[bigcloud1299]

Most of social platforms are nothing but feature AOL back in the day. They got a different look and feel. Some are cross over of ICQ and AOL (WhatsApp) AOL messenger Chat rooms (discord, telegram) Twitter is nothing but public chat room.

[grogenaut]

Slack is just irc, Dropbox just nfs, Google just grep, Craigslist just newspaper classifieds, amazon just Walmart, Netflix just charter, hacker news just coffee shops and bars, and on and on, what's your point

[inkywatcher]

When you put it like that, I really prefer some of the precursors.

[OnlyMortal]

Reddit is just Usenet.

[morkalork]

I like reddit because it's a bunch of millennials and has been from the start. My old manager, he talks all glowingly about the haydays of usenet. He's a gen-Xer. Given the equivalency of social networks features, the most important thing is just going to be the identity of the users consuming them.

[grogenaut]

I love to joke to my kids that twitch is just AM radio for their age group... they get mad on that one cause it's pretty on point.

[OnlyMortal]

As a Gen-X, almost Boomer, and the only social media I use is Reddit…

I think, perhaps, you might be looking at the wrong “groups”.

CasualUK is where I spend my time.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Case in point.

[courgette]

> hacker news just coffee shops and bars

Ok, I really follow you on the rest and the overall point.

But this one … hacker news is how : delicio.us/Reddit/digg/slashdot used to be, before the network effect.

I rarely talk about BRNF at bars and I don’t use drugs while reading HN.

[grogenaut]

What was hacker news before delicious/reddit/digg/slashdot... before the web bassed internet... before bbs's... what's the analog version of these?

Also I've talked about SQL, made an adobe flash joke, ML, and many other tech things at bars in the last month, with randos.

Had a good hour discussion about ChatGPT with an NFL journalist from the local paper.

[courgette]

Again, agreed. I’m just bored tonight. No animosity here.

My goal was to point out that the metaphors is not equality working across all the examples.

Why Dropbox got NFS and not the postal service or train station locker?

Why google got Grep and not the Dewey classification system ?

Why HN got a pre internet, multi-milenary and deeply human “ancestors”. While BBS would have been sufficient?

Same for Craigslist and Amazon I guess.

[grogenaut]

Cause that's what I typed while in the bathroom at a baseball game after 2 beers and it wasn't my a-material :)

Thanks for clarifying, I guess I'm in paranoid mode...

I didn't say BBS because I was never on one.

[theGnuMe]

Dr. Dobbs, early computer magazines. Then there was email and usenet.

[langfan]

Wow. Good analogies.

"Google just grep"

That's a keeper.

Larry's dad to Larry (pretending that dad was not computer literate, but somehow knew just grep and the web):

Son, now that you're outta school, whaddya do to make rent?

Larry: Oh dad, Sergey and me, we just grep the web for folks. Makes us rent, and a tad more.

[htag]

Generally the social platforms can offer one or more of these three things better than AOL ever did.

1. Recommendation engines, and other clever ways to drive up engagements.

2. Marketing. AOL's marketing was generally ahead of other tech companies at the time. Modern platforms have marketing on par with any other consumer brand. They are specifically great at FOMO, user acquisition, and feeling like a basic utility for modern life.

3. Network effect. Meta reports almost 3B monthly active users. What did AOL max out at? 20M?

[doodlesdev]

Arguably all of the things you pointed out are actually disadvantages, it's a matter of perspective really.

[samstave]

Heh, you may not be old enough to recall BBSs or PCLink?