[olivierduval]

IMHO, the "social web" was "forums" (think "phpBB" for example) and the "webrings", that enable to find other website/forums like the one you were on. It was quite usual to see some people refering to other forums in their comments, so it was a way to share a community of forums.

Even if there was no "single personal page", it was quite usual to wander in the same forums on some specifics topics (like "reverse engineering" or "wargames") and people usually used the same username... so you could "follow" the same people in differents forums

Then, later, people interests started to be more egoistic, sliding from "what" to "who", and the era of (micro-)blogging started : everybody wanted its own website to share its own view and be the superstar of the day...

Web 2.0 was the consecration as it allowed "comments" under blog posts (and so called "community" knowledge). Facebook, MySpace & consort allowed people without any technical knowedge or technical resources to have their own "profile page" and the rest is history

PS: yeah... I still miss the 90's-95's, when the web was full of "hackers", "free spirits", having already lived a long and rich life, and eager to share to the youngest generation...