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Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio

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Speaker 1: and a lot of all things tech. Over the last

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Speaker 1: couple of years, I've covered a lot of stories that

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Speaker 1: were either directly about Facebook or they related back to

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Speaker 1: the social media platform in some way. From Cambridge Analytica,

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Speaker 1: you know that whole scandal. There are a couple of

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Speaker 1: episodes about that. Two calls from the US government to

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Speaker 1: break up some big tech companies. That's back in the news.

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Speaker 1: As I record this, Facebook has had a lot of coverage.

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Speaker 1: It has been front and center, particularly over the last

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Speaker 1: couple of years. There are a lot of good arguments

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Speaker 1: to suggest people would be better off if they were

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Speaker 1: not on Facebook, if they weren't using it, didn't have

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Speaker 1: an account there, And there is plenty of evidence that

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Speaker 1: shows that misinformation campaigns and extremist groups are leveraging Facebook's

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Speaker 1: algorithms to get widespread coverage and momentum, that they are

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Speaker 1: using the social networking site for malicious purposes, and because

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Speaker 1: the site ends up benefiting from this through the whole

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Speaker 1: advertising realm, they have been largely complicit, or at least

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Speaker 1: they haven't cracked down on it as much as they

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Speaker 1: a lot of people feel they should have until fairly recently.

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Speaker 1: Now all that being said, I gotta be upfront with you, guys,

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Speaker 1: I still have a Facebook profile over there, and I

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Speaker 1: am still on Facebook way too much. It is a

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Speaker 1: complicated thing because I recognize that it would probably be

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Speaker 1: better if I were not on there, but it's where

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Speaker 1: most of my friends maintain a social presence, and particularly

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Speaker 1: in the era of COVID, I can't get together with

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Speaker 1: my friends in person, and even before COVID was a thing,

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Speaker 1: it was hard to find time for all of us

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Speaker 1: to get together in person anyway. So for folks like me,

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Speaker 1: staying on Facebook can feel like it's necessity unless I'm

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Speaker 1: just willing to cut ties with my friends. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's not like people talk on the phone anymore, right Like,

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Speaker 1: especially my younger friends, the thought of them getting on

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Speaker 1: the phone for a conversation, to actually talk on the

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Speaker 1: phone fills a lot of them with anxiety. So I

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Speaker 1: feel like there aren't a whole lot of alternatives. And

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Speaker 1: this got me to thinking that I really wish there

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Speaker 1: were a viable social networking alternative to Facebook. You know,

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Speaker 1: a social media platform that could serve as a place

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Speaker 1: to connect with people, but one that doesn't rely on

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Speaker 1: Facebook's model of engagement, which in turn gives a leg

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Speaker 1: up on those malicious campaigns I mentioned. But we've seen

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Speaker 1: social media platforms come and go, and none have really

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Speaker 1: managed to have staying power, and the ones that are

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Speaker 1: still around are definitely not challenging Facebook for superiority. So

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Speaker 1: today I thought we would go through some social media

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Speaker 1: platforms that either predated Facebook and then faded away, or

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Speaker 1: they tried to challenge Facebook but failed in some way.

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Speaker 1: Facebook launched in two thousand four, and there were several

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Speaker 1: social networking sites that existed before that. One of the earliest,

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Speaker 1: and by some accounts, the first true social networking site

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Speaker 1: was six degrees dot com, which launched in n Now,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure most of you are familiar with the concept

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Speaker 1: of six degrees of separation, that any two people in

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Speaker 1: the world are at most six social connections apart from

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Speaker 1: one another. So the degrees in this case talk about

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Speaker 1: those social links. So, for example, I have met the

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Speaker 1: actor Colleen Camp and she was Inclue the movie Madeline

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Speaker 1: Khan was also include the movie and Madeline Khan was

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Speaker 1: in Young Frankenstein with Gene Wilder. So I am two

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Speaker 1: degrees separated from the late great Gene Wilder and one

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Speaker 1: degree separated from the late great Madeline Khan, and that

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Speaker 1: there are two social contacts that link me with Gene

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Speaker 1: Wilder and one social contact that links me with Madeleine

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Speaker 1: con that being calling Camp. Now to call calling Camp

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Speaker 1: a social contact as being grandiose. She likely has no

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Speaker 1: memory of me, whatsoever. I met her one day on

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Speaker 1: a movie set. It's just an example I wanted to use. Now,

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Speaker 1: if I went through all of my social contacts, like

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Speaker 1: every single person with whom I have a connection, I

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Speaker 1: might find that my link to Gene Wilders even closer.

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Speaker 1: It may be that one of my friends or acquaintances

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Speaker 1: worked directly with Gene Wilder. But you get the idea.

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Speaker 1: And this concept was turned into something of a game,

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Speaker 1: the famous game of six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where

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Speaker 1: you would try to find the fewest number of professional

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Speaker 1: acting links between Kevin Bacon and some other actor. So

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Speaker 1: you would just name different films that the actors were

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Speaker 1: in to try and find a link to Kevin Bacon.

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Speaker 1: The joke being that Kevin Bacon was in so much

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Speaker 1: stuff that you frequently didn't have to go more than

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Speaker 1: three links before you you found a connection. Anyway, six

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Speaker 1: degrees dot Com was a social platform where you could

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Speaker 1: upload photos and you could connect with friends, you know,

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Speaker 1: the basic stuff of making a profile and connecting with

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Speaker 1: people that all social networks sort of share in common.

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Speaker 1: And you could also then see the folks that your

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Speaker 1: friends are friends with, so you could connect with people

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Speaker 1: up to three degrees out from your personal contacts. And

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Speaker 1: it was one of those early platforms that really demonstrated,

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Speaker 1: you know, that small world phenomenon, how our social circles

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Speaker 1: have way more overlap in them than we typically realize.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure you had an experience where you saw two

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Speaker 1: friends that you know from very different circles in life

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Speaker 1: talking with one another and think, how do they know

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Speaker 1: each other? Because in my world, this person belongs to

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Speaker 1: this group of friends and that person belongs to this

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Speaker 1: totally disconnected group of friends. That happens a lot, and

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Speaker 1: six degrees dot com was kind of about illustrating that.

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Speaker 1: But there was a problem. You see, now in n

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Speaker 1: a lot of folks had not really yet ventured into

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Speaker 1: the Internet world at large, or the World Wide Web

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Speaker 1: in particular. So while a relatively large number of people

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Speaker 1: were signing up for six degrees dot com, you often

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Speaker 1: felt really isolated on the site because while there were

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Speaker 1: a lot of people collectively, it's not like a lot

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Speaker 1: of people everyone knew were on there at the same time.

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Speaker 1: So there were just not enough people that folks do.

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Speaker 1: There weren't enough friends or acquaintances. Also, on six degrees,

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Speaker 1: it was like a bunch of disconnected individuals who were

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Speaker 1: on there, So it's more like a bunch of tiny

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Speaker 1: island chains separated by vast oceans than an interconnected social network.

