WEBVTT - Social Networks that Didn't Make It 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.800 stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.520 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:20.320 how Stuff Works in Dieheart Radio and I love all 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:25.160 things tech. And as I record this episode, it's still 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:28.639 pretty early in two thousand nineteen. It's February two thou nineteen, 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:32.120 and the social networking site Facebook has been in the 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:37.440 news frequently for several reasons over the last many months, 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:40.720 mostly to the company's constern nation. These have not been 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:45.400 positive news stories for the company. Mark Zuckerberg himself said 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:50.400 that perhaps the social networking industry in particular might require regulation. 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:53.240 And I've seen a few calls from lots of different 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:57.200 people that Facebook should either divest itself of some of 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:01.560 its properties like Instagram or else maybe the government should 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:03.960 come in and do it for them and bust it up, 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:07.640 kind of like busting up the old telephone monopolies back 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:09.960 in the day before they kind of reformed. That's a 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:14.480 different story. Facebook is one of a few enormous companies 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:18.560 Amazon and Google would be two others that has so 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:21.759 much access to our personal information that it's always going 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:23.720 to be a potential threat, and it could be a 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:28.200 potential threat either through internal company decisions, things that Facebook 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:33.240 itself does, or there's the possibility of external interference, such 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:37.560 as during the presidential election in the United States. It's 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:40.360 a powerful tool that could be used positively or negatively. 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:43.600 Facebook was largely able to grow to this size by 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:47.960 outperforming numerous other social networking sites, all of which aim 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:51.000 to make a business out of connecting people online. So 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:53.880 in this episode, I want to talk about a few 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:57.000 of the social networking sites that attempted to carve out 0:01:57.080 --> 0:02:01.000 a place online. Some of them even predated Facebook. But 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:02.960 this is just a small selection I'm going to give 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:05.520 you in this episode, because there have been lots of 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:07.800 different attempts to do this, and some of them are 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:13.680 really localized to specific countries or two specific interests, so 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:16.679 I couldn't cover them all, uh, and some of them 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:20.440 didn't even make it past the early development stages. Also, 0:02:20.880 --> 0:02:23.880 I do not plan to cover my Space in any 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:27.040 sort of detail, because I've done an entire episode, actually 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:31.400 multiple episodes, dedicated to my Space, and technically it's still around, 0:02:31.639 --> 0:02:35.680 though it's not anything like what it was originally. So 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:38.640 some people would argue that my Space itself is no 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:41.720 longer a thing, at least not as it was originally intended. 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:45.520 So anyway, here's a selection of social networking sites that 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:48.600 ultimately failed, and a little bit about each of them. 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:50.960 And I figured it might be a good idea to 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:54.400 start off with a couple of examples from truly huge companies, 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:57.240 because that helps illustrate how hard it can be to 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:01.800 establish a social networking service that people actually want to use. 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:06.160 So if Google and Apple can't do it, these huge 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:11.399 companies that have billions of dollars of support behind them, 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:13.680 it's got to be hard to do, right. So we're 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:17.080 gonna start off with Google Plus, keeping in mind that 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:20.800 Google will pop up again and again in this episode 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:25.200 because of their involvement in trying to establish social networks. 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:28.840 But Google Plus is a pretty recent one and one 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:32.400 that has some more news coming up very shortly. And 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:37.200 you know, Google Plus tried a lot. It tried hard 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:41.480 for many years to become a true social network destination, 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:45.400 but as of April twenty nineteen, it's going to be 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:49.320 shut down for good. And honestly, it probably could have 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:51.640 closed up shop a few years ago and the world 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:56.000 in general wouldn't have noticed. Instead, it took a massive 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:59.520 data breach, or at least the possibility of one, for 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:02.480 Google to close the door on Google Plus. So let 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:06.400 me talk a little bit about it. So Google Plus 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:11.080 wasn't the Internet uh companies first foray into social networking. 