Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
Speaker 2: here's Jerry, and we're going to take a nice little
Speaker 2: stroll down Internet memory lane parent stuff.
Speaker 1: You should Yeah, this is something I had never heard of.
Speaker 1: Had you heard of this?
Speaker 2: No? I ran it past. You mean she's like, oh, man, yes,
Speaker 2: I think I've heard of it, and I don't know
Speaker 2: if she has or no.
Speaker 1: Well, you mean is an early adopter.
Speaker 2: Yeah. She was definitely more Internetti than I was at
Speaker 2: that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So what we're talking about here is the first
Speaker 1: what's regarded as the first social media website, the thing
Speaker 1: that started the degradation of all mankind. Way back in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven. It was called six degrees dot com
Speaker 1: spelled out SixDegrees dot com. I was founded by a
Speaker 1: guy named Andrew Weinreich and for about three years in
Speaker 1: the late nineties they were able to come online when
Speaker 1: a ton of people were online, and garner ultimately about
Speaker 1: three and a half million users, which it pales in
Speaker 1: comparison to what we look at today, but for the
Speaker 1: time wasn't too bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not too shabby. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to get
Speaker 2: them over the hump and give them staying power. But
Speaker 2: I think they were also a victim of timing, as
Speaker 2: we'll see, Yeah for sure, but yes, the deck was
Speaker 2: stacked against them, and the fact that they were essentially
Speaker 2: very much ahead of their time. They were a social
Speaker 2: media site before there were enough people online, not just
Speaker 2: enough people to come and use your social media site.
Speaker 2: There was only something like I mean, if they had
Speaker 2: three and a half million users, there's probably like three
Speaker 2: point six million users on all of the Internet at
Speaker 2: a time. I don't know if that's a correct estimate,
Speaker 2: but something like eighteen percent of households according to the
Speaker 2: US in nineteen ninety seven when six degrees launched, only
Speaker 2: eighteen percent had internet at home at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a it was a competing stat from Pew
Speaker 1: Research Center that said thirty six percent did, but there
Speaker 1: was different methodologies and stuff. So let's just say, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhere in between those numbers, I bet it was more
Speaker 1: more like eighteen. This was you know, ninety seven was one, two, three, four,
Speaker 1: five years before Prinster launched Princester. That's hard to say
Speaker 1: for some reason. And but by that time the percentage
Speaker 1: of people in two thousand and two that had flipped.
Speaker 1: It was more like thirty nine percent of people did
Speaker 1: not use the internet, and sixty one percent of people did.
Speaker 1: So it was right at that, you know, it was
Speaker 1: just terrible timing, right there at the end of the
Speaker 1: nineties when the dot com bubble burst, and just right
Speaker 1: on its heels, other sites came along that did far,
Speaker 1: far better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just one thing, I like that Pew Data
Speaker 2: because it doesn't have like that small slice of like
Speaker 2: don't know, not sure. It's either yes, I use it
Speaker 2: or I don't use it. It's a nice solid survey agreed.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so there's a lot of what ifs could
Speaker 2: have been kind of thing, and we'll get into those
Speaker 2: a little bit more. But there were more things that
Speaker 2: six degrees was up against. Another really really big one
Speaker 2: was the slow speed of internet. Yeah, and you know
Speaker 2: today you might look back and think, well, we had
Speaker 2: no comparison back then, didn't matter. It was so slow
Speaker 2: that it would make you angry waiting around for a
Speaker 2: song to download or a web page to even load.
Speaker 2: There were transfer speeds using dial up modems of fifty
Speaker 2: six kilobytes per second that was what you had to
Speaker 2: deal with, not a gig per second, a kilobyte times
Speaker 2: fifty six per second. That was the transfer speed at
Speaker 2: the time, and that was the maximum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we've laughed about it before, but just
Speaker 1: the days of just seeing a picture appear on the
Speaker 1: screen like three lines at a time, down, down, down,
Speaker 1: and you're just I just want to know what this
Speaker 1: thing looks like. And if you wanted to know, you
Speaker 1: had just sit there for five minutes or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you had time to go make and
Speaker 2: eat toast, Yeah while a picture was downloading.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hate a lot of toast back then.
Speaker 2: So that was that was a big challenge for it too.
Speaker 2: And then one of the other problems too is we'll
Speaker 2: see is that people I mean, if you have a
Speaker 2: social media so it's kind of helpful to have pictures,
Speaker 2: and they just weren't around at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we'll we'll get to that all the reasons
Speaker 1: why in a minute, but just to sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: locate it on the timeline in nineteen ninety seven when
Speaker 1: at launch, like Google dot com had just registered as
Speaker 1: a domain, so it wasn't even a real thing yet.
Speaker 1: The word weblog had just been coined or you know
Speaker 1: what it would become is blog and Netflix was sending
Speaker 1: DVDs through the mail. So remember that it seems like
Speaker 1: a thousand years ago, but it wasn't that long ago
Speaker 1: in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 2: No, and it's kind of sad that six degrees has
Speaker 2: kind of gotten lost to history. Most people think Friendster
Speaker 2: was the first social media site. No, six degrees was,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't even one of those things where it's
Speaker 2: technically the first social media site, even though it really
Speaker 2: was not. It didn't resemble social media at all. No,
Speaker 2: this was the first social media site, and it essentially
Speaker 2: laid the groundwork for all the social media sites to come.
Speaker 2: It just was so far ahead of its time that
Speaker 2: it got lost to history.
