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Author Topic: The evolution of Facebook  (Read 3564 times)  Share 

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elysepopplewell

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The evolution of Facebook
« on: May 07, 2017, 01:21:47 am »
+5
Brenden loves to point out that my 19 years of age means I was never a BeBo or MySpace fiend.

I was just reading this article here about how Facebook has grown into one of the biggest news-sharing platforms in the world, although it definitely wasn't used in this way when the site first launched.

What I do remember, is using MSN to chat with my friends, and then using Facebook to scroll the feed and upload photos. I have "Facebook memories" of my complaining that "Facebook chat is down again, if you want to talk to me, message me on MSN" because Facebook chat literally used to be shit. Do you remember this?

Then Instagram came along and I stopped sharing photos on Facebook (except now that I'm abroad and need to keep nana updated).

Do you remember some old Facebook features? I recall having a series of four "featured photos" on your own profile (this has just been brought back in!) and the days before a cover photo.

Of course, now Facebook is used as a platform to share news unlike we've ever really seen before.

If you are older than me and used MySpace - what was the cause of its death? What did the primitive Facebook have that it didn't?

Side Note: Facebook stories are the cringiest part of the evolution thus far.
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Joseph41

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Re: The evolution of Facebook
« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2017, 11:02:30 am »
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Nice thread!

I first discovered Facebook in, perhaps, 2006. I recall it looking something like this:



I didn't have social media at the time. I had MSN, and used that a lot - but no MySpace or whatever. In fact, I never got on the MySpace bandwagon, even though the majority of my friends did. The thing I didn't like about MySpace was the fact that you rated your friends (???) publicly, which was just... weird. It did have some features I quite liked, though - for example, you could add a song to your profile, which played when people visited.

I ended up making an account in 2008. Perhaps this coincided with the downfall of MSN (the biggest tragedy ever)? Three changes I can think of in that time:

Real time updates

Basically, that column on the right that updates when people like, share, comment or whatever else. It received a horrible, horrible reception. I still don't like it much.

Liking comments

There was a huge push for that and it's actually relatively recent, but I can't quite recall when it first came in.

Status function

I'm not really sure how to explain this. But basically, statuses always started with "is". So like, "Joseph41 is looking forward to work today!", or "Joseph41 is tired -.-". It's changed a lot now - people don't speak in third person lol.

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elysepopplewell

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Re: The evolution of Facebook
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2017, 05:51:40 am »
+1
Liking comments

There was a huge push for that and it's actually relatively recent, but I can't quite recall when it first came in.

I remember there being a call for "a dislike button" and when the option to like comments came in, everyone was like "Facebook, we asked for a dislike button but you gave us another like button!"
Cringeeeeee

But, since the option to like comments has come in, watching Facebook arguments is so much more gruelling as people silently throw their support behind people with a comment liking.
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brenden

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Re: The evolution of Facebook
« Reply #3 on: May 14, 2017, 11:24:17 am »
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If you are older than me and used MySpace - what was the cause of its death? What did the primitive Facebook have that it didn't?
I honestly think about this a lot because, when you consider that Facebook could be "too big to fail", well, a lot of people would have thought that about Myspace. (Important to note that Myspace was a dward compared to Facebook but then again, the way we used the Internet then is also dwarfed by how we used the Internet now).

Instant Messaging was definitely a huge win for Facebook - obviously pretty well known that they screwed it up for a while but... they got there in the end. When you'd previously have to log onto MySpace and MSN to stalk and message... Facebook put it in one place - a big win because, why go to two places when you could go to one? So Facebook effectively killed both MSN and MySpace (though MSN hung in there for a while haha).

I think one of the main differences is that MySpace was blatantly narcissistic, whereas Facebook is narcissism under the guides of community focus.

Your MySpace profile was basically dominated by a bunch of prose you wrote about yourself, your favourite music, your top friends, and then your photos, and "quizzes" you might have taken (LOL), and so on. It was mostly stagnant, you controlled virtually all of the content, and curating your profile was one of the main activities on MySpace lol.

Then there was obviously the newsfeed type thing which basically just gave you a choice to display how you were feeling, and write something.

What's interesting about this is the way we conceive of "status". A Facebook status is just, anything you write into the newsfeed becomes your status, with 'status' basically equivalent to 'random shit someone posted'.

On MySpace, it was usually 'status' in terms of like, "what is your status, red rover?". Literally, what is your position? So people would make posts like "Brenden is... online until late tonight *FEELING CRAZY*" or "Brenden is... thinking about life *FEELING SAD*".

For the most part, I feel like MySpace was an inward focussed social media platform, whereas Facebook is ostensibly a community based platform that more closely mimics our real-life interactions. From the get go you could post on people's walls and everyone could see that happen on their newsfeed which was a big differentiation point from MySpace.

