Reality is Perception

Without getting into a detailed history of social media and the Internet, I’d like to answer some of the questions I get on a regular basis from very non-techy people.  The main question being:

I don’t understand why there are so many networking sites, especially (gasp!) Twitter?  I just don’t get it, so I’m not going to use it.

(Twitter getting the most slack as a LOT of people are still avoiding like the plague.)

In order to answer why there have been so many, I’ve found that it’s easiest to explain the progression from a pop culture prospective (the most popular ones used by the most non-techy audience).  In essence, it’s a return to the original, non-complicated way of posting statuses and messages to people in our different social groups.

In the beginning…

I always like to pull out the old Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) that popped up right after the Internet launched, because it seems to have weird relevance on all this today.  All a Bulletin Board System was back in the late 80’s was a pure text page that you could log in, enter a particular topic area or “room”, and have real-time scrolling chat with the others there.  This photo is of a french BBS that gave you the time in different parts of the room, and if you typed in the command “Who”, would show you the list of users in the room and how long they’ve been online.

I bring that up because it seems like we’re constantly trying to get back to that real-time status and chat environment.  Sure, we’ve had chat rooms, then instant messengers, and now social media sites, but along the way, it seems that people got distracted on what they were really after.  Once the internet browsers were created, and websites along with it, people wanted to have a constant presence online, so they created and publicizes their websites and email addresses.

Websites were still so technical though, that they were primarily used for business.  Individuals that had websites were rare, except for those that were technical enough to figure it out and had money enough to pay to have it constantly up.  I’m personally not sure which consumer-site enabled it first, because I’m sure there were many that started around the same time, but these sites started making it easier for individuals to setup websites from a free or low-cost source, like AOL, Geo-cities, etc. that gave you a space and help wizards to setup your own profile.  You still had to know how to setup a website though, but at least by this time, you started having friends that had done it or some people in your family or work network that could advise you.

About this time, a site called SixDegrees.com started to allow you to connect with friends, however it was WAY before the Internet had enough users to make it really stick.  In the US, Friendster was personally the first one to really catch the pop culture wave, with it’s ability to sign up, fill out text info about yourself, add some pictures, then start connecting with your friends around the world.

Friendster – finally a networking site with popularity enough to attract a useful size!

Friendster was great at its time, and really started to give people the ability to both setup a constantly-online profile as well as message and email with their friends.  This was successful because you didn’t have to know anything about websites at all, you just filled out your profile info, uploaded pictures and off you went!  You could connect to friends, add them to your network, and see who you knew in common.

However, the downfall of the site began when people started using it heavily, and realized how clunky it was.  People dealt with the poor user experience while there was little or no popular alternative…

MySpace – better functionality and usability than Friendster, with customizable profiles!!

This opened the door for MySpace.  MySpace was exponentially more popular than Friendster, and started providing additional features and ways to connect with people, including:

• “bulletins” where you can see what others are posting publicly
• a “wall” on your profile so others can post comments to you,
• and the most interesting feature which was the ability to update your profile look-and-feel to keep the same widgets but completely customize what your page looks like, giving it your own personality, which you can change on a regular basis (and lots of people did).

However, what I saw next was an interesting progression, and perhaps a redefining of what people wanted to do withtheir online profile and networking.  Being able to customize your profile was great and all, but again it started to get too technically difficult to “keep up with the Joneses”.  I especially found it tempting and ridden with jealousy whenever I looked at a friend’s profile that had just put a “flashy”, new template on it (pun intended), and then looked at mine to see how boring mine was in comparison.  I started to spend hours researching, setting up, tweaking and re-doing my site almost every month.  I’m not saying everyone was like that, but people in general were spending more and more time updating their profile if they knew how, or trying to ignore it if they didn’t.

Facebook – forget difficult, customizable profiles, just give me status streaming!

During this same time, Facebook came along, bringing all the cool features like a “wall” and comments and pictures, and a new feature of “status” streaming, which everyone now knows is all the rage.  However, one BIG advantage Facebook has over MySpace, is it re-leveled the playing field by restricting the ability to update your profile back to just photos and info.  No hours worrying about what your profile looks like or how it works, no buying websites or MySpace for Dummies to look as cool as your friends.  Now my 82 year old grandma can have a Facebook page (and she does!) and it can look just as cool as mine if she fills everything out and loads pics!

Thus the exodus from MySpace began, and Facebook began to reign supreme because the lack of maintenance required (other than finding a hot default pic) , leaving you free to focus on what you want anyway, which is to connect with friends, post photos, comment on each other’s profiles, and update your status so everyone can know what you’re up to.

Twitter – forget everything EXCEPT for status streaming!!

Following the downward trend of complexity from Myspace to Facebook, along came Twitter.  This essentially stripped EVERYTHING out about your profile, except for some very basic info, and focused solely on status updates.  In fact, Twitter is so stripped down, that the whole point of their service is not only provide a website to update your status and check out others’, but build it as a platform where it can be integrated with other profiles, blogs, sites, apps, anywhere you want your status info.

Even though most people I’m writing this for are still stuck in Facebook land, the whole benefit of Twitter is that inter-connection of status updates.  For those of you that love to stream your whole life, that’s all Twitter focuses on is providing a platform to do that.  There are even free apps that you can download off the Internet (like Tweetdeck), which provides you one place to update your status and read others’, and it will post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn (a professional networking site), and MySpace currently.  My next post will be discussing some of these tools at a basic level.

Today, these downloadable tools are fairly easy to use, and make updating multiple sites a snap, but there are still several to choose from, each with pros and cons.  I’ll go over these next time…

This is what I saw leading the progression from one social networking site to the next, and there are people still left in the old systems some abandoned along the way.

What were your reasons for moving/not moving onto the new sites/tools?

Social Networking History - http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

BBS Picture - http://www.marcelgagne.com/cwl062005.html