Speaker 1: Yeah. For sure, Friendster ultimately got about ten million, but
Speaker 1: they had a lot of technical problems, so they didn't last.
Speaker 1: MySpace was the next big one. In two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: they were the first to reach a million monthly active users,
Speaker 1: which was a big deal. Some people say that at
Speaker 1: one point it was the most popular site in the
Speaker 1: United States.
Speaker 2: I believe that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, even if only for a brief amount of time.
Speaker 1: But then in two thousand and eight, Facebook came along
Speaker 1: and sort of smashed everything, and just to put a perspective,
Speaker 1: three and a half million users for six degrees. Facebook
Speaker 1: has more than three billion users and Blue Sky has
Speaker 1: thirty three million, and that's looked at as like a
Speaker 1: tiny thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. So yeah, it kind of puts their
Speaker 2: three and a half million users into perspective. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: six degrees may sound familiar to people. It's actually very
Speaker 2: much related to the six Degrees of Kevin Bacon or
Speaker 2: six Degrees of Separation that play by John Gwayer and
Speaker 2: then later the movie adaptations starring Stockard Channing, of course,
Speaker 2: but it's actually I didn't realize this based on a
Speaker 2: study that Stanley Milgram, of the very famous Milgram experiment
Speaker 2: where he had people shock some unseen person in another
Speaker 2: room to find out just how obedient people were to authority,
Speaker 2: even against their own set of morals. You know that one, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He also carried out a study where he was one
Speaker 2: of the first to kind of determine how far apart
Speaker 2: the average person was from the other from anybody else
Speaker 2: in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he got together with another psych professor named Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Travers and This is pretty cool. I think it was
Speaker 1: pretty low fi way to do it. But this is
Speaker 1: I mean, what year was this. Was this the nineteen.
Speaker 2: Fifties, No, it was the late sixties.
Speaker 1: Late sixties, okay. But what they did was they said,
Speaker 1: all right, let's get some people in Kansas. Let's get
Speaker 1: some people in Nebraska. They said, here's a folder and
Speaker 1: it has a document with a target person that we
Speaker 1: want you to get this to them. But you can't
Speaker 1: just look them up and see if you can find
Speaker 1: their address and mail it to them. One of the
Speaker 1: people was in Cambridge, one was in Sharon, Massachusetts, and
Speaker 1: they said, what you want to do, or what we
Speaker 1: want you to do, is send it to a person
Speaker 1: that you personally know who you think might be able
Speaker 1: to get it to another person who could get it
Speaker 1: to another person who could eventually get it to this
Speaker 1: target person. And then we will measure that and see
Speaker 1: what the average or the mean might be. So literally,
Speaker 1: a farmer in Kansas got it, you know, this is
Speaker 1: just one example. Got it to the wife of a
Speaker 1: student Massachusetts, who gave it to an Episcopalian minister in
Speaker 1: this town, who gave it to an instructor at the
Speaker 1: theological seminary there who got it to that target? So
Speaker 1: that would be one, two, three, four degrees of separation,
Speaker 1: which is pretty remarkable.
Speaker 2: I think yeah. And I also think chok that it's
Speaker 2: kind of funny that to Stanley Milgram, Nebraska and Kansas
Speaker 2: are the most socially remote locations in all of the
Speaker 2: United States, because that's where he started to see how
Speaker 2: long it took to get to I guess civilis like Boston.
Speaker 2: But they actually did a lot of analysis of this.
Speaker 2: They released a version of the study in Psychology Today,
Speaker 2: which was meant for a general audience. But then they
Speaker 2: did like the real deal in a journal called Sociometry
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty nine, and they found that there was
Speaker 2: a mean length mean is the one in the middle. No,
Speaker 2: mean is average, it's another word for average, just say average,
Speaker 2: you know, of four point four to five point seven intermediary.
Speaker 2: So they found that people have a degree of separation
Speaker 2: of four point four to five point seven. And this
Speaker 2: was all the way back in the mid to late sixties.
Speaker 2: Think about how closer we are now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, what I wonder too is did they throw
Speaker 1: out the ones? Because apparently most of the folders never
Speaker 1: even made it. Did they just toss those and say,
Speaker 1: of the ones who got there, this is how they're connected.
Speaker 2: Yes, but I believe that most of the ones that
Speaker 2: didn't get there were because the initial farmers in Kansas
Speaker 2: and Nebraska just threw them out. They didn't participate. Oh really,
Speaker 2: I think that's what happened to the majority of them.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it wasn't like the most robust study of
Speaker 2: all time, but it was so fascinating that it just
Speaker 2: captured the imagination of people and became kind of a
Speaker 2: pop cultural meme. But what's interesting about it is that
Speaker 2: later scholarship that was pretty robust studies supported what Milgram
Speaker 2: and his collaborator Jeffrey Travers found in that study.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was one in two thousand and three that
Speaker 1: found a media of five to seven. This is pretty
Speaker 1: old data. But in twenty eleven they did the degrees
Speaker 1: of separation on other social media sites, and for Facebook
Speaker 1: at the time, it was four point seventy four and
Speaker 1: for the at the time named Twitter it was four
Speaker 1: point sixty seven. But the caveat there is like you're
Speaker 1: not necessarily counting just the people that you know, Like,
Speaker 1: I know plenty of people when I was on Facebook
Speaker 1: that had lots of like what were they in Facebook? Friends? Yeah,
Speaker 1: friends who they had no idea who they were. It
Speaker 1: was just more of a maybe a networking thing kind
Speaker 1: of like LinkedIn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And as we'll see six degrees too.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. Laura doctor Claw, who helped us out with this,
Speaker 2: points out that social media kind of has a stretch
Speaker 2: the definition of what we consider a connection. Like you
Speaker 2: just said, and also you said, what used to be
Speaker 2: called Twitter. I think it's hilarious because very frequently you'll
Speaker 2: see Twitter used in like some sort of article or whatever,
Speaker 2: and then in parentheses after that it'll say X.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean everyone still says Twitter. It seems like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it just didn't take.
