Written by Brian McConnell
As Facebook enjoys its moment in the sun, we should take a moment to step back and look at the history of computers and social communication. Some historical perspective is in order, both to assess the real value of social networks as businesses, and to anticipate how they are likely to evolve in the future.
I’ve been using the Internet since 1988, and have been using various commercial online services such as CompuServe, Prodigy and GEnie since I had my first computer. A lot of things that could be described as social networks have come and gone in that time.
Bulletin Boards
People have been using computers for social communication since the very beginning of the personal computer industry. Long before the Internet became accessible to the general public, people were hosting BBS systems, many of them focused on an interest group or local community. One particularly prescient invention was FidoNet, a network for BBSes that allowed systems to transfer data (messages, files, etc.) in bucket-brigade fashion to sites around the world. It grew to, at one point, cover much of the world, and was an entirely community-based effort.
Since not everyone had a computer , the communities that emerged in the BBS world largely revolved around computers in some way. Some BBSes focused on DIY computer projects, others on games, and more than a few were devoted to pirating commercial software.
Online Services
Commercial online services reached their peak in the 1990s, first as destinations in of themselves, and later as a way to access the Internet. These services provided access to a broad range of services that are now mirrored on the web. News, travel reservations, shopping and social hubs were all part of the package; much of what we see today on the web existed in some form on these sites. Social communication was one of the big draws for online services, as a major source of their revenue was derived from billing for usage on a per-minute basis. AOL in particular recognized this and allowed users to create communities about just about any topic.
Just as online services were reaching their peak, the web became accessible to ordinary users, turning the Internet into a mainstream phenomenon. Online services, in turn, gradually morphed from destinations to a means of accessing the Internet.
Throughout this period, the population of computer users expanded rapidly. AOL, for all of its faults, deserves a lot of credit for introducing millions of people to the Internet. As the user community grew, online services began to build communities around more diverse interest groups, most having nothing to do with computers. The community focus shifted from computers to people who happened to use computers to do something.
Web 1.0
From the mid-90s to 2000, there was an explosion of activity as companies rushed to reproduce existing online services on the web. There were many social services created during this period, notably GeoCities and theGlobe.com. One thing the web did was to eliminate the walled garden problem that plagued AOL and their brethren. This promoted the development of niche communities, such as PlanetOut/Gay.com, that may have otherwise been stifled by corporate censorship in controlled environments. While none of these services advertised themselves as a social network per se, they had many of the same characteristics.
Friendster
Friendster deserves special mention because it was the first popular web site that contained all of the features we expect from social networks today — especially the notion of using a social graph to track relationships. But was an unfortunate example of being too early in a developing market. Everything I have seen since Friendster is highly influenced by it, and generally offers the same basic features, just in a different package.
The Future
While I think commercial social networks will continue to be popular, it is dangerous to project future growth from past trends. There are several important trends already underway that, while they are good for social networking as a whole, will undermine proprietary commercial services.
Commercial social networks today are a lot like online services in the mid-90s — they’re popular because they make something easier to do (maintain a social graph, keep track of friends, search for new people). It was not that long ago when getting online was difficult for novice users. Large businesses (EarthLink, Netcom, AOL) were built around making the Internet easy to use. They became superfluous as broadband became standard and devices with built-in Net access were shipped.
I think the same thing is likely to happen to social networks, so let’s look at what a social network really does, and think about how that can be implemented on the open web.
Profiles
Social networks make it easy for people to create profiles using standard templates. This makes sense, but this is really no different than a web page. I like what Chris Messina and co. are doing with their distributed social networking project, which uses blogs as a basic building block, and microformats to embed metadata in pages. Separating profiles from other functions, like search and discovery, makes a lot of sense because then you can have one page or site that is visible via many different search tools.