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Speaker 1: A media called youth Stream Media, which specialized in developing

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Speaker 1: Internet sites with the youth market in mind, typically you know,

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Speaker 1: like high school and college kids, ended up purchasing six

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Speaker 1: degrees dot com in nine for a cool one hundred

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Speaker 1: twenty five million dollars, a princely sum indeed, But youth

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Speaker 1: stream apparently couldn't do much with six degrees, and a

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Speaker 1: year later the site would go dark. Just two years

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Speaker 1: after that, another company called Alloy acquired youth Stream Media's assets,

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Speaker 1: the entire company's assets for just seven million dollars now

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Speaker 1: seven million dollars a lot of money. I know, saying

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Speaker 1: just makes it sound like it's not. But when you

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Speaker 1: consider that youth stream paid a D five million for

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Speaker 1: six degrees and then another company bought youth Streams assets

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Speaker 1: for just seven million dollars, you really see where the

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Speaker 1: value of that company plummeted. So what happened, Well, the

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Speaker 1: dot com bubble burst for one thing, as for six

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Speaker 1: degrees dot com, and eventually returned in some form or another.

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Speaker 1: Though I honestly don't know what it looks like today

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Speaker 1: because when I went to go check it out with

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Speaker 1: my browser as part of my research for this episode,

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Speaker 1: my browser told me, yo, buddy, I really don't think

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Speaker 1: you should go in there, essentially saying the site is insecure,

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Speaker 1: possibly a host of malware, and I don't want any

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Speaker 1: of that garbage on my computer. So I quietly backed away. Now,

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Speaker 1: six degrees dot com wasn't a bad idea. It was

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Speaker 1: just way ahead of its time. There weren't enough people,

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Speaker 1: there wasn't enough saturation on the web to make the

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Speaker 1: model work. But the idea behind it was obviously solid.

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Speaker 1: Because anyone who has studied social networks online or otherwise

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Speaker 1: would recognize the value proposition. Now, a few other folks

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Speaker 1: would try to launch social networking sites over the next

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Speaker 1: couple of years, but I think it's fair to say

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Speaker 1: that the first that got some mainstream traction was Friendster,

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Speaker 1: and that one would come out in two thousand two,

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Speaker 1: so five years after six Degrees had originally launched, and

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Speaker 1: two years before Facebook would launch. Now, Friendster was founded

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Speaker 1: by Jonathan Abrams and Peter Chen, and this site also

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Speaker 1: subscribed to that six degrees of separation concept. If you

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Speaker 1: looked at someone's profile, you'd see how you were connected

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Speaker 1: to that person and whether or not it was a

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Speaker 1: close connection, so perhaps you might have a mutual friend

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Speaker 1: in common with that person, or you would see if

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Speaker 1: it was a more tenuous connection, like I know someone

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Speaker 1: who knows someone who knows someone who knows that person

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Speaker 1: kind of thing. And like a lot of social networking sites,

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Speaker 1: it was used primarily by people who are looking to

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Speaker 1: find a date um or at least a lot of

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Speaker 1: people were using it that way. Maybe primarily is too

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Speaker 1: strong a word, but it was a popular use for

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Speaker 1: the site. Oh and uh profiles also had a view

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Speaker 1: counter attached them. Fun times. Now, I don't know if

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Speaker 1: you guys remember when it seemed like every web page

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Speaker 1: on the Internet required a view counter. It's a little

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Speaker 1: counter up in typically you know, the top of the page,

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Speaker 1: maybe in the corner, and it would just tell you

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Speaker 1: how many people had visited the website. And it became

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Speaker 1: a way to gauge not just the popularity of the

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Speaker 1: web page or website, but also by extension, it gave

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Speaker 1: an implication of whether or not the site was a

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Speaker 1: good quality, you know, the idea being that if that

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Speaker 1: many people have visited the site, then it must be

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Speaker 1: doing something right. And we still see elements of this today,

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Speaker 1: of course, you like in view numbers for YouTube videos

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Speaker 1: or how many people like or share a post on

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Speaker 1: various social media sites or tweets, that kind of thing,

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Speaker 1: but we don't typically see them on web pages as

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Speaker 1: much these days now. Finster started strong, but with popularity

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Speaker 1: comes challenges, and one of those was just in scaling.

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Speaker 1: As more people were joining the site and we're making

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Speaker 1: profiles and uploading photos and interacting with one another, the

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Speaker 1: company had to scale up the back end systems and

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Speaker 1: this became challenging. Google would actually come forward and make

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Speaker 1: an offer of thirty million dollars to acquire the company

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Speaker 1: in two thousand three, but the business owners turned that

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Speaker 1: offer down, and that was probably one of the reasons

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Speaker 1: the company would later remove the founder, Jonathan Abrams as

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Speaker 1: CEO in two thousand four, the idea of we could

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Speaker 1: have cashed out and you said no. Following Abram's departure

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Speaker 1: as CEO, there was the old revolving door routine of

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Speaker 1: other CEOs. I mean, seriously, if you look at a list,

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Speaker 1: it's just like one replaced by another, typically more than

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Speaker 1: one in a year, which is really bad. And users

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Speaker 1: began to abandon the site. They were frustrated by performance

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Speaker 1: problems and that linked back to those challenges with scaling,

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Speaker 1: and the users were flocking over to another social networking site,

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Speaker 1: one that for a while seemed like it was going

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Speaker 1: to be the definitive social networking platform, my Space, because

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Speaker 1: this was, you know, a little bit later after my

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Speaker 1: Space had gotten started. But we'll get back to my

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Speaker 1: Space later in this episode. Before that, I should probably

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Speaker 1: explain what actually happened with Friendster. It floundered as a

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Speaker 1: social media platform for several more years. It lasted long

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Speaker 1: enough to see my Space eventually falled behind the upstart

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Speaker 1: competitor of Facebook. Spoiler alert there as if you didn't know.

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Speaker 1: But in two thousand eleven, friends to changed from a

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Speaker 1: social networking platform to more of a social gaming network.

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Speaker 1: And this was really kind of an effort to get

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Speaker 1: out of the trap and had found itself in by

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Speaker 1: competing directly with Facebook. It couldn't do that, that was

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Speaker 1: clearly a lost cause. So Friendster would instead operate as

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Speaker 1: a social gaming network and they did that for a

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Speaker 1: few more years, but ultimately shut down in t and

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Speaker 1: the brand is pretty much non existent today. So with Friendster,

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Speaker 1: we have a social networking site that pre existed Facebook,

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Speaker 1: but was enable to scale to serve a growing user

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Speaker 1: base and thus giving opportunities to competitors. And the next

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Speaker 1: platform I should talk about is high five. It's Hi

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Speaker 1: and the numeral five. This is a social network site

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Speaker 1: that made a profit in its first year of operation.

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Speaker 1: It was actually a profitable web based business right at

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Speaker 1: the gate, not a very common thing even today now.