Speaker 2: Like sorry, the name change for the business you bought
Speaker 2: did not take.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's because X is dumb.
Speaker 2: I guess. So Twitter was just so perfect.
Speaker 1: I guess well, I mean, I don't know if Twitter
Speaker 1: is a good name or not, but it had such recognition.
Speaker 2: It's just like, Yeah, it's like the people who bought
Speaker 2: the Sears Tower and try to change the name and
Speaker 2: everybody's like, nope, still Sears Tower. Sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love that when a corporate sponsor takes over
Speaker 1: and they're like, no, we're still going to call it
Speaker 1: the thing at once.
Speaker 2: Before it's still the Toastedos Fiesta Bowl. Sorry, sorry, cars
Speaker 2: dot Com.
Speaker 1: Well, you mentioned Kevin Bacon and we should mention real quick.
Speaker 1: The six Degrees of Kevin Bacon was a very popular
Speaker 1: thing created by some college students, where in the ideas
Speaker 1: that Kevin Bacon has been in so many varied movies
Speaker 1: over the years that you can connect any actor in
Speaker 1: Hollywood to Kevin Bacon in less than six degrees or less.
Speaker 1: But the Bacon number apparently is three point one two,
Speaker 1: and they're five hundred and twenty two actors who have
Speaker 1: a smaller connectivity number or Bacon number than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're more connected to people than Kevin Bacon. I
Speaker 2: didn't know that, Chuck, did.
Speaker 1: You, Well there were five hundred and twenty two, or
Speaker 1: that there were more connected actors both. I figured there
Speaker 1: were more connected actors because there are people, well, Eric
Speaker 1: Roberts is the number one with two point nine zero
Speaker 1: eight four one because he has eight hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: five IMDb entries as an actor. So I figured there
Speaker 1: were people that were in way more movies. And that's
Speaker 1: just Matt, You know.
Speaker 2: Sure it is. But also you can make a case
Speaker 2: that Kevin Bacon's one hundred and eleven movies typically are
Speaker 2: with more stars who have more work, So there it's
Speaker 2: likelier that the people he work with are in more
Speaker 2: movies with more other people, whereas Eric Roberts is probably
Speaker 2: in movies with people like this is their one and
Speaker 2: only movie.
Speaker 1: Or people who are in like six hundred movies that
Speaker 1: you just have never heard of.
Speaker 2: That's true too, That's possible if Rifftrek taught me anything.
Speaker 2: It's that. Yeah, Like I know who Cameron Mitchell is
Speaker 2: for Pete's sake, is that he's one of those guys
Speaker 2: who's in a million movies that you've.
Speaker 1: Never heard of, but you recognize his face.
Speaker 2: Face name. Yeah, I think I actually know some of
Speaker 2: his family members.
Speaker 1: Now right, I'm gonna have to look this guy up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh man, it will take you on an odyssey.
Speaker 2: And don't even bother watching the original version of the movies.
Speaker 2: Just watch the riff track version of Cameron Mitchell's movies.
Speaker 1: Uh a rare in store or in show. Look up
Speaker 1: Cameron Mitchell. Huh oh no, he's a restaurateur.
Speaker 2: That's not him. Look at Cameron Mitchell's Space Mutiny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that guy. Was he in
Speaker 1: Plan nine?
Speaker 2: Maybe he really might have been?
Speaker 1: Well, and now I'm seeing a picture of him as
Speaker 1: an older gentleman, and I've seen him in movies as
Speaker 1: an older gentleman too.
Speaker 2: Speaking of Space Mutiny, that's a really great rift tracks
Speaker 2: to start with.
Speaker 1: Those guys are the best.
Speaker 2: And wait, actually I think that's an MST three K
Speaker 2: to start watch both versions? How about that?
Speaker 1: All right, well that's what I meant.
Speaker 2: But yeah, okay, so do you want to take a break, Chuck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's take a break and talk more about old
Speaker 1: Internet right after.
Speaker 2: This, okay, Chuck. So we said we were going to
Speaker 2: take a stroll down Internet memory lane. And this was
Speaker 2: a time when, like I think the year before six
Speaker 2: degrees launched, Craigslist launched, Amazon dot Com launched, and they
Speaker 2: were just selling books at the time. Yeah. One of
Speaker 2: the big search engines was ask Jeeves, and it was
Speaker 2: revolutionary because you could use natural language rather than have
Speaker 2: to figure out exactly what keyword you needed to put
Speaker 2: in to get results with licos. Yeah, yeah, totally, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, asked Jesus, ask dot com. Did you
Speaker 2: know that?
Speaker 1: I think I did know that. I knew it changed
Speaker 1: into something. They just got rid of Jeeves, which is
Speaker 1: super sad.
Speaker 2: I know, it is pretty sad. They retired him. He
Speaker 2: went off to live on a farm, as they say, yeah,
Speaker 2: which means they killed him.
