I don’t often think of myself as using social networking much. Sure, I have accounts almost everywhere, but that’s more to do with reserving my name should I want to use whatever the service is in the future (Oklahoma land rush mentality).
Thinking back through today, perhaps I should revise things somewhat;
Woke up, rolled over, picked up Blackberry and checked email while still in bed
Arrived at work, logged into network, checked work email Opened Google Chrome, checked personal email, and new follows from Tumblr
Prepared for afternoon meetings while trying to ignore the Blackberry periodically vibrating in my pocket.
Spent lunchtime catching up with friends on Facebook, reading overnight Tumblr posts, and responding to DMs on Twitter.
Had a conversation with my cousin in Oxfordshire via Facebook IM
I do use a lot of this stuff, don’t I
It’s got me thinking; about the services I have used over the yearsthe communities I’ve been an active part ofbefore my addled brain forgets everything about those early days, I thought it might be fun to see just how much I can remember.
Bulletin Boards Back in the days of 56K modems, my first interactions “online” were with members of bulletin board systems, talking about all manner of garbage. I remember the character based interfaces seeming tremendously clever, when in reality they were utterly hopeless.
Compuserve The first real community I joined in the early 90s. In many ways Facebook is only now beginning to foster the same community spirit that Compuserve had then.
CiX (Compulink Information Exchange) A UK based social network over dial-up. The client softwarecalled “Ameol”was the best “off line reader” application I have ever seen, before or since. The community was fantastic too.
LiveJournal I guess LiveJournal might count as my first “blog”and the first website I regularly visited in the early days of the Web. It’s easy to forget now that until 1994 the web was not the primary means of consuming information from the internet. I still have friends now from those early days on LiveJournal.
Yahoo 360 In it’s day, Yahoo 360 was better than Facebook. It was open, full of interesting people, and a genuinely exciting place to share and communicate online. As far as I recall it never officially left “beta” status.
MySpace Oh MySpacehow did it all go so wrong? Once upon a time you counted something like a third of all people on the internet as your members, and forged many amazing friendships that I still have today all over the world.
Vox Once upon a time Vox was going to be the successor to LiveJournal, and became the place to write, to share, and to communicate online among the higher echelons of the web populance. It looked great, worked great, but was a walled garden. It shut down earlier this yearironically LiveJournal still lives.
Flickr Still going strong, many people forget that Flickr does far more than just photo sharingit has many of the features of the big social networks, and often better security features. I never really got into the whole photography-snob side of it, but have always used it as a repository of family photos.
Orkut I can still remember the day a web designer friend in San Francisco showed me Orkut (way before Facebook was opened up to the non-academic world). I still don’t really know why it didn’t take offit has essentially the same functions as the modern social networks. Perhaps the name? Who knows Of course in some parts of the world, Orkut is the most popular social network.
Digg Social bookmarking site par-excellence, and recent victim of it’s own past failings. Holes in the Digg design allowed it to be gamed by those who might make money from greater exposure of their material within the site. When the holes were plugged recently, the gamer faithful turned rogue. It’s a shameDigg was always the best place (pre twitter) to find out about breaking news.
Facebook I was a member of Facebook from their earliest dayswhen they opened to the outside world as a “Beta” service. I still remember the banner with Zuckerberg’s silhouetted face in it. They have many detractors, but there’s no denying the brilliance of their creation
Twitter Perhaps because of my job, the news I read, and the podcasts I listen to, I was a member of Twitter from the very start too. I remember the early outages, and the emergence of competing services such as Jaiku and Identi.ca. I still find it amazing that it continues to grow in the manner it does.
LinkedIn More a directory of business associates than a social networkI have an account at LinkedIn, but rarely use it beyond finding the email address for old colleagues. The more career focussed of my friends use it far more, and sing it’s praises.
Windows Live I think it appeared for the first time back in 2008, and first impressions looked like Microsoft were copying Facebook to the last detail. The 2011 repaint looks much more like a portal than a service, and that’s good news. It’s just a shame that it doesn’t quite do everything you might like it to.
Yahoo Pulse In the same way that many things appear to have happened at Yahoo over the last few years, Yahoo Pulse is a poor imitation of both Facebook, and Windows Live. It’s clunky, difficult to navigate around, and seems badly thought out, which is a huge shameYahoo 360 was so good!
Tumblr Many people tend to label Tumblr as a blogging platform, but I think of it as a social network. I’ve had an account for years, but only really immersed myself in the community recently - an experience that has brought so many new friends, and amazing content that I still find it hard to describe.
Holy crap that’s a lot of social networksbut then I guess their existence and popularity spans from the late 1980s right through to the present dayover 20 years!.
Where have you lived online? Where do you miss the most?