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:13.880 As I had mentioned, there had also been Google Buzz, 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:16.600 which was a tool that was integrated directly into Gmail, 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:19.839 but was discontinued when the company prepared to launch Google Plus. 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:23.600 There was also Google friend Connect, which lasted from two 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:26.159 thousand eight to two thousand and twelve for all non 0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:29.920 blogger sites. As in Google Blogger sites, even the blogger 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:33.080 sites had to say goodbye to it. In Google Plus 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:35.480 was supposed to take the best ideas from both of 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:38.080 those earlier efforts and add more innovation when it would 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:42.280 launch in And there's some other social networks that relate 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:44.440 back to Google that we'll talk about later in this episode. 0:04:44.839 --> 0:04:48.680 So Google Plus would let you organize the people in 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:53.200 your online social circle into circles. That's what it called 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:56.360 the different groups. You had circles, and you could drag 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:00.840 a person's picture into circles to sort them. So you 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:03.400 could name circles whatever you wanted, and you could create 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:05.479 lots of them in order to sort people out into 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:10.880 specific groups. So you could create circles like friends, family, coworkers, 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:14.360 or you could create people who really like that one 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:17.520 joke I tell. In my case, I had a circle 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.000 just for people that worked with me at the Georgia 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:22.919 Renaissance Festival because there were a few of them on 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:26.160 Google Plus back in the day. Then when you posted 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:29.600 on the social networking platform, you could choose which circles 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:32.920 could see your post. You might want the whole world 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:34.160 to be able to view it, in which case you 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:36.880 would just make it public. But let's say that you 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:40.159 wanted to address one group and leave out everybody else, 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:43.680 like maybe you're asking your friends about recommendations for a 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:47.000 job search, in which case you probably don't want your 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:50.880 coworkers to see that post. Then you would select your friends, 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:53.960 you would leave out your coworkers, and that would be 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:56.080 that you know, you would just post in The only 0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:58.000 people who would see it were the ones that you 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:01.200 had authorized to see it. That was the basic idea, 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:04.640 and the platform had all the features that you would 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:08.240 expect to find on social networks. You could post updates, 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:10.960 you could share links, you can share photos, you can 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:13.840 make new friends, you can join groups. There's a lot 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:18.320 of integration with Google's other services like YouTube. But apart 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:22.359 from the initial excitement when the platform first opened, fueled 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:24.560 in large part by the fact that when it was 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:28.760 first open, Google held an invitation only closed beta, so 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:30.480 the only way you could get an account was if 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:34.200 you've got to invite. It gave the platform some exclusivity, 0:06:34.240 --> 0:06:37.080 which made people want to be part of it more. Now. 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:38.960 I know because I was part of that first group 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:43.279 and I was invited to participate, and it was kind 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:46.440 of fun because it was still a very small group 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:49.480 of people, generally speaking, who were online, and they were 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:53.440 almost all business leaders or tech journalists. So I got 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:56.560 the chance to catch up with friends of mine who 0:06:56.760 --> 0:07:00.800 also got in on that closed beta. Once it opened up, 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:04.680 and after I had that initial rush of everyone adding 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:07.600 in their accounts, it had trouble catching on. And it 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:12.000 wasn't just the design that didn't really grab people's interests. 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:14.680 It was some of the policies that Google had put 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:17.360 into place. So this was around the same time that 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:19.800 Google had decided to make a single log in for 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:24.200 all its services, including stuff like YouTube, and they wanted 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:28.760 to link each account to the account owner's real name, 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:33.400 so they wanted to make sure that the name of 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:36.600 the account was the same as the person who created 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:39.520 that account. Never mind if you have an online following 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.160 that knows you by a stage name or a brand. 