Speaker 1: How six degrees worked, though, is interesting because not only
Speaker 1: was it the name copped from six degrees of separation,
Speaker 1: they actually organized the website in such a way and
Speaker 1: it seemed like part of the fun of it. And again,
Speaker 1: this is early Internet. If you're a youngster out there,
Speaker 1: you may think this is super funny that people thought
Speaker 1: this was fun, But it seems like part of the
Speaker 1: fund SixDegrees dot com was finding people you didn't know
Speaker 1: and then tracing that connection through the website.
Speaker 2: Right. So one of the things that you would do
Speaker 2: is go through the I guess the registry of other
Speaker 2: six degree users, and there were so few initially that
Speaker 2: you could do that. Rather than go through three and
Speaker 2: a half million people, it was just a few hundred potentially,
Speaker 2: and you'd be like, oh, I know them, I know them,
Speaker 2: and you would make a connection with them. They would
Speaker 2: confirm it, and now you were a first degree connection.
Speaker 2: You two were because you actually know each other.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, and you, like you said, you had to
Speaker 1: confirm that connection. But you could also include people who
Speaker 1: weren't on it yet, like I'm just going to list
Speaker 1: out my family members or whatever and put their email
Speaker 1: addresses in. Keep in mind, this is at a time
Speaker 1: where you didn't get a lot of email. You didn't
Speaker 1: get much, if any spam email, and sometimes getting an
Speaker 1: email was like, oh wow, look at this, this is cool.
Speaker 2: It's cool.
Speaker 1: So if you think about that now, like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: just put all your family and friends and put their
Speaker 1: emails in. That's like a fireable offense, like socially.
Speaker 2: You go to jail.
Speaker 1: I think you can. But back then it was a
Speaker 1: different deal. So you can include people put their emails
Speaker 1: and they would get an email asking for confirmation and
Speaker 1: saying and also, do you want to sign up for
Speaker 1: the school new thing? No, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So the people that knew the people you knew, but
Speaker 2: you weren't directly connected to them, you were now second
Speaker 2: degree connected with them. And then those people were connected
Speaker 2: to people that you didn't know, and they were third
Speaker 2: degree connections. I think it didn't go beyond third degree,
Speaker 2: Like they didn't go all the way up to six.
Speaker 2: I think that was totally unnecessary. But this was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is very groundbreaking and revolutionary, and people were just
Speaker 2: amazed by people they knew. And the point was like,
Speaker 2: who do your friends know that you want to know
Speaker 2: that you don't know yet. Now you can make a
Speaker 2: first degree connection with those people if they confirm you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's the way. It was sort of
Speaker 1: like a predecessor to LinkedIn. I mean, you'll see again,
Speaker 1: like you said, like seeds of all the social media websites.
Speaker 1: They were doing it because you could create a profile
Speaker 1: with your professional affiliations and stuff like that. You were
Speaker 1: encouraged and I think most people probably really did use
Speaker 1: their real identities because at the time people were like, well,
Speaker 1: what kind of a weirdo would just create some fake
Speaker 1: identity on the internet just to mess with people. So
Speaker 1: there were real people on there. That was a member
Speaker 1: of the trust E Data Privacy Program, which has now
Speaker 1: been bundled up under trust ARC. But email was very
Speaker 1: central to it all. It was not an app. They
Speaker 1: didn't have apps yet. You would get an email asking
Speaker 1: for confirmation, you would reply via email. You would add
Speaker 1: others via email, so it was just a different time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there were I mean you would add your hobbies,
Speaker 2: you would add who you worked for, what degrees you
Speaker 2: had maybe so yeah, again, lots of seeds of linked
Speaker 2: In for sure. Again no pictures, and this was a
Speaker 2: huge stumbling block, as we'll see. But they did have
Speaker 2: other functionality that was thrilling. It had basically in network emailing, right,
Speaker 2: so you could directly contact your context had they confirmed you.
Speaker 2: They are bulletin boards where you could essentially chat, and
Speaker 2: I think they had a bunch of other kind of
Speaker 2: and whistles that they added over the years. They had
Speaker 2: something called channels, which were essentially special interest groups and
Speaker 2: you could be like, oh, I'm interested in business and finance,
Speaker 2: or I'm interested in games I think, meaning at the
Speaker 2: time nothing but Oregon Trail, right, and you could just
Speaker 2: go and find other people on these message boards that
Speaker 2: were interested in these things and maybe make some context
Speaker 2: if they confirmed you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, again, way ahead of its time with Facebook groups,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what they did. We got some and you
Speaker 1: can go look these up if you want to see
Speaker 1: like screenshots of what the screen looked like. I believe
Speaker 1: we were sent one from October nineteen ninety nine a
Speaker 1: welcome scream scream screen, and it was it was cute.
Speaker 1: It looked like a fun website of the day. It
Speaker 1: had a service marketplace. There was daily trivia on the
Speaker 1: homepage that this is hysterical. There was a daily poll,
Speaker 1: and on that day in October nineteen ninety nine, this
Speaker 1: was the poll. When you get a chain letter from
Speaker 1: a friend, you a immediately throw it away, B do
Speaker 1: what it says asap, c hold on to it for
Speaker 1: a while, and then lose it. So it's clearly they
Speaker 1: weren't like super future facing. If they were like chain letters,
Speaker 1: that's relatable, right right.
Speaker 2: I found on also Chuck from February twenty ninth, two thousand,
Speaker 2: so that was a leap here. It was the question
Speaker 2: of the day was Bill and Monica, and then your
Speaker 2: choices were love lust and as long as it's not Hillary,
Speaker 2: that was the question of the day.
