4 ms·

Compulserve was the first Walled garden. I find it very interesting that we went from people mostly being on Compulserve, to AOL, to Yahoo and the concept of i

Compulserve was the first Walled garden. I find it very interesting that we went from people mostly being on Compulserve, to AOL, to Yahoo and the concept of integrated portals, to a bunch of small websites strewn around the internet, and then back to a few social networks. All that happened organically, with no antitrust scrutiny or regulatory changes (beyond the commercialization of the internet) that I know of.

hollerith 2y ago
My guess is that a big part of why the social networks took over as much as they have is that the average non-technical person did not like the thousands of small web sites: every web site is a snowflake, and if you make web sites for a living, then the differences between them tend to be interesting, but to the average non-technical person, the differences tend to be confusing or at least a little distracting or annoying, is my guess.
- EarlKing 2y ago
  It's a combination of things really. Part of it was not being able to discover new content (Google notwithstanding, since Google is good for finding things when you know what you want, while social media feeds you things you didn't even know you wanted). The other part was not being able to talk back or otherwise iterate on what people had published in a way that others could see it easily. Finally, it comes down to money... people wanted to make money and social media (and yes, I count Youtube among social media in its earliest incarnation) made it a lot easier to do that. Despite this, people are departing existing aggregators and social media for SIGs to get around the spam, the screeching, and general annoyance... so we're probably going to see a more balanced network over the next decade... because making money isn't everything.
  - hollerith 2y ago
    Good point about making money. But we're using a service that lets people discover stuff on thousands of small sites in the way you describe. (Before this site existed, I used Slashdot to discover stuff, and before that Usenet newsgroups.)
    - EarlKing 2y ago
      We're here today, but we'll be gone tomorrow(-ish). Before HN I was on Reddit, before that Digg, before that Slashdot, and so on. Being in any particular place at any particular time is no guarantee we'll be there going forward because the social networking anacyclosis is undefeated.
dredmorbius 2y ago
That narrative entirely omits that small niggling detail that the extant FAANG monopolies (and precursors and successors) haven't fought like hell to achieve that domination. AOL in the 1990s was the single largest consumer of CDROMs, which it mailed out by the billions. I recall walking into a US post office sometime in that period to find every level surface stacked a foot or more deep in the things. <https://www.vox.com/2015/5/12/8594049/aol-free-trial-cds https://www.vox.com/2015/5/12/8594049/aol-free-trial-cds> <https://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2014/08/she-gave-the-world-a-billion-aol-cds-an-interview-with-marketing-legend-jan-brandt/ https://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2014/08/she-gave-the-...> MySpace was killed, though less by Facebook than Google, according to Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Viant, which bought MySpace in 2011: <https://petapixel.com/2024/08/30/myspace-ceo-facebook-didnt-kill-myspace-google-did-for-music/ https://petapixel.com/2024/08/30/myspace-ceo-facebook-didnt-...> Facebook itself has spent tens of billions of dollars buying up competition, most notoriously Whatsapp: <https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/why-facebook-bought-whatsapp https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/why-faceb...> Amazon crushed its own competition, including Diapers.com and Zappos, either driving them out of business or acquiring them, or both. Diapers.com: <https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff-bezos-went-thermonuclear-on-diapers-com.html https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff-be...> Zappos: <https://www.fastcompany.com/1314670/amazon-buys-zappos-847-million-updated https://www.fastcompany.com/1314670/amazon-buys-zappos-847-m...> If your point is that antitrust regulators were asleep at the switch (or worse), yes. If your point is that this growth was somehow "organic" ... well, I'd like a look at your dictionary, because this was absolutely engineered.

hollerith 2y ago

My guess is that a big part of why the social networks took over as much as they have is that the average non-technical person did not like the thousands of small web sites: every web site is a snowflake, and if you make web sites for a living, then the differences between them tend to be interesting, but to the average non-technical person, the differences tend to be confusing or at least a little distracting or annoying, is my guess.

EarlKing 2y ago
It's a combination of things really. Part of it was not being able to discover new content (Google notwithstanding, since Google is good for finding things when you know what you want, while social media feeds you things you didn't even know you wanted). The other part was not being able to talk back or otherwise iterate on what people had published in a way that others could see it easily. Finally, it comes down to money... people wanted to make money and social media (and yes, I count Youtube among social media in its earliest incarnation) made it a lot easier to do that. Despite this, people are departing existing aggregators and social media for SIGs to get around the spam, the screeching, and general annoyance... so we're probably going to see a more balanced network over the next decade... because making money isn't everything.
- hollerith 2y ago
  Good point about making money. But we're using a service that lets people discover stuff on thousands of small sites in the way you describe. (Before this site existed, I used Slashdot to discover stuff, and before that Usenet newsgroups.)
  - EarlKing 2y ago
    We're here today, but we'll be gone tomorrow(-ish). Before HN I was on Reddit, before that Digg, before that Slashdot, and so on. Being in any particular place at any particular time is no guarantee we'll be there going forward because the social networking anacyclosis is undefeated.

dredmorbius 2y ago

That narrative entirely omits that small niggling detail that the extant FAANG monopolies (and precursors and successors) haven't fought like hell to achieve that domination. AOL in the 1990s was the single largest consumer of CDROMs, which it mailed out by the billions. I recall walking into a US post office sometime in that period to find every level surface stacked a foot or more deep in the things. <https://www.vox.com/2015/5/12/8594049/aol-free-trial-cds https://www.vox.com/2015/5/12/8594049/aol-free-trial-cds> <https://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2014/08/she-gave-the-world-a-billion-aol-cds-an-interview-with-marketing-legend-jan-brandt/ https://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2014/08/she-gave-the-...> MySpace was killed, though less by Facebook than Google, according to Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Viant, which bought MySpace in 2011: <https://petapixel.com/2024/08/30/myspace-ceo-facebook-didnt-kill-myspace-google-did-for-music/ https://petapixel.com/2024/08/30/myspace-ceo-facebook-didnt-...> Facebook itself has spent tens of billions of dollars buying up competition, most notoriously Whatsapp: <https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/why-facebook-bought-whatsapp https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/why-faceb...> Amazon crushed its own competition, including Diapers.com and Zappos, either driving them out of business or acquiring them, or both. Diapers.com: <https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff-bezos-went-thermonuclear-on-diapers-com.html https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff-be...> Zappos: <https://www.fastcompany.com/1314670/amazon-buys-zappos-847-million-updated https://www.fastcompany.com/1314670/amazon-buys-zappos-847-m...> If your point is that antitrust regulators were asleep at the switch (or worse), yes. If your point is that this growth was somehow "organic" ... well, I'd like a look at your dictionary, because this was absolutely engineered.