Search (and the Social Graph)
The social graph is a function that can easily be added to search engines. Once web sites, blogs, etc. are tagged to indicate that they are profiles, search engines can crawl them to pick up metadata, links to friends, etc. Search engines are already good at indexing the web, so adding a vertical search for people and social information is not a daunting task. Expect the search engines to add social/people search features. While the conventional wisdom holds that this task will naturally fall to Google, I think this is an area where AOL or Yahoo could score an unexpected win, as both companies are much more people- and community-focused.
Updates
One of the reasons Facebook is so addictive is because it is a convenient way to track the status of friends. This, too, is something that can be moved onto the open web. Anyone who wants to can publish updates, events, etc. via standard formats like RSS and iCal. Anyone who wants to monitor their friend’s updates can do so, via a feed reader, or via custom applications that have yet to be built. If this becomes standard practice, there will be many opportunities for software developers to create new and better ways to track and display this information.
Follow The Money
To many, social networking is a winner-takes-all market. But I don’t think that’s the case. With the three pieces above, you can recreate what any social network does using open standards and the web. At the moment, this requires more effort, so people use commercial services, but in the long run, open standards usually win.
I would bet on a company like WordPress or perhaps Tumblr to come out with a simple tool that makes publishing profiles and updates easy, and that is designed with social search in mind. Maybe this will be an open-source tool, maybe it will be a commercial service supported by monthly fees or advertising. My guess is that many companies will get into this category, and that — just as there is diversity among blogging and personal publishing tools — there will not be one clear winner. Blog authoring and hosting companies are logical entrants, as they already do the majority of what’s needed for an open social network.
Search will be an important component of this, and I would expect that Google and other search vendors will play a dominant role here. There should also be opportunities for companies that specialize in people and social search. They’ll make money, as they already do, by mixing targeted ads with their social search tools.
The good news for users is that this will be an open market, an ecosystem, with no lock in. Users will be able to choose among many profile and update publishing tools. They’ll also be able to use whatever search tool they prefer. Most importantly, users (a.k.a. publishers) will own their data, and will be able to control how it is presented to the outside world.
The bad news for social networking companies is that this is not a winner-takes-all market, with winner-takes-all valuations. Blog authoring tools are a good comparison. This is certainly not a bad business to be in, but it is not a get-rich-quick business, either. The barriers to entry will also disappear as the network effect of having a large user community becomes irrelevant when every participant is equally searchable via multiple services. I also think that the general paranoia about big companies using personal data inappropriately will be an incentive for people to switch to other tools that provide more control over the use and presentation of their data.
If I had to pick a category to start a company in, I’d pick authoring tools. There’s real long-term value there, as people tend to pick a publishing tool and stick with it — and they’ll more for higher-end tools. If I were Facebook, I’d be thinking about how to participate in this trend — in other words, deal with change before it deals with you.
80 comments so far
4:19 AM PT
Keep Abreast! nice post OM!
nhick
http://www.itrush.com
4:34 AM PT
Future of Social Networking.
Well I think with coming of broadband it will turn into a Digital Id for everyone, with Personal, Propfessional and Social sections with different people in Each of them.
Also it will include visual and group chat and Videoconferencing capability.
Rajeev Vashisht
http://tekno-world.blogspot.com
6:03 AM PT
[...] brings two new articles of interest. One is about the changing business models for online services. Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s is an article by someone who started using the internet in 1988 (about when I did too). It [...]
7:06 AM PT
Don’t forget NNTP, ie; Newsgroups.
7:13 AM PT
I completely concur. Facebook is enjoying it’s “day in the sun” but being a long time user of social sites and services dating back to the beginning I see no real vauue in Facebook and especially no really long term viability. Its novel and can be fun but is by no means necessary.
Facebook is a tremendous waste of time. Eventually they will fall the way of Prodigy, TheGlobe, Friendster, Myspace and the thousands of other sites and services that grow to big to fast to remain cool and sticky in this evolving world.
The promise of a truly connected world will not be based on a particular site, platform or brand but on the distribution of connections - the ability not the method. And that is the core reason Facebook and its insane valuation are in deed INSANE.