Speaker 1: That's pretty funny. By that time, six or eight months
Speaker 1: after the October one that was sent, and probably in
Speaker 1: the February one that you saw, there were little nuggets
Speaker 1: of engagement boosting that they were trying to use, like hey,
Speaker 1: here's some content, here's some like join this mother's day group,
Speaker 1: or we're going to spotlight this channel it was. They
Speaker 1: would tell how many people were online at that moment,
Speaker 1: which in the October nineteen nine Ney No, I was
Speaker 1: five hundred and ten people, which sounds very funny. But
Speaker 1: I distinctly remember being in like chat rooms where they
Speaker 1: would say like like three hundred people are in there,
Speaker 1: and I would it would blow my mind.
Speaker 2: That there were that many.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just seemed like, oh my god, dude, I'm
Speaker 1: in my living room in New Jersey and I'm on
Speaker 1: this computer and there are three hundred people around the
Speaker 1: world that I can talk to right now.
Speaker 2: That's neat And what did you say that?
Speaker 1: Well? I did have one specific interaction with someone. Of course,
Speaker 1: at the time, I thought it was a real girl
Speaker 1: about our love of Cat Stevens, and we had a
Speaker 1: real back and forth going and a lot in common.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that was probably a nine year old boy.
Speaker 2: You got cat fished over Cat Stevens.
Speaker 1: I might have, who knows, but I remember thinking like,
Speaker 1: hey man, this girl sounds super cool and there are
Speaker 1: no pictures so a bit you know, she's cute as
Speaker 1: far as I know.
Speaker 2: Well, a nine year old boy who's into Cat Stevens
Speaker 2: is probably pretty cool too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that probably would have been a better life unfriend
Speaker 1: to chat about real music, right.
Speaker 2: Another thing I saw on that February two thousand page
Speaker 2: was the theme of the week, and this theme was
Speaker 2: to thine own self improve. So there was like you
Speaker 2: could click on to zen practice Group, self help, functui, Reiki,
Speaker 2: there's a book club. They were just throwing everything they
Speaker 2: could at this to just get people to interact more
Speaker 2: and more and more, because it would the more engaged
Speaker 2: you were, the more likely you were to send out
Speaker 2: those emails to your friends and be like, hey, join
Speaker 2: me on here. It's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: So maybe let's talk about pictures real quick and then
Speaker 1: we'll take a break, because the lack of pictures is
Speaker 1: the big deal, especially when you look at the modern Internet.
Speaker 1: A website with just text and maybe you know, clip
Speaker 1: art and stuff like that isn't super engaging obviously. So
Speaker 1: the reason why they didn't have pictures is because there
Speaker 1: was no way to get pictures there. You know, there
Speaker 1: weren't digital cameras. The There was the Apple Quick Take
Speaker 1: one hundred that was released a few years before. If
Speaker 1: you look up pictures of this it's about the size
Speaker 1: of a sandwich, kind of funny looking. It was the
Speaker 1: first digital camera. It costs seven hundred and fifty bucks.
Speaker 1: The Canon Power Shot was the first digital camera that
Speaker 1: could write images to a hard disk. That was released
Speaker 1: kind of one yeah, one year before six degrees came
Speaker 1: online in nineteen ninety six. That was almost one thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: had one hundred and seventy six megs of storage. But
Speaker 1: the first camera phone didn't come along until ninety nine,
Speaker 1: and that was a Kyo Serrah Visual Phone VP two ten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was actually cheap, considering it's six hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty four bucks in today's dollars for a camera phone.
Speaker 2: It was a point eleven megapixel camera. For comparison, the
Speaker 2: iPhone sixteen has as much as forty eight megapixels. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but if you look up some of like the the
Speaker 2: promotional images of this, there's like like Japanese women holding
Speaker 2: the phone that's showing a picture of themselves. You can
Speaker 2: clearly see who it is. Yes, that's another word for it.
Speaker 2: I'm using nineteen ninety seven. Yeah, terminology though they like
Speaker 2: you can see you can tell it's them. I think
Speaker 2: one version of it is in color. It's not that bad,
Speaker 2: especially for you can tell them. Yeah, you don't have
Speaker 2: to like like squint your eyes to make the pixels
Speaker 2: come together. And you're like, is that popeye? It's like
Speaker 2: you can tell it's them. I guess yeah. I was
Speaker 2: impressed by it.
Speaker 1: So it did its most basic function as an image
Speaker 1: capturing device, yes, being able to tell it was that
Speaker 1: same right.
Speaker 2: Oh. One other thing I saw about the Apple quick
Speaker 2: Take one hundred. At its highest resolution, it could store
Speaker 2: up to eight photos at once. Whoa, this is so
Speaker 2: much fun. I love making fun of the early Internet.
Speaker 1: I know that we live through. This is also a
Speaker 1: true story. Winreich, the founder, would get emails where people
Speaker 1: would say, hey, can I snail mail you a physical photo?
Speaker 1: I have it? Can I send it to you via
Speaker 1: the US Postal Service? And can you scan it and
Speaker 1: attach it to my profile because you really need pictures
Speaker 1: on this thing.
Speaker 2: Right, And they were like maybe. And then somebody around
Speaker 2: the table at the bull session said, well, what if
Speaker 2: people want to start like updating or changing their photos?
Speaker 2: And Andrew Wine I think it's wine Rich maybe, said yeah,
Speaker 2: let's just skip that, all right. Okay, No, no, I'm
Speaker 2: saying wine Rich said that not us. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: Well there's like a rare intro edit that didn't get
Speaker 2: edited on purpose.
