[d_watt]

Perhaps naive to say, but I think there was the briefest moment where your status updates started with "is", feeds were chronological, and photos and links weren't pushed over text, that it was not an adversarial actor to one's wellbeing.

[smeej]

There was an even briefer moment where there was no such thing as status updates. You didn't have a "wall." The point wasn't to post about your own life. You could go leave public messages on other people's profiles. And you could poke them. And that was about it.

I remember complaining like hell when the wall came out, that it was the beginning of the end. But this was before publicly recording your own thoughts somewhere everyone could see was commonplace, so I did it by messaging my friends on AIM.

And then when the Feed came out? It was received as creepy and stalkerish. And there are now (young) adults born in the time since who can't even fathom a world without ubiquitous feeds in your pocket.

Call me nostalgic, but we were saner then.

[fivestones]

Unless I’m remembering wrong, posting a public message on someone else’s profile was posting on their wall. Or was it called something else before it was somebody’s wall?

[smeej]

It didn't have a name. It wasn't really a "feature." You just went and posted on their "page" I guess I would call it.

The change to being able to post things on your own page and expecting other people to come to your page and read them (because, again, no Feed) wasn't received well at first.

Keep in mind, smartphones didn't exist yet, and the first ones didn't have selfie cameras even once they did. And the cameras on flip phones were mostly garbage, so if you wanted to show a picture, you had to bring a camera with you, plug it in, and upload it. So at first the Wall basically replaced AIM away messages so you could tell your friends which library you were going to go study in and how long. And this didn't seem problematic, because you were probably only friends with people in your school (it was only open to university students, and not many schools at first), and nobody was mining your data, because there were no business or entity pages.

Simpler, simpler days.

[dcrazy]

I joined Thefacebook in 2005. The place on your page where posts from other people appeared was called the “wall” then.

[smeej]

Yeah, that's about when it changed. The lack of a wall was a very early situation. I joined in 2004, back when it was only open to Ivy League and Boston-area schools.

[djmips]

It was still acceptable to write on someone else's wall when they came to be called that. You can still do that now I think but it's quite uncommon and how it works is now complicated but settings.

[OtherShrezzing]

The wall was released maybe 6 months after Facebook launched. I think it was still called “The Facebook” at the time.

[figassis]

Oh wow, I’d even forgotten about pokes. Thanks for that trip down memory lane.

[smeej]

I made the mistake of sending a Gen Z (adult) friend a poking finger emoji to try to remind him about something.

It wasn't the first time I've had a generational digital (ha) communication failure, but it was the first time I've had one because I'm old and out of touch with what things mean these days!

[alexthehurst]

Still a supported feature! You can find it if you dig around in the menus long enough.

[emseetech]

The early, organic days of social networking are always fun. They never would have pulled in billions of users if they started off how they are now.

[cornfieldlabs]

Couldn't have said it better.

Nothing is a social network anymore.

Everything is a content-consumer a platform now.

People just want to scroll and scroll

[kbrkbr]

People want to scroll and scroll, because social media make them miserable [1, 2, 3]

Perfect storm.

[1] https://time.com/4882372/social-media-facebook-instagram-unh... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-social-media-... [3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/navigating-the-maze/...

[7952]

My hunch is that instant messaging is slowly taking over that space. If you actually want to connect with people you can without needing much of a platform.

[safety1st]

I mean let's be clear on the history and not romanticize anything, Zuck created Facebook pretty much so he could spy on college girls. He denies this of course, but it all started with his Facemash site for ranking the girls, and then we get to the early Facebook era and there's his quote about the "4,000 dumbfucks trusting him with their photos" etc.

There is no benevolent original version of FB. It was a toy made by a college nerd who wanted to siphon data about chicks. It was more user friendly back then because he didn't have a monopoly yet. Now it has expanded to siphoning data from the entire human race and because they're powerful they can be bigger bullies about it. Zuck has kind of indirectly apologized for being a creeper during his college years. But the behavior of his company hasn't changed.

[mysterydip]

Well they had to grow the userbase before they could abuse it :)

[distances]

Very true! I was annoyed by the loss of the "is" pattern and basically stopped using Facebook when the chronological feed was removed.

[lern_too_spel]

They were stealing your contacts from wherever they could get them. There was never a time when they didn't abuse their users.