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How to Join a Social Network in 1998

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Re: How to Join a Social Network in 1998

#11

Post by marapuru »

Fnoord wrote: post #3

I guess we're talking WWW or Web 2.0 or HTTP(S) or whatever (ie. bloat). Cu2 was a Dutch predecessor of Hyves which were both a very popular social network in The Netherlands before the existence of MySpace and Facebook. Eventually, "everyone" went to Facebook though. Both were colorful (think: IRC on DALnet, or MySpace). It was awful. The thing is, social networks existed before the term was ever coined. They were j…

Ah CU2, the memories. It's a while ago. One of the interesting things there is that it actually made people aware of technology. You had to learn some HTML (for horrible purposes though), you had to read urls.

Maybe it wasn't always for the good (eye bleeding color schemes for example). But I'm sure a lot of people learned the basics of HTMl through those types of websites.

Re: How to Join a Social Network in 1998

#12

Post by tobyjsullivan »

I (barely) recall chain letters being a very common thing back in those days. Probably the first form of "viral content" on the internet. Reading that email, it's easy to connect the dots of how sixdegrees probably had the idea of capturing that viral nature in a web app. Great example of clever and somewhat successful adaptation.

edit: internet != web

Re: How to Join a Social Network in 1998

#13

Post by aerique »

Fnoord wrote: post #3

I guess we're talking WWW or Web 2.0 or HTTP(S) or whatever (ie. bloat). Cu2 was a Dutch predecessor of Hyves which were both a very popular social network in The Netherlands before the existence of MySpace and Facebook. Eventually, "everyone" went to Facebook though. Both were colorful (think: IRC on DALnet, or MySpace). It was awful. The thing is, social networks existed before the term was ever coined. They were j…

A friend of mine knew the guy (one of the guys?) who was creating Cu2 at the time and we as nerds were laughing at it like: "You can't be serious, who would want to use this?!".

Same with startpagina.nl, a really basic portal that eventually was sold for a lot of money.

Or as Bill Hicks used to say: "Boy, do I NOT have my finger on the pulse of America."

Re: How to Join a Social Network in 1998

#14

Post by all2 »

marapuru wrote: post #11
Fnoord wrote: post #3

I guess we're talking WWW or Web 2.0 or HTTP(S) or whatever (ie. bloat). Cu2 was a Dutch predecessor of Hyves which were both a very popular social network in The Netherlands before the existence of MySpace and Facebook. Eventually, "everyone" went to Facebook though. Both were colorful (think: IRC on DALnet, or MySpace). It was awful. The thing is, social networks existed before the term was ever coined. They were j…

Ah CU2, the memories. It's a while ago. One of the interesting things there is that it actually made people aware of technology. You had to learn some HTML (for horrible purposes though), you had to read urls. Maybe it wasn't always for the good (eye bleeding color schemes for example). But I'm sure a lot of people learned the basics of HTMl through those types of websites.

Myspace served a similar purpose for later generations. It did for me, anyway.

There were still terrible color choices, and scrolling text, and flashing text, and glitter that followed your mouse cursor...

Re: How to Join a Social Network in 1998

#16

Post by tapland »

liquid_x wrote: post #4
INTPenis wrote: post #2

In 1998 here in Sweden kids were joining the Skunk network, a very early social network. I guess it sort of exploded around that time so it's hard to backup a statement like "the first online social network".

We had StajlPleijs/Lunarstorm founded in 1996 https://www.internetmuseum.se/tidslinjen/lunarstorm/

With up to 600k memebers in a country of 9m at the time.

Lunarstorm was HUGE.

Re: How to Join a Social Network in 1998

#18

Post by code_duck »

I recall sixdegrees. I was invited to it by the same person who got me to sign up classmates.com and Friendster.

As far as websites with useful social networking functionality that resembles what we have today, I would say the PHPbb/vBulletin style forums were there early on. Sometime around 1999, I joined a forum on ezboard.com(1) which ended up turning into a long running discussion and meeting site. It was moved to a private server after ezboard transitioned in some way and deleted everyone's content circa 2003. It was the most prominent online resource in our artist community until it was replaced by Facebook and then Instagram.

(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezboard

Re: How to Join a Social Network in 1998

#19

Post by myleshenderson »

ZebZ wrote: post #17

I spent most of my time in the mid 90s through early 2000s as an op in #HTML on Undernet. Good times. I actually got my first job through there.

I spent way too much time on undernet during the same period of time, mostly on #asp. I got my first and second programming jobs through friends I made there.

Wasn't there a site ran by one of the #html ops, htmlcenter or something like that?

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