Speaker 1: Should we take that break now?
Speaker 2: I feel like we need two.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, I'm going to go do twenty pushups
Speaker 1: for that and they'll be right back. All right, So Winrich,
Speaker 1: it's wine Rich, wine Rich. I think wine Rich.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's how. I think it
Speaker 2: was Wikipedia that had the pronunciation, and I think he
Speaker 2: said wine.
Speaker 1: Rich okay, all right, maybe he was trying to seem
Speaker 1: less German.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah. That always reminds me of that part in
Speaker 2: thirty Rock where Tina Fey is like, well, she's apologizing
Speaker 2: and she said, I'm very sorry, like mister Wiener slav
Speaker 2: and he said, it's Wiener slave.
Speaker 1: That's such a good joke.
Speaker 2: Have you ever seen Unbreakable, Kimmy Schmidt? Have you seen
Speaker 2: that yet?
Speaker 1: I watched it when it I mean when it came
Speaker 1: out years ago. I watched the first like season or so.
Speaker 2: There aren't that many shows that can make me actually
Speaker 2: laugh out loud, and that's one of them. And it's
Speaker 2: because Jeter is one of the best comedy writers to
Speaker 2: ever live.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed. I don't have you seen the Four Seasons yet?
Speaker 2: No, I'm avoiding it. I saw that it's a remake
Speaker 2: of an Allan all the film, and I have a
Speaker 2: strict policy not to watch late seventies early eighties Allen
Speaker 2: all the films or their remakes.
Speaker 1: Oh God, your distaste for Alan Alda is truly disturbing.
Speaker 2: The thing is, I've got nothing against Alan Alda personally.
Speaker 2: It's just those kind of movies. Same with Elliott Gould.
Speaker 2: I can't stand those kind of movies like where it's
Speaker 2: just like like, hey, I can't even do an impression
Speaker 2: of it, but I can't stand those kind of movies.
Speaker 2: And somebody out there knows what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Elliott gould kind of movies, Yes.
Speaker 2: Whether it's Capricorn one or that Shaggy Dog movie that
Speaker 2: he's in he plays the detective.
Speaker 1: I will say that one movie I think you would
Speaker 1: like is The Long Goodbye.
Speaker 2: That's the one I'm talking about. That's the Shaggy Dog
Speaker 2: Detective one. I don't think I would.
Speaker 1: What does Shaggy Dog Detective mean? I don't know.
Speaker 2: So Shaggy Dog is where like there's this whole build
Speaker 2: up of like say, a mystery or something, and it
Speaker 2: turns out to be nothing, Like there's really no point
Speaker 2: to the movie in the end.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, So I thought you would like The Longabye
Speaker 1: great Robert Altman.
Speaker 2: Noir, and I like Robert Allman stuff too.
Speaker 1: Raymond Chandler book. No, still nothing, Huh.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't if you made it. No, I can't make
Speaker 2: if you made it before Elliott Gould was in it,
Speaker 2: I would probably watch it, all.
Speaker 1: Right, fair enough?
Speaker 2: Wait one more thing? Yeah, yeah, speaking of great directors,
Speaker 2: I finally saw a ghost dog way of the sam
Speaker 2: But Jarmish, did you see that ever?
Speaker 1: I saw that in the theater, Buddy.
Speaker 2: I was guessing that you had. That is such a
Speaker 2: good movie, man. I can't believe that slipped under my
Speaker 2: radar because that totally was in my wheelhouse for that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Jarmish is the best. And Forest Whitaker was
Speaker 1: so good in that. Yes, he was good music too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, where how did that start? Winwreck trying to
Speaker 1: seem less German? This is the six degrees of that conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: winter slave. So here's what wine rich.
Speaker 2: Wait, there's one other thing that reminds me of too,
Speaker 2: can you remember we were talking about the vanity license
Speaker 2: plate episode. Yeah, uh huh, And like the greatest misconstrued
Speaker 2: vanity plate of all time is where the guy had
Speaker 2: j is Lord, like Jesus's Lord, but it's all one word,
Speaker 2: so it says jizz lord Lord. That's the greatest vanity
Speaker 2: plate anyone's ever had.
Speaker 1: Oh, that definitely beats as Man even.
Speaker 2: I think so too, which is a good one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really.
Speaker 2: Funny, especially taking it in the content.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Yeah, who that guy was to be that
Speaker 1: you know, dedicated of a Christian to do that on
Speaker 1: your license plate, and that's what you end.
Speaker 2: Up with rolling up the church with Jiz Lord on
Speaker 2: your car.
Speaker 1: Man, Well you can make a movie about that.
Speaker 2: Was starring Elliott Gould Lord.
Speaker 1: So win Rich said, and this is a quote that
Speaker 1: just kind of shows how far ahead of his time
Speaker 1: he was. His vision. It is a bun clear to
Speaker 1: me that the world will index all of their relations
Speaker 1: everyone's relationship in a single database. And that was like
Speaker 1: before anyone else is doing it. So they started off
Speaker 1: this thing as a just with a launch, like a
Speaker 1: physical launch event, a party in New York City. They
Speaker 1: had two hundred invited guests, and those were the first
Speaker 1: two hundred members, and they were like, now you all
Speaker 1: go out and and make this a thing inviting your friends.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious who those two hundred people were. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting way to start at site like this.