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:46.520 The intent was to create accountability, so I would say 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:50.119 the intentions were honorable. Google figured people would behave better 0:07:50.600 --> 0:07:53.520 if their actions online could be traced back to their 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:58.320 real identities. If you can't hide behind anonymity, ne're less 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:00.720 likely to be a jerk face on line. That was 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:03.920 the logic, but there was an intense backlash from the 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:07.560 online community due to this policy, and there were legitimate 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:10.520 objections to it. It wasn't just people saying I don't 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:13.320 want to have my name on the internet. Some were 0:08:13.360 --> 0:08:16.680 worried that they could be targeted if their identities were revealed. 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:20.600 Maybe they use online social networks as a way of 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:25.960 expressing opinions about an oppressive government. You know, they might 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:28.600 not live in a place where such things are are 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:33.640 tolerated and might even be actively punished. They don't want 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:36.200 to have their identity traced directly back to them, but 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:38.400 they still want to be able to share those views 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:43.680 with the wider world. Some people had undergone extremely personal changes, 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:45.960 like maybe there was someone who had had a sex 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:49.800 change operation and literally they were no longer the person 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:54.720 they used to be. They have transformed into a new identity. 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:57.800 They did not want their online presence to reflect someone 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:02.560 who no longer existed. Google eventually backed off this policy, 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:05.920 but the platform never really recovered from that. In fact, 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:09.200 there was a lot of animosity, not just on Google Plus, 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:13.040 but particularly on YouTube related to all of this. Now, 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:16.439 in first glance, the platform seemed to be doing fairly well. 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:18.360 If you were just looking at numbers and you weren't 0:09:18.400 --> 0:09:21.760 looking too hard, it looked like things were going pretty smoothly, 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:24.840 or at least there was an encouraging trend, because in 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:30.439 six there were around three million registered accounts that were 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:34.199 listed as active. Now that's not like the billion of 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:38.360 accounts that Facebook was boasting, but still it's almost half 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:40.240 a billion. You're getting close to half a billion. That's 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:46.560 a respectable population. Except cent of those accounts had nothing 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:50.360 in them. They were empty. They had someone who had 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:54.440 created them, but they weren't posting anything. The nail in 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:56.920 the coffin would be that data breach I had mentioned, 0:09:56.960 --> 0:09:59.880 or really it was more of a vulnerability the design 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:04.960 Google Plus would potentially allow a third party app developer 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:09.160 to get far more data access than was intended. So 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:12.280 let's say that you have a Google Plus account and 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:15.600 you want to enable an app that will work on 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:20.720 top of Google Plus. You could give that app access 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:24.480 to your information on your profile. Maybe it's just the 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:28.360 public information, and you could also give access to the 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:32.520 public profile information of your of your friends, so but 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:35.520 it's not anything that was listed privately. It would just 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:37.280 be the same sort of stuff you would see on 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:40.640 your friends profile if you were a total stranger and 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:43.840 you just navigated to that person's profile. So anything they 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:49.440 chose that was public this app could see a security probe. However, 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.280 discovered that the app developers could also get access to 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:55.840 information stored in fields that were not tagged as public, 0:10:56.880 --> 0:11:00.440 so that meant that there this vulnerability would allow a 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:03.640 third party developer to see all sorts of information someone 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:07.880 had voluntarily put into their profile but had not chosen 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:11.600 to reveal publicly. That can include stuff like real names, 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:17.640 email addresses, uh, the occupations. These are mostly optional fields, 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:20.640 not ones that you had to fill out. But even 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:23.439 if you had filled them out and told Google Plus 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:26.520 that you wanted them to be private unless you sorted 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:29.719 someone into a friend bucket for example, or circle. I 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:34.079 should say that these apps could get access to that information. 