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Speaker 1: This is according to CBS News. By the way, there

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Speaker 1: was an entrepreneur named Ramu Yala Manchi who founded the

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Speaker 1: site in two thousand three. And I do apologize for

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Speaker 1: my pronunciation of his name. I am terribly ignorant, and

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Speaker 1: that is all on me. But anyway, while I was

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Speaker 1: researching this episode and I came across High five, I thought, huh,

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Speaker 1: that's a social networking site. I don't think I've ever

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Speaker 1: heard of before, except maybe I have, because apparently I

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Speaker 1: already created a profile for it. See high five is

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Speaker 1: still around today, at least theoretically it is. And so

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Speaker 1: I thought, you know what I'll do. I'll make a

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Speaker 1: profile on there. I'll create a profile to check out

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Speaker 1: what this site looks like. Only when I tried to

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Speaker 1: do that, when I tried to make a profile with

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Speaker 1: my my private email address, I got a message that

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Speaker 1: said that my email was blocked, which was odd because

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Speaker 1: it's not like I'm using a particularly you know, shady

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Speaker 1: email service. It's Gmail for those who want to know,

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Speaker 1: it's nothing bad. So I thought, how that's weird. Well,

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Speaker 1: maybe what that means is that I may have already

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Speaker 1: made a high five accountant. I just forgot about it.

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Speaker 1: So I chose the forgot my password feature, you know

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Speaker 1: that useful thing, and then I put my email address

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Speaker 1: in the little field and I hit the button, and

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Speaker 1: the site said it was going to send an email

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Speaker 1: to me with instructions on how I could log in,

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Speaker 1: and as of this moment, I have not received that email.

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Speaker 1: That was hours ago when I I did that. Nothing

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Speaker 1: has happened since. So there are a few possibilities. One

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Speaker 1: is that it's just taking a really long time. Maybe

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Speaker 1: High five servers are few and far between and overloaded.

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Speaker 1: Another possibility is that the site just isn't active like

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Speaker 1: I had been led to believe, and that it's really dormant.

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Speaker 1: I can't really find any information that says one way

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Speaker 1: or the other. Another possibility is that I never had

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Speaker 1: a profile on there, and everyone gets the message about

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Speaker 1: an email being sent, whether they have a profile on

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Speaker 1: High five or not, if they go through that whole

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Speaker 1: forgot my password process. So I could find that out

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Speaker 1: by just making up a fake email address and or

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Speaker 1: making a brand new email address even and putting it

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Speaker 1: in the field, but I didn't go through that that phase.

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Speaker 1: I was already fed up, so I did try to

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Speaker 1: sign in or sign up with my work email address,

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Speaker 1: and that didn't work either. So honestly, I'm just not

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Speaker 1: sure if there's anything going on at High five or not.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there is a page there. It's not like

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Speaker 1: it goes to you know, some page that says that

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Speaker 1: you can get the the U r L or anything,

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Speaker 1: but I can't make it do anything. But anyway, High

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Speaker 1: five started off as another social network site where you

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Speaker 1: would create a profile with information about yourself. There was

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Speaker 1: supposed to be an age restriction. Users were supposed to

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Speaker 1: be at least thirteen years old, but the site had

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Speaker 1: no means of authenticating a person's age, so you know,

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Speaker 1: there you go. The site would prompt new users to

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Speaker 1: add friends through their contacts with existing services like Yahoo

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Speaker 1: mail or hot mail, and boy those take me back.

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Speaker 1: And users could customize their profile pages. They could do

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Speaker 1: stuff like change the background color of their profile. They

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Speaker 1: can move things around on their profile if they wanted to.

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Speaker 1: They could even go into HTML editing mode and really

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Speaker 1: change things up and customize things if they if they

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Speaker 1: so desired. But from the reports I've read, very few

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Speaker 1: people went to the trouble of doing that. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: it also, like its predecessors, was tying into that that

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Speaker 1: concept of six degrees of separation. Now, like for Inster

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Speaker 1: and like some others that will be on this list,

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Speaker 1: High five would attempt to evolve as sites like my

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Speaker 1: Space and later Facebook began to dominate the social networking sphere.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand nine, the site changed into more of

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Speaker 1: a social gaming site, similar to why happened with Friendster.

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Speaker 1: A company called Tagged acquired High fives assets in two

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Speaker 1: thousand eleven, and then Tagged itself would get scooped up

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Speaker 1: by a company called The Meat Group. That's m E

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Speaker 1: E T, not M E A T, which is a

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Speaker 1: totally different and frankly horrifying company, but anyway, the Meat

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Speaker 1: Group got them in two thousand seventeen. Jumping back to

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Speaker 1: two thousand three, couple of months after High five launched,

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Speaker 1: we got my Space. Now I've done full episodes about

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Speaker 1: my Space and the whole story of the rise and

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Speaker 1: fall the platform is fascinating. There's a ton of drama

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Speaker 1: going on there, So for this episode, I'm not going

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Speaker 1: to go into all that detail. I'll give you more

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Speaker 1: of a high overview, and I'll do that after we

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Speaker 1: take this short break. My Space was monumentally successful in

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Speaker 1: the early days of social networking. You had your customizable

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Speaker 1: profile pages, similar to what High five was doing. There

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Speaker 1: was a fairly robust music industry presence on MySpace from

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Speaker 1: the get go, and it became something of a hallmark

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Speaker 1: that if you had a MySpace page, you would add

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Speaker 1: songs to your profile uh and someone visiting your profile

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Speaker 1: would be treated or would be forced to endure the

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Speaker 1: music you had selected. If you were particularly mischievous, you

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Speaker 1: could design your profile page so that the playback controls

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Speaker 1: like pause and and play and everything we're very hard

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Speaker 1: to find on the page, so that people who did

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Speaker 1: visit your profile would have no option but to listen

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Speaker 1: to whatever music you had selected. But gosh darn it,

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Speaker 1: I needed everyone to really groove to Tarzan Boy by Baltimore.

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Speaker 1: It was important. This was also the site where you

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Speaker 1: would have your top eight friends. You could have lots

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Speaker 1: and lots of MySpace friends, but on your a file

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Speaker 1: page you would only see the top eight listed. In

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Speaker 1: the early days, and Tom, one of the founders of

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Speaker 1: my Space, was automatically your friend from the beginning. You

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Speaker 1: could give him the boot if you wanted to, but

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Speaker 1: Tom was everyone's friend when they first joined my Space.

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Speaker 1: Not Tom. What a mench Now. For the first few

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Speaker 1: years of its existence, it seemed as though my Space

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Speaker 1: was going to be the definitive social networking site. It

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Speaker 1: was like, this is this company is just on the

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Speaker 1: up and up. News Core, the company that owned Fox News,

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Speaker 1: among lots of other stuff. Rubert Murdoch's company, in other words,

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Speaker 1: would end up buying my Space in two thousand five

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Speaker 1: for more than half a billion dollars at truly princely

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Speaker 1: some and in two thousand six my Space became the

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Speaker 1: most visited site on the entire web. It was valued

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Speaker 1: at twelve billion dollars in two thousand and seven. It

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Speaker 1: was just astounding, like you would think it's too big

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Speaker 1: to fail, right, and then it failed. Funny how that happens.

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Speaker 1: So my Space did very well early on, but it

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Speaker 1: didn't have fierce competition either Facebook, which cut on with

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Speaker 1: college kids because when it first debuted, Facebook membership was

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Speaker 1: exclusive to people who had a university or college email address.

