[stickfigure]

I was on AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Chat, as well as Friendster, Tribe.net, MySpace, and Orkut. True, Facebook didn't invent social networking, but it was significantly better than all of the others.

The messengers were different beasts; in fact, Facebook didn't get instant messaging for quite some time.

Facebook had two things going for it over the other early social networks - the UI was comparatively good, and they platform-ized early. Nowadays folks get angry about "apps that steal your data" but back in that era the apps were the interesting thing. Facebook itself didn't have an event planning system; you relied on third party apps for that.

Facebook also executed well in a way that the other platforms didn't. Friendster just outright failed to scale. But even the other platforms were stuck following the conceptual model of a dating website - they were all about customizing your "page". Zuckerberg gets credit for recognizing the value of a "feed of what your friends are up to" and shifting the core interaction, despite angry protests from entrenched users.

Saying "Facebook didn't invent social networking" is far too dismissive.

[ModernMech]

By saying "Facebook didn't invent social networking" the parent wasn't implying that Facebook didn't bring anything new. They were dismissing the idea that before Facebook you had to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to facilitate social activities over the internet. As a teenager using AIM in the 90s, I certainly wasn't shelling out thousands to talk with my friends every night.