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:38.000 So Google posted a message that said it had independently 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.800 discovered this vulnerability. It wasn't brought to their attention from 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:46.400 a breach, but rather while investigating Google Plus, they discovered 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:51.840 it and according to Google, according to their their experience, 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:54.800 they didn't see any evidence the developer had ever discovered 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:56.800 or exploited it, and at least that's what they said. 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:00.960 So the company patched the vulnerability in March two thousand eighteen. 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:04.000 But the message was clear. Google Plus was actually more 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:06.640 trouble than it was worth to keep around, and so 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:10.640 there will be no more Google Plus after April nineteen. 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:14.840 It just doesn't make sense to keep uh expending energy 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:17.920 and money and resources on a product that very few 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:21.280 people are using. But what about Apple? I mentioned Apple 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:23.720 as well as one of the other big companies that 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:27.120 attempted to create a social network and failed. Well. They 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:31.920 tried to integrate a social network like feature into the 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:37.600 Juggernaut program, iTunes. So Apple launched iTunes way back in 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:40.960 two thousand one. They announced it at the Macworld Expo 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:43.840 that year and revealed to the world an enormous digital 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:47.920 music online storefront, which would end up changing the way 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:52.199 people bought music and and would even change the way 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:57.040 that music would be recorded. The album experience became less 0:12:57.040 --> 0:13:01.079 important than the single experience became way more important, and 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:04.320 then it would go on to support the creation of 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:08.360 a burgeoning art form called the podcast. But nine years later, 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:13.520 in upon the release of iTunes version ten, Apple would 0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:19.280 introduce Ping. Ping was a music centric social networking platform. 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:22.280 So with your profile on iTunes, you could follow other 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:27.800 users or music artists. You could choose bands or musicians 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:31.360 to follow, and you could search out their concert listings. 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:33.960 You could also use paying to indicate that you are 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:36.720 attending one of those concerts, you know, kind of be 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:40.040 one of those super cool people, almost almost a social 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:42.120 status sort of thing, like, Yeah, I'm gonna be at 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:45.720 the concert in Brooklyn of this band that four people 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:47.800 know about, but don't worry, you'll all know about it 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:52.080 in two years. Or you could create or peru's song 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:56.360 lists or album charts. You could see the photos and 0:13:56.360 --> 0:13:59.439 the videos that your favorite musicians were sharing, and ideally 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:04.360 it allow for easier music discovery, something that is pretty tricky, 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:07.680 but Ping did not get much traction, and one possible 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:11.280 reason for that was that upon launch, there was no 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:15.920 way to integrate Paying's features into Facebook profiles. According to 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:20.920 The Verge, that wasn't necessarily Apple's choice. The Verge reported 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:23.040 that there were rumors at the very least that Apple 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:26.760 had intended to integrate Facebook Support and Paying, but they 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:28.840 had to pull it out at the last minute for 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:34.240 unsaid reasons. I have no idea what the reasoning was. Now, 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:38.280 despite an early rush of users making profiles, just like 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:42.800 with Google Plus, Ping didn't really catch on. Apple chose 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:45.320 to shut down the service just two years later in 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:49.480 twent Both Google Plus and Paying were latecomers to the 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:53.120 social networking party. Though after the break, I'll talk about 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:57.040 a site that actually debuted before Facebook and MySpace. But 0:14:57.160 --> 0:14:59.960 first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:11.360 Back in two thousand two, three developers named Peter Chen, 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:15.840 Jonathan Abrams, and Dave Lee wanted to create an online 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:17.960 tool that would make it easy for people to connect 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:20.600 with one another on the Internet. You would be able 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.040 to link up with folks you already knew, and you 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:26.160 would be able to make new friends over this great 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:30.760 communications tool. No longer would your real world environment limit 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:34.360 who you could befriend. So these three got together and 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:37.440 they began to develop this tool one of the earlier 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:41.400 social networking sites. Sometimes people refer to it as the 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:45.160 first real social network, or at least the first real 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:49.320 one to enjoy mainstream success. It was called Friendster, but 0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:51.200 I want to be clear, this was two thousand two. 