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Speaker 1: You couldn't join if you didn't, so it was almost

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Speaker 1: entirely college kids when it launched. Anyway, it ended up

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Speaker 1: getting a ton of momentum after that launch and when

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Speaker 1: it opened up to the general public, and it was

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Speaker 1: a young demographic, and by two thousand and eight, Facebook

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Speaker 1: started to leave my Space behind. They were they had

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Speaker 1: more users and people were spending more time on Facebook

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Speaker 1: than on MySpace. News Corps tried to pivot. They redesigned

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Speaker 1: my Space a few times to try and win people

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Speaker 1: back over to the platform, but they couldn't really do

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Speaker 1: much other than, you know, slow the flow of users

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Speaker 1: from their site to the rival of Facebook. It was

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Speaker 1: like putting a band aid on a truly massive wound.

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Speaker 1: It just wasn't enough, and eventually news Corps sold my

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Speaker 1: Space to a company called Specific Media for thirty five

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Speaker 1: million dollars. So again, news Corps paid eight million for

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Speaker 1: the site and then they sold it for thirty five million.

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Speaker 1: I don't think I need to point out that that's

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Speaker 1: not a great deal. Today my Space is technically still around,

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Speaker 1: though it's really focused more on entertainment in general and

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Speaker 1: the music industry in particular, and it's less of a

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Speaker 1: social networking space for users like some of the other

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Speaker 1: sites we've talked about on here so far. The only

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Speaker 1: way my Space was able to stick around at all

377
00:22:44,480 --> 00:22:46,880
Speaker 1: was to switch its focus from being a social networking

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Speaker 1: platform to a different central focus, but still incorporating some

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00:22:52,600 --> 00:22:56,480
Speaker 1: social elements to the experience, so it's more like it's

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Speaker 1: a site about music that has some social networking features

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Speaker 1: along with it. Now, our next social platform that preceded

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00:23:05,440 --> 00:23:08,160
Speaker 1: Facebook is orch it Now. This one only came out

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Speaker 1: a month before Facebook did, but technically that makes it earlier.

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Speaker 1: It debuted in January two four, and orch It grew

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Speaker 1: out of Google, where the company had this standing policy

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Speaker 1: that employees could devote their work week to their own

387
00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:29,600
Speaker 1: personal projects within Google, and one of those projects was orchit. Now.

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00:23:29,760 --> 00:23:33,480
Speaker 1: There have been subsequent allegations that orch it really was

389
00:23:33,520 --> 00:23:37,840
Speaker 1: a replica of UH, an earlier project that the same

390
00:23:37,960 --> 00:23:42,040
Speaker 1: engineer had created for a different company called Affinity Engines,

391
00:23:42,119 --> 00:23:45,920
Speaker 1: but that that's its own thing now. You might recall

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Speaker 1: I mentioned that Google had attempted to acquire friends Store

393
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Speaker 1: a couple of years earlier, but had been turned down.

394
00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:56,360
Speaker 1: Or Kit would become Google's first real experiment in social

395
00:23:56,400 --> 00:24:00,960
Speaker 1: networking platforms, and at first the service was by invitation only,

396
00:24:01,359 --> 00:24:04,720
Speaker 1: which helped drive interest in the platform, because it turns

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00:24:04,760 --> 00:24:07,880
Speaker 1: out people like to feel that they're part of an

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00:24:07,880 --> 00:24:11,960
Speaker 1: exclusive club, and Google would employ this same strategy for

399
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:15,320
Speaker 1: several of its products. Further down the line from Gmail

400
00:24:15,720 --> 00:24:18,480
Speaker 1: to another social networking platform, will get to later in

401
00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:23,040
Speaker 1: this episode, but going invitation only meant that new users

402
00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:25,679
Speaker 1: might only know a couple of other people on the

403
00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:29,040
Speaker 1: entire network, which made it really hard to build out

404
00:24:29,040 --> 00:24:32,080
Speaker 1: a circle of friends and meant that ork It didn't

405
00:24:32,119 --> 00:24:35,320
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of usefulness for those folks. My

406
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:39,280
Speaker 1: Space would end up taking off faster, although ork It

407
00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:43,879
Speaker 1: would end up finding some traction in Brazil. Over time,

408
00:24:44,160 --> 00:24:48,040
Speaker 1: Brazil and India would become the two main markets where

409
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:51,679
Speaker 1: users were flocking to on orch It, but it was

410
00:24:51,760 --> 00:24:55,679
Speaker 1: largely a bust in the United States. One interesting fact,

411
00:24:55,840 --> 00:24:58,560
Speaker 1: at one point, Marissa Meyer, who would go on to

412
00:24:58,760 --> 00:25:02,520
Speaker 1: be the CEO of Yahoo, was the product manager for

413
00:25:02,680 --> 00:25:05,280
Speaker 1: or Kind. Now the features of Orchid are familiar to

414
00:25:05,359 --> 00:25:09,320
Speaker 1: anyone who has visited a social networking platform. Users would

415
00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:12,320
Speaker 1: have profiles, and they could add friends on their network.

416
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:16,159
Speaker 1: Unlike some other examples, or could actually allowed users to

417
00:25:16,240 --> 00:25:19,119
Speaker 1: visit any profile that was hosted on the platform, at

418
00:25:19,200 --> 00:25:23,320
Speaker 1: least at first. The other platforms typically would restrict you

419
00:25:23,400 --> 00:25:27,040
Speaker 1: to only being able to visit your friends profiles or

420
00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:31,159
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of degrees out from your friends, but

421
00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:34,679
Speaker 1: beyond that you wouldn't be able to visit a profile

422
00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:36,800
Speaker 1: so if it's a complete stranger where you didn't have

423
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:39,960
Speaker 1: any contacts in common and they were too far separated

424
00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:42,240
Speaker 1: from you, you wouldn't be allowed to see it. Orcutt

425
00:25:42,320 --> 00:25:44,760
Speaker 1: was different. Now eventually they did change that, but at

426
00:25:44,760 --> 00:25:48,439
Speaker 1: first you could visit any profile on the service. For

427
00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:51,880
Speaker 1: several years, or Kit would remain more popular in Brazil

428
00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:56,280
Speaker 1: and India than rival social networking sites, So it was

429
00:25:56,320 --> 00:25:59,920
Speaker 1: outperforming my Space, it was outperforming Facebook, but eventually face

430
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:03,240
Speaker 1: Book caught up and then surpassed orch It in both

431
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:07,960
Speaker 1: of those countries. Meanwhile, Google had turned its fleeting attention

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00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:11,480
Speaker 1: to a different social networking platform from within the company,

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Speaker 1: which we'll get to a little bit later, and so

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00:26:14,560 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 1: ork It was essentially operating without a whole lot of

435
00:26:17,520 --> 00:26:21,120
Speaker 1: support from Google. It would limp along until two thousand fourteen,

436
00:26:21,520 --> 00:26:24,560
Speaker 1: when Google would officially shut it down. Now, I think

437
00:26:24,640 --> 00:26:28,760
Speaker 1: orc It's main drawback was that limited access very early on,

438
00:26:28,920 --> 00:26:31,960
Speaker 1: and that meant that users who couldn't get an invite

439
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:35,240
Speaker 1: instead would head over to somewhere else like my Space.

440
00:26:35,720 --> 00:26:40,760
Speaker 1: And typically once you establish an online presence somewhere, you

441
00:26:40,800 --> 00:26:43,560
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of motivation to build it out again.

