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TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

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Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#61
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original Facebook didn't have a status to update; that didn't come until around late 2007 or early 2008. There was no chat until that time as well, just "poke." In 2004 it still managed to be "social" for its time though, especially with its focus on a campus. For a very long time Facebook was just mostly static pages with a list of friends and a "wall" your friends could write on, and maybe, IIRC, photo upload.…

the wall was chat. there was one screen where you could check on who's online, then you'd write on their wall

I remember, but it was really quite different than what you'd think of as a chat. I'd write something on your wall and you'd reply by posting something on my wall two days later. Everyone saw both. That was the only chat available. There was very little interactivity.

The wall was mostly equivalent to scrawling something in a public bathroom, hence the name.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I thought part of Facebook's instant success was because, with the exception of wilfully-obtuse student columnists, most students instantly "got" it because they'd had some sort of internet profile and compulsively-updated statuses since their parents had finally succumbed to the avalanche of AOL CDs in 1997. Even the university, moving at such glacial pace it still ran a nineties Windows NT, was trying to g…

The original Facebook didn't have a status to update; that didn't come until around late 2007 or early 2008. There was no chat until that time as well, just "poke." In 2004 it still managed to be "social" for its time though, especially with its focus on a campus. For a very long time Facebook was just mostly static pages with a list of friends and a "wall" your friends could write on, and maybe, IIRC, photo upload.…

> The original Facebook didn't have a status to update; that didn't come until around late 2007 or early 2008

It wasn't that late. At early as 2005, there was a form with the prompt "John Doe is:" and you had to squeeze whatever thoughts you needed your friends to know into that format.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original Facebook didn't have a status to update; that didn't come until around late 2007 or early 2008. There was no chat until that time as well, just "poke." In 2004 it still managed to be "social" for its time though, especially with its focus on a campus. For a very long time Facebook was just mostly static pages with a list of friends and a "wall" your friends could write on, and maybe, IIRC, photo upload.…

> The original Facebook didn't have a status to update; that didn't come until around late 2007 or early 2008 It wasn't that late. At early as 2005, there was a form with the prompt "John Doe is:" and you had to squeeze whatever thoughts you needed your friends to know into that format.

No way. When they launched the status feature they got all kinds of crap for copying twitter, which launched in 2006.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original Facebook didn't have a status to update; that didn't come until around late 2007 or early 2008. There was no chat until that time as well, just "poke." In 2004 it still managed to be "social" for its time though, especially with its focus on a campus. For a very long time Facebook was just mostly static pages with a list of friends and a "wall" your friends could write on, and maybe, IIRC, photo upload.…

> The original Facebook didn't have a status to update; that didn't come until around late 2007 or early 2008 It wasn't that late. At early as 2005, there was a form with the prompt "John Doe is:" and you had to squeeze whatever thoughts you needed your friends to know into that format.

2005? Nope and no and no way in hell.

First of all, mini-feed launched in Sep, 2006, according to a TechCrunch post from that time. That was the real time Facebook started to be anything near what it is today, and certainly well before status updates.

I first noticed people using status updates in March 2008, how do I know month and year, you ask? because there was serious shit going on on my life at the time. And I remember reading "X is blah blah blah" for the first time while I was going through my shit. It was new enough to notice. I'll conceed that the "status feature" may have existed a year before I really noticed it, so we are still at early 2007 two years earlier than 2005.

I also do recall the criticism of "you're copying Twitter" as a sibling posted.

I remember using the brand new Facebook chat about April or May 2008, FWIW.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#65
post #47
post #40

What was CS235? I graduated 2016 and I don't remember a course with that number ever being offered

CS 235: Applied Robot Design for Non-Robot-Designers: How to Fix, Modify, Design, and Build Circa 2012-2013

I remember it used to be an advanced OS class about a decade ago. I'm not sure why it would be considered that challenging as opposed to any other graduate-level class (especially the theory ones)...

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#66

Jesus christ. It's so hard to believe that's only from 2004. I feel like that era transpired 40 years ago. The period of time before smartphones feels like it happened in the 1970's to me. The difference between 2000 and 2015 is so absurdly radical it begs disbelief.

> It's so hard to believe that's only from 2004. It's surprising Holt could still get away with writing "Cornell girls are hideous" as late as 2004!

It's true though.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#67
Though satire, the fake Moskovitz quote was interesting: "I don’t want to elaborate too much on our end goal / purpose, but I will say we are not without a plan."

I wonder at what point it became clear to Facebook that they were sitting on a targeted advertising goldmine? Surely it was not on the minds of Zuckerberg and Moskovitz (or anyone else!) in the company's early years.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that you put it that way, man... things have changed. I can't help thinking about further back, too. Just imagine how it felt to live around the turn of last century! Planes, [newer] trains, and automobiles! Electricity, plumbing, underground subway transportation. Hygienic medicine. Vaccines. Telegraphs reaching out overseas and powering thousands of morning daily papers; becoming a commodity instead of luxury.…

The really weird thing is how actual technology in movies from the 80's and 90's looks so much worse to people in 2017 than technology in moves from the 50's and 60's looked to people in the late 90's.

Orville Wright (of the Wright brothers) went from developing early airplanes to seeing the development of international travel and the jet engine. He lived until 1948 and his last flight was in a Lockheed Constellation[1]

In computer science we are similarly privileged. We've gone from basic ideas of transistors and turing machines to having a global network of interconnected supercomputers in our pockets.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Constellation

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#70
post #32
post #28

> Many people have told me that they are surprised that a computer science major from Harvard designed this people-meeting service. Can Facebook still be considered a “people-meeting service”?

I don't know that Zuckerberg ever considered it a "people-meeting" service.

Back in 2009, you could join, I think, two "networks" and easily search and browse within those networks, firing off messages to anyone who seemed interesting. IIRC, that functionality disappeared a few years ago. Now FB is almost entirely a way to connect with people you already know, rather than a way to actually meet people.
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