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:55.720 There were sites that I would call social network sites 0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:59.120 that predated friends Ster. I do agree that Friendster was 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:02.480 the first one to be really successful. So they were 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:07.200 able to launch a prototype of this Friendster site in 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:09.760 the spring of two thousand two, and within a few 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:12.760 months they had more than three million users, which is 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:16.280 not bad when you remember that this was a pretty 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:19.120 early idea. Still, even though there had been a couple 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:22.120 of other attempts at creating social networks, that was at 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:24.640 a time when there were very few people online at all. 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:27.760 So this is still a new concept for a lot 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:30.280 of people. So you had to explain to people what 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:32.360 this was all about in the first place before you 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:34.960 could even get them to decide whether or not they 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:37.880 wanted to join. And Friendster tried to turn everyone into 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:41.280 Kevin Bacon, and by that I mean Friendster would show 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:44.240 you how you were connected to strangers through a network 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:47.720 of mutual friends. So you might discover that someone you 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:51.040 have never met, someone you do not know, is actually 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:53.320 very good friends with a couple of people you do know, 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:57.080 and maybe those people you know are actually in totally 0:16:57.080 --> 0:17:00.680 different social circles. Like otherwise, you wouldn't realize that these 0:17:00.720 --> 0:17:03.880 two people had anything in common. Uh. The example I 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:06.160 would give is, say, let's say that I found out 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:08.959 that someone I knew from my work at the Georgia 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:13.359 Renaissance Festival was friends with someone uh that was also 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:15.680 friends with a coworker, And I would have thought, well, 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:18.080 I didn't expect those two worlds to cross because I've 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:21.960 never seen seen them interact. But now here's this third 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:24.720 person or fourth person. Really, because I'm counting myself in 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:28.320 here too, this fourth person who is a connection both 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:30.960 to my co workers and to the folks that I 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:34.720 work with at the Georgia Renaissance Festival. Maybe I would 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:37.359 like to be friends with that person too, because chances 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:41.400 are I share more than a few common interests with them. 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:44.480 That was the theory. It was a very compelling concept. 0:17:44.520 --> 0:17:47.679 This idea that you could meet people that you would 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:50.480 very much be friends with, you just hadn't had the 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:52.920 opportunity yet, you hadn't met them yet, and this would 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:55.520 be a way to meet them. Unless I'd be remiss, 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:57.760 I have to mention this was not a new idea, 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:01.880 even for online social networks. Back in the mid nineties, 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:05.160 there was a sort of proto social network site called 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:09.240 six degrees and it was built on that very premise. However, 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:12.120 it appeared online at that time I was talking about 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:15.040 when there weren't that many people on the World Wide Web. 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:19.359 Very few people were aware of what the web was 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:22.119 or had any experience with it, so there weren't a 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:24.119 whole lot of people to sign up for it, and 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:28.040 it eventually kind of faded away. Not many people remember it, however, 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:32.040 I will say the site did return years later, and 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:34.920 if you have an account, if you if you had 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:38.080 made an account for six degrees back in the mid nineties, 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:43.080 then you could still log in to that old account. Um, 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:46.200 so it does technically exist, but there's fewer than like 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:49.760 a quarter million people on there these days. In two 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:54.480 thousand three, the developers of Friendster were able to secure 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:57.960 twelve million dollars in funding from an investment firm. But 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:00.760 while that was a really good shot in the arm, 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:03.879 the site was finding it difficult to handle its rapidly 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:08.360 expanding popularity. There were more people joining the site than 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:12.199 they could accommodate, and so they were always trying to 0:19:12.200 --> 0:19:16.439 play catch up, trying to build out enough capacity to 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:19.640 handle the people who wanted to use the service. There 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:23.200 were glitches and server issues, the site would load slowly 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:27.360 and users would become frustrated it had grown too quickly 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:31.320 for the company to manage. My Space, which launched in 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:34.919 August two thousand three, also began to get popular and 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:39.720 siphon away users, and Friendster never really recovered from that. 