8:36 AM PT
The identity issue is critical. As a developer, I want to build apps that allow multiple authentication methods (user-pass, OpenID, Facebook, Bebo, OpenSocial, etc) yet maintain a core set of features.
Building unique code for each platform isn’t going to be feasible as more sites create APIs to access their users.
8:53 AM PT
[...] a rather simple idea: an open standard will be developed/adopted for social profiles (much like RSS for articles, iCal for calendars), online publishing platforms (e.g., Blogger, Yahoo!) will adopt it as a feature, and then commercial social network providers (e.g., Facebook, MySpace) will be in big trouble. [...]
9:35 AM PT
For a litle pre-online social network history, have a look at The Social Construction of Reality:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Construction_of_Reality
I read this book in college and it had a major impact on how I view groups. The book which was written in 1966 continues to hold it’s weigh in the classical tradition of both philosophy and sociology.
9:48 AM PT
Great historical perspective. Wonder how people can make money with tools, especially when they get traction by first giving them away for free, thus training their users to expect tools for free.
10:06 AM PT
Brian,
I think you’re right on point with your historical and current review of social networks. I continually tell friends and colleagues that Facebook is worthless as it is nothing more than a “clean and friendly bulletin board”.
I would love to be a “fly on the wall” at the FB board meeting when their investors realize that they have overcapitalized the most hyped bulletin board in the history of the internet.
This said, the structural product weaknesses of today’s big social networks (MySpace included) combined with increasing user desire to control their personal profiles (incl. social graphs and data) throughout the web will ultimately erode the popularity of the big social networks.
11:04 AM PT
[...] been quiet here for a very good reason: I’ve been writing! But I wanted to point out a recent post over at GigaOM that shows the long history of online social networks. Lots of folks believe they kind of sprung [...]
11:38 AM PT
Why does everybody leave out College Club???? It one of the first social networks around the community created by schools in 1999. To me its the logical predecessor to Friendster, even if it wasn’t as interactive and was primarily based on email correspondence. Great article, and pretty comprehensive despite the small omission.
12:31 PM PT
[...] GigaOm han publicado un interesante articulo sobre la evolución que han sufrido las redes sociales desde [...]
1:15 PM PT
Uh…how about the usenet, folks? It sorta predated all of this!
1:19 PM PT
Horses OF OLD TRAIN WERE OLD AND STOP SLOWER. Horses of 1210 A.D.were of bird egg element. Also 2006 consumer information handbook had a similiar element problem.
1:37 PM PT
This was a commercial perspective of these types of networks. Which is an interesting look from your perspective.
But you’ve missed a lot of what was really going on in the background. But maybe that’s because there’s a clear distinction between Social Network and Community.
– A
1:51 PM PT
I’ve added some additional ones here:
http://www.centernetworks.com/look-back-at-old-social-networks
2:05 PM PT
Incredibly shallow article. Online communities <> social networks. As for the latter, no alleged historical review should be thought of as such without mention of the original: SixDegrees.com (circa 1996). That site was something the author would call “Web 1.0″ but had all the friend of friend network functionality of Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, etc, only a decade beforehand.
2:11 PM PT
[...] abridged. To read the full list and full descriptions, view the original post at it’s source: Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s [...]
2:43 PM PT
Any discussion of computer-based social networking should probably begin with the PLATO system developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign beginning in the 60’s and reaching full flower in the mid to later 1970’s. Yes, this pre-dates microprocessors. PLATO was designed to teach courses on any topic using terminals online to a mainframe computer system and was later marketed commercially by Control Data.
Among the many firsts (or parallel co-firsts) were forms of email (called personal notes or Pnotes on PLATO), discussion forums for thousands of topics (called notesfiles on PLATO), live 1 on 1 chat (”term talk”), live multi person chats ala chat rooms (”Talk-O-Matic”). Computer games abounded, even multi-player games. Many people got to know each other via online interaction and so PLATO was one of the first online communities.