442
00:26:43,880 --> 00:26:47,359
Speaker 1: Somewhere else, so the likelihood of building out on other

443
00:26:47,440 --> 00:26:50,360
Speaker 1: networks starts to go down. Now, some people are more

444
00:26:50,359 --> 00:26:55,359
Speaker 1: than happy to maintain a profile on multiple social networking sites,

445
00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:58,120
Speaker 1: but I think a lot of us prefer to focus

446
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:01,080
Speaker 1: on one or two at the most, Like Facebook and

447
00:27:01,119 --> 00:27:03,359
Speaker 1: Twitter are the two that tend to go hand in hand.

448
00:27:04,080 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 1: Orc It didn't have the momentum needed to keep up

449
00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:09,960
Speaker 1: with my Space and definitely didn't have the foundation to

450
00:27:10,040 --> 00:27:14,520
Speaker 1: withstand the Facebook flood that would happen around two thousand eight.

451
00:27:14,960 --> 00:27:18,520
Speaker 1: Facebook debuted the month after orc At first launched, so

452
00:27:18,560 --> 00:27:21,359
Speaker 1: in February two four. But heck, this episode is all

453
00:27:21,359 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 1: about the attempts to make it an alternative to Facebook,

454
00:27:24,880 --> 00:27:28,520
Speaker 1: so there's no real point talking about Facebook itself. Suffice

455
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:32,159
Speaker 1: it to say that the social media platform has grown

456
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:37,280
Speaker 1: beyond all expectations and plays an incredibly important role when

457
00:27:37,280 --> 00:27:40,840
Speaker 1: it comes to the dissemination of ideas and ideologies. Who

458
00:27:40,880 --> 00:27:43,920
Speaker 1: would have thought that what originally started out as a

459
00:27:43,960 --> 00:27:48,080
Speaker 1: flimsy excuse to try and find dates at a college

460
00:27:48,200 --> 00:27:52,440
Speaker 1: university campus would eventually become a potential threat to democracy

461
00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:56,720
Speaker 1: and security. But moving on, in two thousand five, a

462
00:27:56,920 --> 00:28:00,960
Speaker 1: San Francisco couple launched a social net working site they

463
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:04,479
Speaker 1: called Bibo b e b oh. They would seem more

464
00:28:04,560 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 1: success in the United Kingdom and in Ireland than it

465
00:28:08,080 --> 00:28:11,040
Speaker 1: would in the United States. In fact, it actually became

466
00:28:11,119 --> 00:28:14,840
Speaker 1: more popular than my Space over there in the UK

467
00:28:15,080 --> 00:28:18,359
Speaker 1: and in Ireland at one point. Once again, the site

468
00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:22,040
Speaker 1: had the hallmarks of your typical social networking services. You

469
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:24,960
Speaker 1: could have a profile, you could post blogs, you could

470
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:27,680
Speaker 1: share videos and music and photographs and do that kind

471
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:31,280
Speaker 1: of stuff. And the success in the UK led to

472
00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:34,919
Speaker 1: the company A O L taking notice of Bibo and

473
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 1: making a move that in hindsight often gets lumped in

474
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:42,240
Speaker 1: with the worst deals of all time in the tech space.

475
00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:46,800
Speaker 1: A O L bought Bibo for the princely sum of

476
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:52,880
Speaker 1: eight hundred fifty million dollars yeawza, and the couple who

477
00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:57,320
Speaker 1: launched Bibo had like seventy steak in the company, so

478
00:28:57,800 --> 00:29:00,560
Speaker 1: they had something that more than five hundred million dollars

479
00:29:00,600 --> 00:29:04,520
Speaker 1: between the two of them. Man and this happened in

480
00:29:04,560 --> 00:29:06,920
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. So A O L was essentially trying

481
00:29:06,960 --> 00:29:10,480
Speaker 1: to establish its presence in the social networking space by

482
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:13,360
Speaker 1: taking a shortcut. You know, companies do this all the time.

483
00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:18,400
Speaker 1: Where they will scale up, not by building out their

484
00:29:18,480 --> 00:29:22,280
Speaker 1: their assets, but just buying new assets and trying to

485
00:29:22,320 --> 00:29:26,320
Speaker 1: incorporate them into the existing company structure, which doesn't always

486
00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 1: work so well, and it did not work well for

487
00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:32,520
Speaker 1: a o L. The motivation to really get into the

488
00:29:32,560 --> 00:29:35,120
Speaker 1: social networking space really pushed a o L to pay

489
00:29:35,160 --> 00:29:38,720
Speaker 1: way too much for Bibo. Now, granted, in two thousand eight,

490
00:29:38,920 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 1: it was hard to predict that Facebook was going to

491
00:29:41,040 --> 00:29:44,840
Speaker 1: eclipse all other social networking sites around the world. Maybe

492
00:29:44,880 --> 00:29:47,560
Speaker 1: there was hope that Bibo could maintain its own special

493
00:29:47,600 --> 00:29:50,240
Speaker 1: space on the web, particularly in places like the UK,

494
00:29:51,040 --> 00:29:54,840
Speaker 1: But the numbers began to fall, and in just two years,

495
00:29:54,960 --> 00:29:56,800
Speaker 1: a o L started to look for a way to

496
00:29:56,960 --> 00:29:59,920
Speaker 1: offload those assets or they were going to shut the

497
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:03,560
Speaker 1: whole thing down. In t A o L would sell

498
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:07,880
Speaker 1: Bibo to an investment company called Criterion Capital Partners for

499
00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:11,560
Speaker 1: a fraction of what they paid for it, reportedly just

500
00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:15,280
Speaker 1: ten million dollars. So to recap, A o L spent

501
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:18,960
Speaker 1: eight hundred fifty million dollars on Bibo in two thousand

502
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:21,400
Speaker 1: and eight, and then in two thousand and ten sold

503
00:30:21,440 --> 00:30:24,520
Speaker 1: it for ten million. Now, this makes the News Corps

504
00:30:24,520 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 1: acquisition and unloading of MySpace look tame by comparison, But

505
00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:34,120
Speaker 1: Criterion Capital failed to really leverage Bibo, just as a

506
00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:36,720
Speaker 1: o L had failed to do it. And so a

507
00:30:36,760 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 1: couple of years later, that same couple who had launched

508
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:42,600
Speaker 1: the site in the first place and made you know,

509
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 1: half a billion dollars off of it, uh, they ended

510
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:50,760
Speaker 1: up buying Bibo back for just one million dollars, so

511
00:30:50,880 --> 00:30:53,160
Speaker 1: a fraction of a per cent of what they were

512
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:56,640
Speaker 1: paid for it. That's not bad at all. Bibo would

513
00:30:56,720 --> 00:31:00,720
Speaker 1: relaunch in it floundered a bit, It re branded, it

514
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 1: became more about supporting Twitch streamers by offering up streaming software,

515
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:09,080
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like overlays and video switchers and

516
00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:13,280
Speaker 1: stuff that streamers use whenever they are live streaming on Twitch.