Basically, Facebook catered more to what we want, and what we want people to think we want. It's pretty crazy when you think about it. It sort of blows my mind that at one point, nearly everyone I knew was on MySpace and then they basically just all evaporated and got onto Facebook. It's amazing when you think about it. Just, POOF - we're over here now.

Fun Fact: My first Facebook status was something along the lines of "this is shit, going back to MySpace".
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elysepopplewell

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Re: The evolution of Facebook
« Reply #4 on: May 15, 2017, 07:00:11 am »
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I think one of the main differences is that MySpace was blatantly narcissistic, whereas Facebook is narcissism under the guides of community focus.

Hey! Um, do you have a degree in philosophy?

On MySpace, it was usually 'status' in terms of like, "what is your status, red rover?". Literally, what is your position? So people would make posts like "Brenden is... online until late tonight *FEELING CRAZY*" or "Brenden is... thinking about life *FEELING SAD*".

Funny you say this, I was thinking today how much I love the option to add "feelings" and "activities" to your status. I posted a photo the other day that I don't think would have made sense unless I could contextualise it with the "watching" activity. I rarely legitimately use my "feeling" option on a status as my actual feeling, it's usually a bit of banter.

Alsoooo, I think one of the appeals Facebook had for me was games like FarmVille. I convinced mum to let me have Facebook before I started High School (by one year) because I wanted to play FarmVille. I don't know if MySpace had anything like this, but I certainly knew all about CafeWorld and Farmville and Frontierville and all that jazz which definitely got me onto Facebook earlier.
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Joseph41

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Re: The evolution of Facebook
« Reply #5 on: May 15, 2017, 07:46:16 am »
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Hey! Um, do you have a degree in philosophy?

This gave me a genuine chuckle. Thank you.

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brenden

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Re: The evolution of Facebook
« Reply #6 on: May 15, 2017, 11:32:09 am »
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Hahahaha, I maybe have a degree in philosophy.

---

Games were definitely a big part of it, true. For me it was "MafiaWars". MySpace defs didn't have it - great point. The games heavily incentivise the growth as well because, as we all know, the more friends you invite, the better score you can get... And when your friends aren't on Facebook to invite... better convince them to jump on!

I originally made my Facebook account to help Mum with MafiaWars.
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Joseph41

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Re: The evolution of Facebook
« Reply #7 on: May 15, 2017, 11:34:26 am »
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I originally made my Facebook account to help Mum with MafiaWars.

The reason I like language is that new and interesting sentences like this pop up every day.

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Joseph41

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Re: The evolution of Facebook
« Reply #8 on: May 16, 2018, 12:38:56 pm »
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One year on (should have bumped this yesterday - would have been to the day), what's changed?

I honestly think in that year, Facebook's stocks have dropped a fair bit. The Cambridge Analytica fiasco obviously hurt them. I'm confident in saying that people now trust Facebook less - and for a company like Facebook, what do they have if not trust?

Earlier in this thread, we were discussing the switch from MSN and MySpace to Facebook.

Are we currently seeing the switch to Instagram? Snapchat? Will something else soon arise?

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Aaron

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Re: The evolution of Facebook
« Reply #9 on: May 16, 2018, 02:12:43 pm »
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I know from my point of view I have become less reliant on Facebook and more engaged with other services such as Twitter and Instagram.... however I don't think this is due to Facebook, but more of a personal preference.

I will admit though, there are quite a few things I don't like about Facebook... namely the inability to truly control privacy settings. One such example: the message button on the timeline. Anybody can start sending you messages (even if they are requests). For under 18s, the message button is hidden by default for those that aren't friends of friends (e.g. public setting). If you're over 18, you can't modify this setting at all which to me is bizarre. You can hide the friend request button.. but not the message button... doesn't make any sense.

I have also noticed that my key interest organisations/websites don't post things on Facebook that they would on something like Twitter or Instagram. One example: North Melb (AFL) posts live updates on Twitter, because Twitter is a service that is better suited to that. On Facebook, they don't. So a true fan would not be able to engage properly if they only isolated themselves to Facebook rather than another service.
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elysepopplewell

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Re: The evolution of Facebook
« Reply #10 on: May 17, 2018, 09:08:24 am »
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I prefer Instagram, but I have for some time. I also use Twitter more than ever now too. But none of these are so much directly because of a fault of Facebook, but because I like the curated nature of Instagram, I like the very "live" feel about Twitter and the ability to connect beyond my circles. Facebook as a feed doesn't offer me a lot, I think the only extra benefit is receiving content from pages I like...and I do that elsewhere.

Although, I think I consume domestic news better on Facebook because I enjoy reading the comment section - whereas domestic news isn't interacted with in the same way on twitter (do Australians use it significantly less?). But I much prefer international news on Twitter.

ALSO, an important distinction must be made between Facebook and Messenger - in the way that I use messenger daily and several times a day but I scroll Facebook once a day. If all of my friends had iphones and constant internet connectivity then we'd have an imessage group chat, but it's not the case so we use facebook messenger instead.
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