Technically, PLATO was amazing, with UIUC’s own system having over a thousand terminals and many times there could be 800 or more active at any time. Unlike large business networks of the day which might have to respond to an occasional request for service a couple seconds later, on the PLATO system even simple key echoing got the full attention of the mainframe and thus was totally interactive. Did pressing the “a” key cause an “a” to be displayed or did it move the spaceship a bit to the left? Totally under programmer control and quite amazing for a mainframe system.
The need for graphics vs. the expense of computer memory within each terminal which would be needed to remember the status of each pixel in a CRT-based system caused the invention of the plasma display panel where dots could be turned on and off and stay that way sans memory. 512 x 512 resolution was very respectable.
Most PLATO terminals had touch screens, some had microfiche projectors that could put an image on a screen behind the plasma display with the latter being used to superimpose labels. External devices included an audio disk device for language classes,several generations of music synthesizers and even a voice synthesizer. As this was before PC’s and the PC keyboard layout did not yet exist PLATO’s designers came up with some general function keys that would be appealing in an academic environment such as LAB, DATA, etc.
PLATO went into decline with the rise of PC’s and the general use of the internet but the last true PLATO system was running at the FAA up until just about a year ago. The name PLATO was sold off separate from the rest.
Those interested can check out some of my old pictures at http://plato.filmteknik.com/.
A historically recreated PLATO system can be accessed by anyone interested. Go to http://www.cyber1.org/ They run the actual PLATO software (although called CYBIS due to the name having been sold). They run it on the old CDC “NOS” operating system running on a CDC mainframe emulator in turn running on Linux on a PC. You can download a terminal emulator for PC and naturally you connect over the internet.
2:46 PM PT
Thanks for the historical review.
2:50 PM PT
Spot on, along with many of the comments. Facebook is, in fact, a throwback to CompuServe in that it is essentially a closed system.
I want to move seamlessly from my desktop to all my connections with one log-on or no log-ons, depending on the privacy of those connections. The model, as ever, is the net itself, with doohickeys like zotero, Google notebooks, iCal, RSS etc, sitting next to the browser.
3:02 PM PT
[...] GigaOm and Center Networks commented today on the history of social networking. Reading some of the comments on both posts, I realize just how subjective social networks are, as the name would imply. [...]
4:15 PM PT
What about IRC? Shouldn’t it be part of this list?
Cheers
Rui Shantilal
4:34 PM PT
[...] blogpost at GigaOm covers some of the iterations that social networks on the internet went through over the years. [...]
5:14 PM PT
I am also amazed you’re not mentioning SixDegrees. They had hundreds of thousands of members (for example, pretty much everyone working in Silicon Alley in the late 90’s) and the functionality was actually in some ways superior to that of Facebook et al. For example, one could perform complex searches (Find me people who are X and Y in my 3rd degree). A useful application: show friends of friends living in a particular city.
SixDegrees went under because they couldn’t figure out the whole advertising model - essentially, they started too early and were too much ahead of the curve.
5:17 PM PT
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5:33 PM PT
Brian - It’s really gratifying to read someone else that remembers Prodigy, the original Compuserve and GEnie. I rememebr $200/month bills from Compuserve too :) Maybe we take all the free stuff on the web today for granted.
My own take is we essentially have two groups crossing over, some of which is good and some ‘noise’. The SEO’s that have been around and a whoole new crew of 2.0 fanatics. The social people can be a real asset to the SEO bunch if we keep the doors open in both directions.
While there will always be people that vote for ‘their pals’, the reality that some really good pieces rise to the top.
I found this one on a rare visit to Mixx. A great example.
Charlie
5:59 PM PT
good read and a history lesson all in one
I think in the long run social networks will die a horrible death, all things reach a peak and then have to come crashing down
it is natural
6:02 PM PT
Brian,
Your historical perspective is helping everybody to think beyond specific vendor definition of social network.
