social way to interact with a network of people?
- vaylian 2y agoThat's very fuzzy. What about e-mail? Or the phone network? Or the internet in general? Yes, there can be some social aspects to it. But that by itself does not make it into a social network. Networks have topologies and paths. The social graph matters on facebook because you get connected to your friend's friends which is a core feature of the platform. This is not the case with chat platforms.
- mattl 2y agoWhat makes you think it wasn't a social network?
- vaylian 2y agoIt is only a chat platform and it predates the first social networks (which were explicitly called "social networks" back then). This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but I think people use the term "social network" way to much so that it doesn't even mean anything any more.
- mattl 2y agoI don't know what the official ICQ client does today but back in the day it had more than just chats between people. It had file sharing, etc.
- eternauta3k 2y agoWe associate other stuff like sharing and virality with social networks. Isn't the phone network just as much of a social network as ICQ?
- mattl 2y agoI think party lines on the phone, yes.
- Terr_ 2y agoWhat qualities do you consider unique to a "social network" system (beyond its own self-marketing or the time-period in which it arose) that aren't qualities already present in ICQ, E-mail, IRC, newsgroups, etc?
- vaylian 2y agoOne distinct quality is that as a user you actually have the possibility to navigate the network. On ICQ you only see your own contact list. You cannot see how many friends/contacts/followers/relations anyone else has. You cannot traverse the network from your direct friends to indirect friends. A social network puts the connections you have with other people prominently on display for everyone to see. The number of "friends" you have is a central social status metric on social networks.