4 ms·

Perhaps naive to say, but I think there was the briefest moment where your status updates started with "is", feeds were chronological, and photos and links were

by d_watt 1y ago

Perhaps naive to say, but I think there was the briefest moment where your status updates started with "is", feeds were chronological, and photos and links weren't pushed over text, that it was not an adversarial actor to one's wellbeing.

mysterydip 1y ago
Well they had to grow the userbase before they could abuse it :)
emseetech 1y ago
The early, organic days of social networking are always fun. They never would have pulled in billions of users if they started off how they are now.
cornfieldlabs 1y ago
Couldn't have said it better. Nothing is a social network anymore. Everything is a content-consumer a platform now. People just want to scroll and scroll
- kbrkbr 1y ago
  People want to scroll and scroll, because social media make them miserable [1, 2, 3] Perfect storm. [1] https://time.com/4882372/social-media-facebook-instagram-unhappy/ https://time.com/4882372/social-media-facebook-instagram-unh... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-social-media-makes-people-unhappy-and-simple-ways-to-fix-it/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-social-media-... [3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/navigating-the-maze/202506/why-social-media-makes-you-feel-worse https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/navigating-the-maze/...
- 7952 1y ago
  My hunch is that instant messaging is slowly taking over that space. If you actually want to connect with people you can without needing much of a platform.
smeej 1y ago
There was an even briefer moment where there was no such thing as status updates. You didn't have a "wall." The point wasn't to post about your own life. You could go leave public messages on other people's profiles. And you could poke them. And that was about it. I remember complaining like hell when the wall came out, that it was the beginning of the end. But this was before publicly recording your own thoughts somewhere everyone could see was commonplace, so I did it by messaging my friends on AIM. And then when the Feed came out? It was received as creepy and stalkerish. And there are now (young) adults born in the time since who can't even fathom a world without ubiquitous feeds in your pocket. Call me nostalgic, but we were saner then.
- figassis 1y ago
  Oh wow, I’d even forgotten about pokes. Thanks for that trip down memory lane.
  - smeej 1y ago
    I made the mistake of sending a Gen Z (adult) friend a poking finger emoji to try to remind him about something. It wasn't the first time I've had a generational digital (ha) communication failure, but it was the first time I've had one because I'm old and out of touch with what things mean these days!
  - alexthehurst 1y ago
    Still a supported feature! You can find it if you dig around in the menus long enough.
- fivestones 1y ago
  Unless I’m remembering wrong, posting a public message on someone else’s profile was posting on their wall. Or was it called something else before it was somebody’s wall?
  - smeej 1y ago
    It didn't have a name. It wasn't really a "feature." You just went and posted on their "page" I guess I would call it. The change to being able to post things on your own page and expecting other people to come to your page and read them (because, again, no Feed) wasn't received well at first. Keep in mind, smartphones didn't exist yet, and the first ones didn't have selfie cameras even once they did. And the cameras on flip phones were mostly garbage, so if you wanted to show a picture, you had to bring a camera with you, plug it in, and upload it. So at first the Wall basically replaced AIM away messages so you could tell your friends which library you were going to go study in and how long. And this didn't seem problematic, because you were probably only friends with people in your school (it was only open to university students, and not many schools at first), and nobody was mining your data, because there were no business or entity pages. Simpler, simpler days.
lern_too_spel 1y ago
They were stealing your contacts from wherever they could get them. There was never a time when they didn't abuse their users.
safety1st 1y ago
I mean let's be clear on the history and not romanticize anything, Zuck created Facebook pretty much so he could spy on college girls. He denies this of course, but it all started with his Facemash site for ranking the girls, and then we get to the early Facebook era and there's his quote about the "4,000 dumbfucks trusting him with their photos" etc. There is no benevolent original version of FB. It was a toy made by a college nerd who wanted to siphon data about chicks. It was more user friendly back then because he didn't have a monopoly yet. Now it has expanded to siphoning data from the entire human race and because they're powerful they can be bigger bullies about it. Zuck has kind of indirectly apologized for being a creeper during his college years. But the behavior of his company hasn't changed.
distances 1y ago
Very true! I was annoyed by the loss of the "is" pattern and basically stopped using Facebook when the chronological feed was removed.