I think same old communication model keeps getting repacked. Fancy user interface, rich media support and in general more online engagement gives the appearance that this time it’s new. At the core we are still recycling communication concepts. Yes context is changing and will keep changing as our overall culture evolves.
Authoring tool category holds great promise. At MessageDance, we are walking the talk -
http://blogs.messagedance.com/2008/01/17/no-limits-twittering-right-from-your-email/
“email is the most easy-to-use, widely-adopted and under-utilized tool for the social media engagement”
There are lot of authoring tools, we say why can’t we use email for all our authoring needs.
What do you think?
6:12 PM PT
Brian,
What role do you think VoIP and real-time communication will play in social networking. Without stating the obvious, real-time communication is critical to social networking in the offline world but thus far, even Web 2.0 social networking and real-time voice and video are run as separate ventures.
Do you see potential for a new social networking portal to arise based on real-time communications or will the existing sites likely just add this as another feature?
Scott Wharton
My Blog: http://www.ipbusinessmag.com/blogs.php?author_id=3
6:19 PM PT
[...] Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s - GigaOM (tags: socialnetworking history community orality) [...]
6:57 PM PT
I totally agree with whomever mentioned sixdegrees.com — it was a decade ahead of myspace/friendster/facebook. Those dudes were ahead of their time.
8:05 PM PT
You forgot ryze.com which predates Friendster. For me, this was the first social network I had ever seen. The founder of Friendster was an early member :)
8:23 PM PT
[...] Update: There is a nice post about the Social networking history. [...]
9:35 PM PT
Hi
Good post, my guess is that in future it would mobile social networking where using wireless technology, a person roaming in SanFrancisco downtown would come to know whether there is any show/sale/movie/friend of his interest near him/her.
In essence server can push all this information to his mobile any social information….
Thanks
Sandeep Sahai
9:39 PM PT
[...] A guest-written post on GigaOM by Brian McConnell explores “Social Networks from the 80s to the 00s.” Brian writes, “As Facebook enjoys its moment in the sun, we should take a moment to [...]
10:18 PM PT
[...] Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s - GigaOM Social networks from the prehistory. (tags: SocialNetworking history socialnetworks internet) [...]
11:58 PM PT
I think that Social Playground is a better term for the likes of FaceBook
12:11 AM PT
I totally agree about profiles becoming separate from the destination… that is what mEgo is doing.
12:25 AM PT
Brian,
nice writeup, but i’m surprised you didn’t touch on instant messaging networks, which are almost certainly the immediate pre-cursors to today’s emerging social networks. this whole arena would look very different if the IM networks had been able to anticipate the importance of profiles and voyeurism.
oh, and facebook IM is going to be both powerful and sticky.
12:49 AM PT
Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s | Deliggit.com
gigaom.com
As Facebook enjoys its moment in the sun, we should take a moment to step back and loo
2:35 AM PT
Great post! With Facebook making headlines everywhere from Time magazine to The Today Show, it is difficult to remember that online social networking is only ten years old. It is amazing how much the genre has changed our lives in that short time. After the integration of the functions of Open Social and OpenID there is much more to look forward to. Lets hope things move much quicker than anticipated.
Parul Bindra
http://bhopu.com – Web 2.0 Blog
5:52 AM PT
but where is the money - apart from anticipation — and if we havent forgot then the last recession was the evolution of the high expection of dot com era?
7:05 AM PT
I see a big future for OpenID as users want to own their online profile and are fed up with social sites claiming their user data.
Based on OpenID a whole new network of separate social services can start to flourish.
7:57 AM PT
I think Social Networking is The new revolution of the young writers to come out and spread their Imaginative ideas and promote their individualism using blog.
I noticed that bloogers follow the thread and become a life and guide to everyone what is your thought of a certain topic.
Thats how i feel! maybe iam wrong or maybe not.
http://www.macisthebest.info
9:05 AM PT
Good post.
Still too much hype around Social Networking. The irrational exhuberance is back for Social network sites.
