[tetromino_]

I used Skype. I distinctly remember that my grandparents were not able to set up Skype on their own: I had to visit them and install the thing and set up their account and add everyone they wanted to into their contact list. I also distinctly remember the video/audio quality often being close to white noise when chatting across multiple international boundaries.

I used MySpace for a bit. As far as I remember, it was a network targeting teenagers. Not a place where, say, one could search for an electrician or a dentist, discuss the relative merits of the vegetable selection at nearby groceries, or look for baby formula in a time of shortage.

I used ICQ and IRC and MSN and AIM and plain old SMS. None of them invested much design effort in internationalization. IRC in particular was brutally hostile to non-English alphabets. None ever considered the possibility of auto-translationg a conversation between people speaking different languages; perhaps there were third party addons that tried to do so, but I never encountered them.

You are correct that Facebook did not invent its portfolio of technologies. What Facebook did is integrate them, implement them extremely well, and made them ridiculously easy to use for non-technical people, which is extraordinarily useful given that much of one's social circle is non-technical.