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:42.640 The site continued on for a few more years. While 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:45.840 it's popularity declined in the States, it did remain strong 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:49.040 in Asia, so it wasn't like it was going obsolete everywhere. 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:54.800 But then Facebook emerged and started to gain in popularity, 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:57.479 and Friendster would continue its decline in the United States, 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:00.160 and two thousand nine, the company launched a read as sign, 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:03.960 attempting to position itself as the cool social network. In fact, 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:06.520 it actually tried to leverage the fact the more people 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:10.200 were on MySpace and Facebook. It was essentially saying, why 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:12.920 do you want to be where everybody else is? Why 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:15.080 do you want to be mainstream? Man? It's very hipster 0:20:15.320 --> 0:20:18.280 kind of mentality, like let's let's go someplace that not 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:22.560 everyone's already at. Later, in two thousand nine, a company 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:27.280 called m OL Global acquired Friendster for around forty million dollars, 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:30.280 although when you subtract all the debts and everything, it 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:33.960 was closer to twenty six million, so most most sites 0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:37.680 list the actual purchase price at twenty six point four 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:42.520 million dollars um. That's deducting stuff like Friendster's secured debt 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:46.639 or payouts to Friendster executives. This wasn't great news for 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:49.760 the company in two thousand nine because way back in 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:52.840 two thousand three, Google had offered to acquire the company 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:56.920 for around thirty million dollars, before all that debt was 0:20:56.960 --> 0:21:00.600 accrued and before all those executive payments would be necessary, 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:03.080 so this was actually a step down. Six years later, 0:21:03.560 --> 0:21:07.200 Friendster continue to operate as designed for a short while, 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:10.639 but m OL would go back to the drawing board 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:15.600 and relaunch Friendster as a gaming social networking site. But 0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:18.879 even that effort failed, and in June two thousand fifteen, 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:23.439 the site shut down and has remained that way ever since. Now, 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:25.760 jumping back to Google for a second, I want to 0:21:25.800 --> 0:21:30.640 talk about or Cut, another early social networking site, Ork. 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:34.280 It would debut after Friendster and MySpace. It was one 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:38.679 of the famed twenty percent projects so over at Google 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:40.639 back in the day. I don't know if this is 0:21:40.680 --> 0:21:45.720 still the case, but Google part of its reputation was 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:48.919 that it had a common practice to allow employees to 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:53.440 dedicate up to twenty of their work time to personal projects, 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:56.800 as long as those personal projects were aligned with Google's goals. 0:21:57.760 --> 0:22:01.959 So whatever your normal job was N five at Google, 0:22:02.400 --> 0:22:04.320 you would do that for eight percent of your time, 0:22:04.359 --> 0:22:06.120 and then for twenty of your time you could work 0:22:06.160 --> 0:22:12.600 on something else. Sometimes those projects would grow into something 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:15.200 more than that. They might evolve into a feature or 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:18.040 even a fully fledged product at Google. And one of 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:21.200 those was or Kit, which was named after its creator, 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:26.560 a Turkish developer named Orcit Bouya Cockton or Could joined 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:30.760 Google or At the man joined Google after graduating from Stanford. 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:34.000 He built a social network and called it Eden, but 0:22:34.560 --> 0:22:37.680 then discovered they wouldn't be able to secure the domain 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:40.560 Eden dot com so they needed to go back to 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:43.639 the drawing board for the name, and ultimately he was 0:22:43.680 --> 0:22:46.000 told that he should really name it after himself and 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:49.840 call it or Kit or kitt and Turkish means happy city, 0:22:50.000 --> 0:22:53.000 so it seemed like a good fit. Or Kit would 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:57.040 become a social networking site and became popular pretty quickly. 0:22:57.080 --> 0:23:00.840 It actually overtook Friendster in popularity, and by two thousand 0:23:00.880 --> 0:23:04.119 and six it was the second most popular social network 0:23:04.160 --> 0:23:07.280 on the Internet. Number one at that time was my Space, 0:23:08.000 --> 0:23:11.520 and the majority of orchits users were in Brazil. Se 0:23:13.040 --> 0:23:15.959 of the users of orch at were in Brazil, and 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:19.040 in fact the site would maintain a dominant position in 0:23:19.040 --> 0:23:22.960 India and Brazil for several years, but would eventually lose 0:23:23.000 --> 0:23:28.440 ground to Facebook, to all other domains in the United States, 0:23:29.119 --> 0:23:32.399 in India, and in two thousand twelve, they finally lost 0:23:32.880 --> 0:23:37.440 to Facebook in Brazil. Facebook would displace it and never 0:23:37.520 --> 0:23:41.000 look back. Google would continue to support orch at dot 0:23:41.040 --> 0:23:45.160 com until two thousand fourteen. Orc At, the man by 0:23:45.200 --> 0:23:48.159 then had already left the orchid team. In fact, he 0:23:48.160 --> 0:23:50.000