No interworking among social networks make them a closed world, and many people maintain several users in several sites. OpenID might resolve it.
On the other side, when people get use to blogs and RSS, why do you need a closed platform?
9:27 AM PT
On the history - Just for the historical record, CARINET (Caribbean Implementation Network) created with in Partnership for Productivity International in 1982/83 using Murry Turoff’s EISE softward linking about 30 developing countries and introductged x.25 and concepts of social networking to many countires in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. But the record seems to be wiped clean of its exsistence.
11:35 AM PT
Ah the good old days of the dial-up BBS! We’ve come a long way since then!
12:29 PM PT
[...] January 21, 2008 http://gigaom.com/2008/01/20/social-networks-from-the-80s-to-the-00s/ [...]
12:39 PM PT
While there are more than enough definitions of “social networks” to fit any agenda, situation, or context needed, I was curious if there were any particular reasons why eBay was left out of this. In terms of size and value creation for both eBay and it’s users, is there anyone out there that comes remotely close?
1:09 PM PT
[...] The evolution of Social Networking Good history lesson on social networking from the 80’s through today. [...]
2:10 PM PT
[...] McConnell has a guest column on GigaOM giving his historical perspective on (online) social networks and potential future directions. There’s a lot to like here, starting his recognizing of [...]
2:43 PM PT
The important point in the piece is decoupling search and discovery from profiles. This does not necessarily mean all of the components need to be free or open. My guess is most people will prefer to use one of several commercial options. Ditto with search, many will use Google, others will use some yet to be built social network search tool. Some will build and host their own systems. So I think it is inevitable that the category will evolve in much the way the web did.
About VoIP and social networks, the idea has been out there for a while. Several companies tried this in the 90s, CUCME is one I remember in particular. Paltalk has also been doing a lot in this area. Going back to ‘old times’ there were phone chat rooms. Not VoIP, but similar idea.
Sorry if I overlooked some services, there are a lot and I had to keep this piece short. Nor am I throwing mud all over Facebook. While I don’t understand their valuation, it is certainly useful for its main audience.
3:01 PM PT
Nice post, Brian; I hope your prediction about the authoring tool is right — I’d certainly use it. I also like the your recognizing of the value of social networks to marginalized communities; the more detailed discussion of the recent history of social network sites (1997-2006) in boyd and Ellison’s “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship”* includes AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, Mi Gente, and (in a different dimension) tribe.net.
Steve, great perspective on PLATO. Thanks!
Jerome, fascinating point about CARINET. The US-centricity of a lot of the coverage of these issues means that some of the most interesting prototypes vanish from history …
Something I mentioned in my post on this at Tales from the Net** is that the lack of understanding of Facebook several of the commenters show here is mirrored in the Economist’s debate.*** If you think of Facebook as ”a waste of time” or “clean and friendly bulletin board”, you’re missing large dimensions of its value to a lot of people. Try spending significant amounts of time there, or some less-privacy-invasive site, for a few months learning how to use it — and getting advice from the people who have grown up there — before judging it. Or don’t; but in that case, don’t fool yourself that you understand it.
jon
** http://www.talesfromthe.net/blog/?p=17
*** http://www.talesfromthe.net/blog/?p=15
3:13 PM PT
oops, sorry, that last link should have been directly to the Economist’s debate rather than my attempt to summarize.
http://www.economist.com/debate/index.cfm?debate_id=3&action=hall is what I meant.
3:20 PM PT
[...] Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s - GigaOM (tags: 80s business history internet) [...]
4:04 PM PT
I think eventually these networks will need to come to life. That is, how can we take these relationships offline and make them useful in our daily lives. For now, they appear to be trapped relationships.
Launching January 23rd - http://www.stickychicken.com
5:48 PM PT
[...] Remember the BBS [...]
12:03 AM PT
[...] Read the rest of this post Print Sphere Comment Tagged: social networks, Brian McConnell, Prodigy, CompuServe, Facebook, MySpace | permalink [...]
