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It's called "social web" for a reason. Instant messenger and chat rooms and ICQ and USENET forums and email are not web. At most the OP is talking about the hi

It's called "social web" for a reason. Instant messenger and chat rooms and ICQ and USENET forums and email are not web. At most the OP is talking about the history of the Internet. {The World Wide Web (abbreviated as WWW or W3,[2] commonly known as the Web), is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web}

papsosouid 14y ago
He may have focused too much on icq and email, but the point is still valid. Forums existed in the 90s. They were websites.
- binxbolling 14y ago
  Forums did more than exist-- they were massively popular. Sure, I don't remember a forum with 1 billion members, but I'm still boggled at the colossal output of some of them. I remember pretty niche topics still with large, competing boards and real-life meetups... all before Zuckerberg even hit puberty. I think the author's point is that the web didn't just magically come alive in 2004, and this is more than true.
jeremyjh 14y ago
He acknowledges this upfront. I'm not sure why he persists in using this terminology since he does know better. I think that he is correct so far as there is equivalent functionality in the older internet social tools and protocols.
pedrocr 14y ago
That was my first impression too but I think his point is that the web was already social because people were already using (and still do) out of band mechanisms to socially share web links. The new social web is just using the web itself to stream those previously OOB messages. This is in contrast to saying that before the social web people used the web individually, looking up information by themselves but not interacting socially about the web.
- scott_s 14y ago
  People weren't using the social web before the likes of Facebook and MySpace. You, me and the rest of HN were. But everyone else? No, they were not on forums. Being social on the internet and the web was the purview of geeks. Friendster, MySpace and Facebook changed that.
  - coliveira 14y ago
    I don't think so. Anyone that was serious about a particular area, such as a hobby, profession, or social cause was already using forums 10 years ago. Now these people converged to the mainstream sites such as twitter, but they have always shared information on the web since it was created. My wife, for example, doesn't know a thing about computers, but is more active in forums and niche sites than I have ever been.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      I know many counterexamples, particularly people who were in their 20's, 30's and older ten years ago. MySpace and Facebook was their first introduction to the social web.
      - pedrocr 14y ago
        I follow a beekeeping forum, and just yesterday there was a thread about some people noticing they had been on for 10+ years. These are definitely not the young hacker crowd. That predates myspace and is literally just an example that came up yesterday, I'm sure I can find older forums. And are you really saying that before web forums, all the way back in the very beginning of the web people weren't being social on the web by sharing links through email? Remember, email is the true killer app of the internet, the web is just a nice-to-have. :)
        scott_s 14y ago
        I'm talking trends, not individuals.
georgemcbay 14y ago
Pedantically speaking, Usenet and email at least are part of the web. They aren't http-based, but the "web" is really anything with addressable URIs, and both usenet and email have well-defined URI formats, eg: nntp://<host>:<port>/<newsgroup-name>/<article-number> mailto:<user>@<domain>
- aidenn0 14y ago
  I disagree with you, and so does wikipedia: "The World Wide Web (abbreviated as WWW or W3,[2] commonly known as the Web), is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet."
- sp332 14y ago
  You can't really like email documents or accounts to each other, so I don't think they're part of the "web" of connected pages.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    You can link nntp news articles.
- rfugger 14y ago
  Just because a browser supports those protocols, doesn't mean they are part of the web, which uses HTTP.
makomk 14y ago
Even the social web dates back further than most people think. For instance, Livejournal's been around since back in 1999 complete with friends lists and communities and privacy settings for posts and all sorts of social functionality, some of which the mainstream social networking sites didn't even adopt until recently.

papsosouid 14y ago

He may have focused too much on icq and email, but the point is still valid. Forums existed in the 90s. They were websites.

binxbolling 14y ago
Forums did more than exist-- they were massively popular. Sure, I don't remember a forum with 1 billion members, but I'm still boggled at the colossal output of some of them. I remember pretty niche topics still with large, competing boards and real-life meetups... all before Zuckerberg even hit puberty. I think the author's point is that the web didn't just magically come alive in 2004, and this is more than true.

jeremyjh 14y ago

He acknowledges this upfront. I'm not sure why he persists in using this terminology since he does know better. I think that he is correct so far as there is equivalent functionality in the older internet social tools and protocols.

pedrocr 14y ago

That was my first impression too but I think his point is that the web was already social because people were already using (and still do) out of band mechanisms to socially share web links. The new social web is just using the web itself to stream those previously OOB messages. This is in contrast to saying that before the social web people used the web individually, looking up information by themselves but not interacting socially about the web.

scott_s 14y ago
People weren't using the social web before the likes of Facebook and MySpace. You, me and the rest of HN were. But everyone else? No, they were not on forums. Being social on the internet and the web was the purview of geeks. Friendster, MySpace and Facebook changed that.
- coliveira 14y ago
  I don't think so. Anyone that was serious about a particular area, such as a hobby, profession, or social cause was already using forums 10 years ago. Now these people converged to the mainstream sites such as twitter, but they have always shared information on the web since it was created. My wife, for example, doesn't know a thing about computers, but is more active in forums and niche sites than I have ever been.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    I know many counterexamples, particularly people who were in their 20's, 30's and older ten years ago. MySpace and Facebook was their first introduction to the social web.
    - pedrocr 14y ago
      I follow a beekeeping forum, and just yesterday there was a thread about some people noticing they had been on for 10+ years. These are definitely not the young hacker crowd. That predates myspace and is literally just an example that came up yesterday, I'm sure I can find older forums. And are you really saying that before web forums, all the way back in the very beginning of the web people weren't being social on the web by sharing links through email? Remember, email is the true killer app of the internet, the web is just a nice-to-have. :)
      - scott_s 14y ago
        I'm talking trends, not individuals.

georgemcbay 14y ago

Pedantically speaking, Usenet and email at least are part of the web. They aren't http-based, but the "web" is really anything with addressable URIs, and both usenet and email have well-defined URI formats, eg: nntp://<host>:<port>/<newsgroup-name>/<article-number> mailto:<user>@<domain>

aidenn0 14y ago
I disagree with you, and so does wikipedia: "The World Wide Web (abbreviated as WWW or W3,[2] commonly known as the Web), is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet."
sp332 14y ago
You can't really like email documents or accounts to each other, so I don't think they're part of the "web" of connected pages.
- Evbn 14y ago
  You can link nntp news articles.
rfugger 14y ago
Just because a browser supports those protocols, doesn't mean they are part of the web, which uses HTTP.

makomk 14y ago

Even the social web dates back further than most people think. For instance, Livejournal's been around since back in 1999 complete with friends lists and communities and privacy settings for posts and all sorts of social functionality, some of which the mainstream social networking sites didn't even adopt until recently.