517
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:17,320
Speaker 1: And in twenty nineteen, Amazon, the owner of Twitch, acquired

518
00:31:17,360 --> 00:31:21,320
Speaker 1: Bibo for twenty five million dollars, So that story kind

519
00:31:21,320 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 1: of ends there. In two thousand seven, we got a

520
00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 1: few more social networks with different value propositions. One of

521
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: those was Tumbler, the micro blogging site, and Tumbler still

522
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:37,320
Speaker 1: around today, but this one was enjoying popularity among younger

523
00:31:37,440 --> 00:31:40,880
Speaker 1: users for several years. It was like a slightly younger

524
00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:43,600
Speaker 1: crowd than what you were finding on other social networking sites,

525
00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:47,880
Speaker 1: and it passed through various corporate ownership. Yahoo owned it

526
00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:50,880
Speaker 1: for a while. It acquired the company for more than

527
00:31:50,920 --> 00:31:55,880
Speaker 1: a billion dollars, an incredible amount of money. Verizon then

528
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 1: went on to buy Yahoo assets, including Tumbler, so tumb

529
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:03,760
Speaker 1: or went with that. Verizon ultimately couldn't figure out really

530
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:05,880
Speaker 1: what to do with Tumbler and sold it off to

531
00:32:05,920 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 1: a company called Automatic that is the current owner of Tumbler.

532
00:32:10,360 --> 00:32:13,600
Speaker 1: One of Tumbler's problems is that the site hosted a

533
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 1: lot of adult content, meaning people were posting adult content

534
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:21,120
Speaker 1: like pornography to Tumbler to the point that it was

535
00:32:21,160 --> 00:32:24,520
Speaker 1: becoming part of the site's reputation. And that proved to

536
00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:27,040
Speaker 1: be a real problem for some of these corporate owners.

537
00:32:27,040 --> 00:32:30,440
Speaker 1: I mean, they couldn't very well talk about owning a

538
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:35,040
Speaker 1: site that was largely trafficking in pornography. Two shareholders and

539
00:32:35,120 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 1: so over different eras at Tumbler, there were different restrictions

540
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:42,160
Speaker 1: put in place with regard to the kinds of content

541
00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:46,680
Speaker 1: that could be shared that changed Tumbler quite a bit. Uh. Tumbler,

542
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 1: like I said, is still around today. Of course, though

543
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:50,640
Speaker 1: it does see a lot less traffic than it did

544
00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:54,640
Speaker 1: at its height. Now, out of curiosity, I went to

545
00:32:54,680 --> 00:32:58,000
Speaker 1: see if I had an account on Tumbler, and I do.

546
00:32:58,680 --> 00:33:01,760
Speaker 1: I don't have any record election of when I last

547
00:33:01,840 --> 00:33:04,720
Speaker 1: logged into that account. It's been a few years, but

548
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:08,560
Speaker 1: the account still exists, still active. All the posts I

549
00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:12,240
Speaker 1: could see when I logged in and casually scrolled through,

550
00:33:12,600 --> 00:33:17,120
Speaker 1: we're all from the official Tumbler account, so I have

551
00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: no idea if anyone that I used to follow on

552
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:22,960
Speaker 1: Tumbler is actually still active over there. So I'm starting

553
00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:25,880
Speaker 1: to sense a theme. And on a side note about Tumbler,

554
00:33:25,920 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 1: there's one event I really want to mention because it

555
00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:32,880
Speaker 1: is infamous. It doesn't directly tie into our topic, but

556
00:33:33,240 --> 00:33:35,080
Speaker 1: I don't know when I will ever get a chance

557
00:33:35,120 --> 00:33:37,080
Speaker 1: to talk about it otherwise, so I want to do

558
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:41,840
Speaker 1: it here. This is one of those examples of something

559
00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 1: that had been built up to be a really special

560
00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:50,400
Speaker 1: celebration but fell far short of what was promised, which

561
00:33:50,480 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 1: is putting it lightly. I'm talking, of course, about dash Con,

562
00:33:56,040 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 1: which was fire festival before there was a fire festival,

563
00:34:00,840 --> 00:34:03,760
Speaker 1: though on a much more modest scale. So for those

564
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:07,280
Speaker 1: who don't know about this at all. Dash Con, which

565
00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:11,279
Speaker 1: was originally called tumble Con, although the organizers would change

566
00:34:11,320 --> 00:34:13,880
Speaker 1: the name in order to show that the convention was

567
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:17,960
Speaker 1: not officially a sanctioned Tumbler event or anything like that.

568
00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:20,880
Speaker 1: It was meant to be a gathering of the tumbler

569
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:25,120
Speaker 1: community to allow Tumbler creators, many of whom were creating

570
00:34:25,239 --> 00:34:30,280
Speaker 1: incredible video and art, to get together and to celebrate

571
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:33,400
Speaker 1: their community. And it was gonna have panels and special

572
00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:37,359
Speaker 1: performances by bands. The podcasts were going to be there,

573
00:34:37,360 --> 00:34:41,080
Speaker 1: including Welcome Tonight Vale, which was really taking off in

574
00:34:41,160 --> 00:34:45,000
Speaker 1: popularity and had a huge following on Tumbler. And it

575
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:47,920
Speaker 1: was supposed to take place in the summer. Of a

576
00:34:47,960 --> 00:34:50,600
Speaker 1: small group of organizers who I think it's safe to

577
00:34:50,640 --> 00:34:54,839
Speaker 1: say we're clearly out of their depth, attempted to throw

578
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:58,240
Speaker 1: together a three day convention and they rented out of space,

579
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:01,680
Speaker 1: and they created a path schedule with lots of stuff

580
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:04,440
Speaker 1: to do and a lot of grandiose promises about what

581
00:35:04,520 --> 00:35:07,279
Speaker 1: was going to be there, and there was a ball pit,

582
00:35:08,160 --> 00:35:12,600
Speaker 1: the famous ball pit. Well, there were problems from the

583
00:35:12,719 --> 00:35:17,040
Speaker 1: very beginning before the convention even got around, but those

584
00:35:17,040 --> 00:35:21,320
Speaker 1: problems became apparent at the beginning of the convention itself. Really,

585
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:24,640
Speaker 1: just as the convention was getting started, the organizers announced

586
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:28,319
Speaker 1: to the relatively small crowd that was there that the

587
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:31,880
Speaker 1: hotel they were using as the host for this convention

588
00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:36,040
Speaker 1: was demanding full payment for the entire weekend in advance,

589
00:35:36,400 --> 00:35:40,120
Speaker 1: and that was an amount equal to seventeen thousand dollars. Now,

590
00:35:40,200 --> 00:35:43,600
Speaker 1: according to the organizers, they anticipated that they would have

591
00:35:43,719 --> 00:35:45,759
Speaker 1: all the money to pay for the hotel by the

592
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:50,319
Speaker 1: end of the weekend just from the attendance of the convention,

593
00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 1: but they didn't have the money on hand, so it's

594
00:35:54,120 --> 00:35:57,600
Speaker 1: like a liquidity problem. They didn't have the liquid assets available,

595
00:35:58,080 --> 00:36:00,640
Speaker 1: so they took up a collection from the people who

596
00:36:00,680 --> 00:36:03,080
Speaker 1: were there, and amazingly they got enough money to meet

597
00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:07,440
Speaker 1: that seventeen dollar goal. Now there were talk of reimbursements,

598
00:36:07,480 --> 00:36:09,799
Speaker 1: that people were going to get paid back whatever money

599
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:13,400
Speaker 1: they were putting in, because again the organizers were saying, hey,

600
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:17,759
Speaker 1: we should be making enough money from admissions to cover

601
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:19,840
Speaker 1: that cost. So really this is just so that we

602
00:36:19,880 --> 00:36:22,359
Speaker 1: can pay the bill and then you'll get your money back.