12:47 AM PT
fidonet!
1:30 AM PT
Why should there be a distinction between social network and authoring tool: http://www.zedpad.com
4:29 AM PT
[...] Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s - GigaOM (tags: socialnetworking history Web2.0 socialnetworks Internet Social community computeristics) [...]
12:48 PM PT
Clearly it’s possible to embed relationship management tools into Web applications and commercial software. But that won’t obviate or replace the Facebook or LinkedIn platforms, which do much more than that. There is plenty of headroom for horizontal media & large networks. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in learning more about the differences between how people use social networks to manage personal and professional relationships, the editors of Found| READ in conjunction with My Global Career invite you to participate in the groundbreaking study called State of Social Networking 2008. To complete the survey, please go to http://s-kf7uz-25818.sgizmo.com/
5:26 PM PT
[...] Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s - GigaOM I’ve been using the Internet since 1988, and have been using various commercial online services such as CompuServe, Prodigy and GEnie since I had my first computer. A lot of things that could be described as social networks have come and gone in that ti (tags: web2.0 Trends Social History) [...]
1:03 AM PT
[...] Networks Where did people first start connecting with others online? It started in the 80s and GigaOm looks at the different tools from bulletin boards, usenet, online services and other areas before this space really started to explode.. [...]
5:35 AM PT
I was sysop with my 300 baud rate model back in the late 1980’s — while many of these networks were devoted to computers, there were also many that were emergency oriented (firemen/police would use them), there were a fair number of disability rights and information BBS, in part, inspired by Project Enable, and of course, community bbs and even some devoted to religion. Also, lots of college kids ran bbs - I first learned about BBS from some colleagues at MIT, etc — they were focused on computers, but also just social space - sort of a very primitive myspace.
5:36 AM PT
You’re missing something important - the Well, Echo, and MetaNetwork were unix based discussion forums pre-Web. From mid-1980s onward
8:47 PM PT
[...] McConnell has written an interesting column about the history of social networks on GigaOM. Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s - GigaOM Guest Column, Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 12:00 AM PT Written by Brian [...]
10:06 PM PT
[...] brought tremendous leaps forward on how humans and computers interact. (For some fun, trace the evolution of social networking and you’ll see that these sites are nothing but a rearrangement of how we’ve been [...]
3:22 AM PT
[...] Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s - GigaOM A useful bit of history and thoughts on the future. I think it confirms the idea that Facebook is not a social network it is a place for networking and the interesting area lies in what people will create both inside and on top of, such places (tags: Trends socialnetworks) No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> [...]
11:38 AM PT
[...] Networks from the 80s to the 00s (GigaOm) Filed under: Technology, advertising, news, social | Tags: [...]
2:02 AM PT
[...] Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s (20 januari) Website: Gigaom Een stukje geschiedenis op en over het web. In dit artikel beschrijft [...]
12:59 PM PT
[...] also a good recent post on GigaOm with a great history of social networks for anyone new to the [...]
12:02 AM PT
[...] Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s - GigaOM “As Facebook enjoys its moment in the sun, we should take a moment to step back and look at the history of computers and social communication. Some historical perspective is in order, both to assess the real value of social networks as businesses, and to anticipate how they are likely to evolve in the future.” [...]
7:21 PM PT
[...] brought tremendous leaps forward on how humans and computers interact. (For some fun, trace the evolution of social networking and you’ll see that these sites are nothing but a rearrangement of how we’ve been [...]
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[...] continue to rise in prominence given their remarkable growth over the last 12 months. This article, “Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s”provides an excellent overview of the evolution of the space. While this digest from Jeremiah [...]
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[...] http://gigaom.com/2008/01/20/social-networks-from-the-80s-to-the-00s/ [...]
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[...] http://gigaom.com/2008/01/20/social-networks-from-the-80s-to-the-00s [...]
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[...] http://gigaom.com/2008/01/20/social-networks-from-the-80s-to-the-00s/ [...]
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