Speaker 2: I think there were a lot of tech savvy people
Speaker 2: who were kind of like probably prime to take part
Speaker 2: in this to begin with. And I think at first
Speaker 2: they were adding like fifty new users a day, wow,
Speaker 2: which again that's really small and thin. Even for the time.
Speaker 2: This was pretty small. But they're doing this through like
Speaker 2: email and stuff, you know, like it's it's really it's
Speaker 2: a weird transfer from online world to real world. It
Speaker 2: straddled both because it had to. Another good example of
Speaker 2: that is that they would use reps to go to
Speaker 2: campus to sign people up, just like that same credit
Speaker 2: card model that credit card companies used to screw college kids'
Speaker 2: parents out of a thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember I had the AMEX College card. And
Speaker 1: the only reason I got it I didn't even really
Speaker 1: want need a credit card, but you got three Delta
Speaker 1: flight vouchers who when you signed up for that card,
Speaker 1: so I got three plane flights.
Speaker 2: So where'd you go, I don't remember.
Speaker 1: Well, I do remember, because I know I went to
Speaker 1: LA for the first time to visit my brother when
Speaker 1: he lived there. Nice when I was in college.
Speaker 2: Did you go visit the six or nine year old
Speaker 2: Cat Stevens fan?
Speaker 1: I did, and that was a seventy five year old woman.
Speaker 2: Wow. Man, this story goes all over there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it took it quite a weird turn. But we're
Speaker 1: still good friends. She's still whether she's one hundred and two.
Speaker 2: Oh really, yeah, that's cool. Man. Does she listen to
Speaker 2: the podcast or is she like.
Speaker 1: Nah, only Cat Stevens all the time.
Speaker 2: That would get kind of old, I think.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the end of this thing, because,
Speaker 1: as we all know, it's not still around. Although doctor
Speaker 1: Claw said if you went there had a homepage, I
Speaker 1: went there and I got an error.
Speaker 2: Gateway time out the old five oh four.
Speaker 1: Same here, the old five oh four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I I but it's there. It's if it weren't
Speaker 2: a domain that was active, it would come back as like, hey,
Speaker 2: you want to buy this domain, but it doesn't do that.
Speaker 2: It just is so slow that you can't connect to it.
Speaker 2: But it does domain to be there. Six degrees dot
Speaker 2: com sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean considering the public knowledge of just that term.
Speaker 1: It's like you try go to trying going out these
Speaker 1: days and getting a better domain name.
Speaker 2: You know, you can't do it, You just can't.
Speaker 1: Don't feel too bad for wine Rich or Reich or
Speaker 1: Rick because he sold in nineteen ninety nine for one
Speaker 1: hundred and one hundred and twenty five million in stock
Speaker 1: options in youth Stream Media Networks. But this, you know,
Speaker 1: if you know anything about Internet history, you know that
Speaker 1: this thing shut down in ninety nine and what that meant.
Speaker 1: That dot com bubble right there on the horizon in
Speaker 1: two thousand shut down more websites than you could check
Speaker 1: a stick out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and actually you can feel pretty bad for a
Speaker 2: wine Rich because he took it that one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty five million dollars in stock and a company that
Speaker 2: folded like months later because it was debt financed. So
Speaker 2: I don't know how much he actually walked away with,
Speaker 2: especially if there was possibly a blackout in him selling
Speaker 2: those stock options.
Speaker 1: Oh so yeah, yeah, what you're saying is youth Stream
Speaker 1: itself also went under.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because they were just borrowing,
Speaker 2: bar and borrowing, and that's how they existed, and then
Speaker 2: when the when the dot com bubble burst, they were
Speaker 2: worth nothing, and so that stock was worth nothing. I looked,
Speaker 2: I couldn't find how much he actually did make from
Speaker 2: that sale, like.
Speaker 1: And we'll never find that out.
Speaker 2: No, and that usually means that it's not a very
Speaker 2: good amount. Yeah, they like to leak that stuff when
Speaker 2: it's like eye popping, but when it's not, they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I don't remember.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good point. The other problem was it was very
Speaker 1: early in the Internet and that monetization was a real struggle.
Speaker 1: They had some ads, of course, I believe their Question
Speaker 1: of the Day had an actual sponsor, but it was
Speaker 1: just a little bit too early, Like right after they
Speaker 1: fell off, Friendster came along that also failed again, but
Speaker 1: then MySpace and Facebook. Just just on the heels of this.
Speaker 1: He did make some other dough off of it. I
Speaker 1: think the patent that he had with six degrees for
Speaker 1: the software for the platform he sold for seven hundred
Speaker 1: thousand real dollars to the CEO of LinkedIn and the
Speaker 1: CEO Mark Pinkus a website called Tribe and they were
Speaker 1: both Friendster investors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and read Hoffmann and he said he and Mark
Speaker 2: Pinkas were like essentially fans, like they were like Winrich
Speaker 2: is a god here he this patent not only is
Speaker 2: for the software, it's for the methodology of creating an
Speaker 2: online social network. No when it ever come up with
Speaker 2: something like that before. So they actually kind of bought
Speaker 2: it for a song. I looked and LinkedIn is apparently
Speaker 2: definitively not built on six degrees architecture, and it never was.
Speaker 2: But it almost seems like they were either taking it
Speaker 2: to learn from it or almost like they were buying
Speaker 2: like some memorabilia. Oh, they were fans of I almost
Speaker 2: got that an impression from an interview with Reid Hoffman.