by d_watt 1y ago

mysterydip 1y ago

Well they had to grow the userbase before they could abuse it :)

emseetech 1y ago

The early, organic days of social networking are always fun. They never would have pulled in billions of users if they started off how they are now.

cornfieldlabs 1y ago

Couldn't have said it better. Nothing is a social network anymore. Everything is a content-consumer a platform now. People just want to scroll and scroll

kbrkbr 1y ago
People want to scroll and scroll, because social media make them miserable [1, 2, 3] Perfect storm. [1] https://time.com/4882372/social-media-facebook-instagram-unhappy/ https://time.com/4882372/social-media-facebook-instagram-unh... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-social-media-makes-people-unhappy-and-simple-ways-to-fix-it/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-social-media-... [3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/navigating-the-maze/202506/why-social-media-makes-you-feel-worse https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/navigating-the-maze/...
7952 1y ago
My hunch is that instant messaging is slowly taking over that space. If you actually want to connect with people you can without needing much of a platform.

smeej 1y ago

There was an even briefer moment where there was no such thing as status updates. You didn't have a "wall." The point wasn't to post about your own life. You could go leave public messages on other people's profiles. And you could poke them. And that was about it. I remember complaining like hell when the wall came out, that it was the beginning of the end. But this was before publicly recording your own thoughts somewhere everyone could see was commonplace, so I did it by messaging my friends on AIM. And then when the Feed came out? It was received as creepy and stalkerish. And there are now (young) adults born in the time since who can't even fathom a world without ubiquitous feeds in your pocket. Call me nostalgic, but we were saner then.

figassis 1y ago
Oh wow, I’d even forgotten about pokes. Thanks for that trip down memory lane.
- smeej 1y ago
  I made the mistake of sending a Gen Z (adult) friend a poking finger emoji to try to remind him about something. It wasn't the first time I've had a generational digital (ha) communication failure, but it was the first time I've had one because I'm old and out of touch with what things mean these days!
- alexthehurst 1y ago
  Still a supported feature! You can find it if you dig around in the menus long enough.
fivestones 1y ago
Unless I’m remembering wrong, posting a public message on someone else’s profile was posting on their wall. Or was it called something else before it was somebody’s wall?
- smeej 1y ago
  It didn't have a name. It wasn't really a "feature." You just went and posted on their "page" I guess I would call it. The change to being able to post things on your own page and expecting other people to come to your page and read them (because, again, no Feed) wasn't received well at first. Keep in mind, smartphones didn't exist yet, and the first ones didn't have selfie cameras even once they did. And the cameras on flip phones were mostly garbage, so if you wanted to show a picture, you had to bring a camera with you, plug it in, and upload it. So at first the Wall basically replaced AIM away messages so you could tell your friends which library you were going to go study in and how long. And this didn't seem problematic, because you were probably only friends with people in your school (it was only open to university students, and not many schools at first), and nobody was mining your data, because there were no business or entity pages. Simpler, simpler days.

lern_too_spel 1y ago

They were stealing your contacts from wherever they could get them. There was never a time when they didn't abuse their users.

safety1st 1y ago

I mean let's be clear on the history and not romanticize anything, Zuck created Facebook pretty much so he could spy on college girls. He denies this of course, but it all started with his Facemash site for ranking the girls, and then we get to the early Facebook era and there's his quote about the "4,000 dumbfucks trusting him with their photos" etc. There is no benevolent original version of FB. It was a toy made by a college nerd who wanted to siphon data about chicks. It was more user friendly back then because he didn't have a monopoly yet. Now it has expanded to siphoning data from the entire human race and because they're powerful they can be bigger bullies about it. Zuck has kind of indirectly apologized for being a creeper during his college years. But the behavior of his company hasn't changed.

distances 1y ago

Very true! I was annoyed by the loss of the "is" pattern and basically stopped using Facebook when the chronological feed was removed.