603
00:36:22,680 --> 00:36:25,400
Speaker 1: But from what I can tell, there never really was

604
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 1: a sincere effort put forward to even keep track of

605
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:32,200
Speaker 1: who was donating how much money. So I'm not sure

606
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:35,319
Speaker 1: that that was ever going to work out, and it

607
00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:38,880
Speaker 1: ended up being a moot point anyway. Now that massive

608
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:42,160
Speaker 1: problem was really just the start of the issues, with

609
00:36:42,239 --> 00:36:46,359
Speaker 1: it soon becoming clear that guests were canceling performances were

610
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:49,240
Speaker 1: not going to happen. The night Vale crew left because

611
00:36:49,600 --> 00:36:52,359
Speaker 1: the payment they had been promised had fallen through. It

612
00:36:52,440 --> 00:36:55,920
Speaker 1: was really ugly and making matters worse, the organizers had

613
00:36:55,960 --> 00:36:59,239
Speaker 1: no real way to make this up to the attendees,

614
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:02,640
Speaker 1: apart from promising some extra time in the ball pit,

615
00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 1: which I mean, if you haven't seen the photos, you

616
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:09,239
Speaker 1: need to search Dashkong Ballpit. It's just this little inflated

617
00:37:09,320 --> 00:37:12,240
Speaker 1: pool filled with maybe a couple of thousand plastic balls.

618
00:37:13,040 --> 00:37:17,360
Speaker 1: We now, I would do a whole episode about dash Con,

619
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:21,160
Speaker 1: but really you should just head over to YouTube and

620
00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:25,920
Speaker 1: watch a video that's titled Tumblers Failed Convention The Story

621
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: of dash Con. It's by Sarah Z. Sarah is a

622
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:34,160
Speaker 1: talented essayist video sayst on YouTube. She has no connection

623
00:37:34,160 --> 00:37:35,880
Speaker 1: to me. As far as I know, she doesn't know

624
00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:38,239
Speaker 1: who I am. She doesn't know I'm talking about this.

625
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:41,960
Speaker 1: I just really like her work, and her piece is

626
00:37:42,280 --> 00:37:47,560
Speaker 1: thoroughly researched. It's really interesting. It's also fifty minutes long,

627
00:37:47,960 --> 00:37:52,000
Speaker 1: so it's kind of like a tech stuff episode Anyway. Anyway,

628
00:37:52,080 --> 00:37:56,120
Speaker 1: dash Con was an unmitigated disaster, and some of the

629
00:37:56,280 --> 00:37:59,760
Speaker 1: stank of that failure would rub off on Tumbler itself,

630
00:38:00,120 --> 00:38:03,920
Speaker 1: which is hardly fair. Anyway, I had to throw that

631
00:38:04,120 --> 00:38:07,400
Speaker 1: in here. Plus give a shout out to Sarah's ez YouTube. Seriously,

632
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:11,080
Speaker 1: go check out the video. It's it's pretty dope, as

633
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:14,360
Speaker 1: the kids are like to say. When we come back,

634
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:17,760
Speaker 1: i'll chat about a couple of other challenges to the

635
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:21,280
Speaker 1: throne of Facebook, and we'll pontificate for a short while

636
00:38:21,640 --> 00:38:24,000
Speaker 1: whether it's even possible for some new platform to make

637
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:27,359
Speaker 1: a space in a Facebook dominated web. But first, let's

638
00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:38,319
Speaker 1: take another quick break. Another service that launched the same

639
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:41,760
Speaker 1: year that Tumbler launched was friend Feed. Now this wasn't

640
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:46,000
Speaker 1: really so much of a standalone social networking site, but

641
00:38:46,120 --> 00:38:50,480
Speaker 1: more of an aggregator created by some former Google employees. Now,

642
00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:53,080
Speaker 1: you could post stuff just a friend feed if you

643
00:38:53,120 --> 00:38:56,520
Speaker 1: wanted to. You could post photos and files and messages,

644
00:38:56,840 --> 00:38:59,680
Speaker 1: but the main attraction was that you could link friend

645
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:04,040
Speaker 1: fee to other services like your Facebook profile or Twitter

646
00:39:04,239 --> 00:39:08,360
Speaker 1: or Flicker or YouTube. And let's just say that I

647
00:39:08,480 --> 00:39:11,560
Speaker 1: joined friend feed and I connect with you as my

648
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:15,120
Speaker 1: first friend high friend. Now, at that point, I would

649
00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:17,480
Speaker 1: see a feed of all the stuff you were posting

650
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:20,799
Speaker 1: on the services you had connected to friend Feed, and

651
00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:23,160
Speaker 1: I would see it in real time and posted in

652
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:26,360
Speaker 1: reverse chronological orders, so the most recent posts would be

653
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:28,839
Speaker 1: at the top of the page. So, assuming you had

654
00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:32,439
Speaker 1: connected all of your services to friend feed, and let's

655
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:35,360
Speaker 1: say that you had just posted something to Facebook, I

656
00:39:35,360 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 1: would see your Facebook status update within friend feed. And

657
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:41,720
Speaker 1: then let's say after that you popped over to Twitter

658
00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:44,200
Speaker 1: and you posted a tweet, Well, then I would see

659
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:47,440
Speaker 1: the tweet pop up on friend Feed. So instead of

660
00:39:47,480 --> 00:39:51,640
Speaker 1: having to follow someone on multiple services, like I'm following

661
00:39:51,640 --> 00:39:55,960
Speaker 1: you on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, etcetera, etcetera, I

662
00:39:55,960 --> 00:39:59,680
Speaker 1: could just follow your friend feed and get everything your

663
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:02,560
Speaker 1: post sting, or at least everything you chose to share

664
00:40:02,560 --> 00:40:06,040
Speaker 1: with friend feed, and that ended up making it really,

665
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:09,800
Speaker 1: you know, kind of useful. Now, not everyone was crazy

666
00:40:09,800 --> 00:40:12,239
Speaker 1: about this, because one big concern was that if you

667
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:15,600
Speaker 1: linked to say, a blog post, to friend feed, The

668
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:17,880
Speaker 1: concern was that people were going to read the content

669
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:21,120
Speaker 1: on friend feed, but they wouldn't actually click through to

670
00:40:21,200 --> 00:40:24,400
Speaker 1: go visit the blog. And if the blog is supported

671
00:40:24,440 --> 00:40:28,640
Speaker 1: by advertising, as most blogs were, that's not very good

672
00:40:28,719 --> 00:40:31,680
Speaker 1: because it would mean that the blogger was getting lower

673
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:34,560
Speaker 1: page views, and that would mean that they would see

674
00:40:34,640 --> 00:40:38,280
Speaker 1: less revenue from their work. So people would be reading

675
00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 1: their stuff, but it wouldn't be counting toward the ad

676
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:46,320
Speaker 1: deals that these blogging sites had, so that was something

677
00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:49,320
Speaker 1: of a problem. Facebook thought that friend feed was a