Speaker 1: Oh, very interesting. Andrew Weinreich went on to, do you
Speaker 1: know a lot of more things like this. He's kind
Speaker 1: of a serial entrepreneur. And again it seems like he
Speaker 1: was always right there before the real thing came along,
Speaker 1: because he had something called Meet Moi as an Moi
Speaker 1: frinch for me, right, Yeah, yeah, I thought so. I
Speaker 1: was just making sure. But that was a location based
Speaker 1: dating app, and it was basically this idea that like hey,
Speaker 1: dating app or dating websites are really tough even at
Speaker 1: the time of the early Internet and like, let's at
Speaker 1: least connect people who are physically close and it might
Speaker 1: be easier to get real dates. The dating part of
Speaker 1: that business was bought by the parent company Amatch dot com,
Speaker 1: once again just right there next to the thing, and
Speaker 1: he and his Memewhile co founder bought out the business
Speaker 1: analytics part of their own company and use it to
Speaker 1: found a data analytics company called Indicative.
Speaker 2: Which is still around from what I can tell.
Speaker 1: And all right, so maybe he's done right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so this was I mean, this was very
Speaker 2: early two thousands too, and they were like they were
Speaker 2: using like location tracking data at the time, and that
Speaker 2: was huge and new, and so they kept that. I
Speaker 2: think they ended up either selling it or licensing to
Speaker 2: a company called Xtifi not a very good name. I
Speaker 2: should call it twitter Ifi.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they had some like high profile clients. They
Speaker 1: had Ritz Carlton, they had Staples, they had Sephora publisher's clearinghouse.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they were they were using those location apps
Speaker 2: to advertise to you and send you push notifications on
Speaker 2: your phone, which sadly means that Andrew Weinrich is going
Speaker 2: to be going to hell for that.
Speaker 1: I mean, did he create that idea.
Speaker 2: I wonder he gave or he sold exsify the ability
Speaker 2: to do that, so.
Speaker 1: And then I bought them, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I'm not sure how much he made from
Speaker 2: these buyouts. I hope a lot, because again, this guy
Speaker 2: is like coming up with ideas and making stuff happen
Speaker 2: long before they can become viable. And a lot of
Speaker 2: people probably have gotten very rich off the back of
Speaker 2: his ideas too. So I hope he's doing well.
Speaker 1: Maybe if he's listening, or if someone knows him through
Speaker 1: their degrees of connectivity, just get to him and have
Speaker 1: him email us at Stuff podcast at iHeartMedia dot com
Speaker 1: and just send us your bank statement. That's right, And
Speaker 1: well know.
Speaker 2: I want to specify by doing well, I don't mean
Speaker 2: just financially. I mean I hope his well being is
Speaker 2: sens of well being is totally nice and inflated and happy,
Speaker 2: and you know that he's he's living a good life.
Speaker 1: No, I agree. I cheapened it by making it financial.
Speaker 1: And that's why you're the heart of the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's me. I'm the one you're not supposed to touch. Remember.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Oh, one thing that I did see that he's doing
Speaker 2: now is a podcast called Predicting Our Future. It's about
Speaker 2: what life is going to be like in the fairly
Speaker 2: near future. It's pretty cool, fantastic, So, Chuck, I think
Speaker 2: there's that's it for six degrees dot com. We got
Speaker 2: forty minutes out of it.
Speaker 1: Hey, not bad, lots of fun stories in between.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what did you just say in between? Right? Well,
Speaker 2: then that means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: Boy. I'm glad I always know the trigger word.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing you never fail each episode. Go me yep.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, I'm a forty something man with autism who
Speaker 1: lives on his own and the need for impression management
Speaker 1: hit close home. So this was I remember about. We
Speaker 1: even speculated about impression management that we might hear from
Speaker 1: some people with autism.
Speaker 2: This was a great email.
Speaker 1: It's a great This is a Josh curated even I
Speaker 1: simply cannot match the body language of others and have
Speaker 1: to fake it. I don't instinctively smile or look angry.
Speaker 1: People say I have an almost disturbing calm demeanor. Being
Speaker 1: calm sounds great, but it has gotten me searched for
Speaker 1: additional screening. At twenty airports and even strip searched at one.
Speaker 1: When people grill you for questioning a straight answer without
Speaker 1: fear frustrates the hell out of people whose job it
Speaker 1: is to make you feel uncomfortable. To help mask my autism,
Speaker 1: I wear sunglasses to hide my eyes. Because of that,
Speaker 1: I've gotten the nickname terminator. A flat affect. Direct language
Speaker 1: doesn't help either. Discrimination is very real, guys, But I
Speaker 1: like to say, getting angry at a person with autism
Speaker 1: who doesn't adhere to societal norms, it's like getting angry
Speaker 1: at a person with one leg that doesn't run marathons.
Speaker 1: Hopefully people who listen will give people with a bit
Speaker 1: of a quirk some slack. Thanks from a long time
Speaker 1: listener that is Matt.
Speaker 2: I'm glad Matt wrote that one, and that was a
Speaker 2: good email, and I think he probably speaks for a
Speaker 2: lot of people in that situation.
Speaker 1: Totally good reminder to everybody, and something that, like we
Speaker 1: talked about on that episode, as we've gotten older, we
Speaker 1: try to sort of think about not just that, but
Speaker 1: what everyone's going through in their life and maybe they're
Speaker 1: not having their best day when you meet them. You know.
Speaker 2: Yep, too true, Chuck, too true. If you want to
Speaker 2: be like Matt and send us a world class email,
Speaker 2: we would love that. You can send it off to
Speaker 2: Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.