678
00:40:49,320 --> 00:40:53,000
Speaker 1: pretty rad idea, so in two thousand nine, just two

679
00:40:53,080 --> 00:40:56,160
Speaker 1: years after friend feed had launched, Facebook announced plans to

680
00:40:56,200 --> 00:41:00,680
Speaker 1: acquire the service for a reported fifty million dollars. Facebook

681
00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:04,160
Speaker 1: continued to allow the service to operate. It never really

682
00:41:04,239 --> 00:41:06,120
Speaker 1: cut on in a big way. I mean, the people

683
00:41:06,120 --> 00:41:08,879
Speaker 1: who used it tended to like it, but not that

684
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 1: many people were using it, and Facebook would finally pull

685
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:15,160
Speaker 1: the plug on the service in two thousand fifteen. The

686
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:19,200
Speaker 1: last friend had been fed, I suppose. And the third

687
00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:23,280
Speaker 1: social networking site that began in two thousand seven was Twitch,

688
00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:27,080
Speaker 1: though not not actually Twitch, not in that form. It

689
00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:29,840
Speaker 1: was really the predecessor of Twitch a k A justin

690
00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:32,799
Speaker 1: dot tv that launched in two thousand seven. It was

691
00:41:32,800 --> 00:41:35,680
Speaker 1: a live streaming video service. Had really changed in a

692
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:37,720
Speaker 1: big way a couple of years later because it became

693
00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:41,520
Speaker 1: clear that video game streamers were dominating the platform. It

694
00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:45,840
Speaker 1: necessitated the company to spin off a new video game

695
00:41:45,920 --> 00:41:50,040
Speaker 1: streaming service. That's the one that was called Twitch dot tv. Eventually,

696
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:54,840
Speaker 1: justin dot tv would become part of like a subsidiary

697
00:41:54,880 --> 00:41:58,160
Speaker 1: of Twitch dot tv, and a little bit later it

698
00:41:58,160 --> 00:42:01,680
Speaker 1: would just get shut down entirely. Twitch dot tv became

699
00:42:01,840 --> 00:42:05,359
Speaker 1: the only focus of the company. Ultimately Amazon would come

700
00:42:05,360 --> 00:42:07,799
Speaker 1: along and acquire that, And of course Twitch dot tv

701
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:11,200
Speaker 1: is still extremely active today, but it's also a very

702
00:42:11,200 --> 00:42:14,359
Speaker 1: different platform from Facebook. You can't really compare the two.

703
00:42:14,840 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 1: I should add, however, that Facebook really hopes to get

704
00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:22,160
Speaker 1: into that space by launching their own streaming video services

705
00:42:22,480 --> 00:42:26,239
Speaker 1: and trying to challenge Twitch. So Twitch isn't really trying

706
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:29,440
Speaker 1: to play in Facebook's yard, but Facebook is trying to

707
00:42:29,440 --> 00:42:32,000
Speaker 1: play in twitches yard. This is something that Facebook has

708
00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:35,680
Speaker 1: done on numerous occasions with other sites as well. Then

709
00:42:35,760 --> 00:42:39,600
Speaker 1: you've got stuff like Instagram, which Facebook would ultimately acquire,

710
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 1: and you've got you know, Snapchat, But these social networks

711
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 1: also come at things in a very different way from Facebook.

712
00:42:47,719 --> 00:42:50,920
Speaker 1: They made a space not through competition with Facebook, but

713
00:42:50,960 --> 00:42:54,560
Speaker 1: by creating something new and different. And then Facebook would

714
00:42:54,560 --> 00:42:58,319
Speaker 1: either try to emulate what these companies were doing, or

715
00:42:58,360 --> 00:43:00,640
Speaker 1: they would just try to buy the ding day companies

716
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:03,960
Speaker 1: and and mutate them to fit within Facebook's own business model.

717
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:06,480
Speaker 1: We see that today with stuff like you know, Twitch

718
00:43:06,520 --> 00:43:11,080
Speaker 1: and TikTok. The next traditional social networking platform that I

719
00:43:11,120 --> 00:43:13,879
Speaker 1: really want to talk about arrived in twenty eleven. This

720
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:17,320
Speaker 1: was Google's second really big push to get back into

721
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:20,160
Speaker 1: social networking. Now. They had tried a couple of other

722
00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:24,680
Speaker 1: things in between or cut and this. There was Google

723
00:43:24,719 --> 00:43:27,640
Speaker 1: Buzz and Google friend Connect, but neither of those got

724
00:43:27,719 --> 00:43:31,279
Speaker 1: very far. So this one was called Google Plus. Now.

725
00:43:31,320 --> 00:43:33,760
Speaker 1: I remember the launch of Google Plus really well because

726
00:43:33,800 --> 00:43:36,320
Speaker 1: I was one of those jerks who got early access

727
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 1: to it when it was invitation only. When I joined

728
00:43:39,719 --> 00:43:42,040
Speaker 1: Google Plus, most of the people who were on the

729
00:43:42,080 --> 00:43:45,239
Speaker 1: site were either in the tech industry or they were

730
00:43:45,239 --> 00:43:48,799
Speaker 1: in the tech journalism industry, so it's a it's kind

731
00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:51,720
Speaker 1: of like being in an exclusive club of my peers,

732
00:43:51,800 --> 00:43:53,680
Speaker 1: and that was a lot of fun. I'm not gonna lie.

733
00:43:54,160 --> 00:43:55,719
Speaker 1: It felt like we were all in our own little

734
00:43:55,760 --> 00:43:59,840
Speaker 1: clubhouse and like or cult. Years earlier, Google chose to

735
00:43:59,840 --> 00:44:03,000
Speaker 1: make Google Plus invitation only network at first to kind

736
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:06,240
Speaker 1: of control things and scale things up. Uh. I suppose

737
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:09,080
Speaker 1: they wanted to do this gradually and avoid the pitfalls

738
00:44:09,120 --> 00:44:12,279
Speaker 1: that come with like a massive influx of users all

739
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:15,760
Speaker 1: at the same time. Old school Twitter users probably remember

740
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 1: the fail Whale, the character that would pop up whenever

741
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:22,040
Speaker 1: Twitter would crash, usually because of server overload. Google didn't

742
00:44:22,080 --> 00:44:25,640
Speaker 1: want that stuff to happen. But while this metered edition

743
00:44:25,800 --> 00:44:29,200
Speaker 1: of users might have meant that the servers weren't being overtaxed,

744
00:44:29,600 --> 00:44:33,000
Speaker 1: it also created that feeling of exclusivity and more people

745
00:44:33,160 --> 00:44:36,239
Speaker 1: wanted in to try stuff out. And then when they

746
00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:39,360
Speaker 1: finally did get into Google Plus, they were disappointed to

747
00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:42,719
Speaker 1: find that, you know, it really wasn't that special, and

748
00:44:42,800 --> 00:44:45,560
Speaker 1: it really wasn't Now that's not to say Google Plus

749
00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:48,399
Speaker 1: was bad. I don't think it was bad. It just

750
00:44:48,680 --> 00:44:52,480
Speaker 1: wasn't remarkable, And so it would be natural for someone

751
00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:55,279
Speaker 1: who had their expectations really built up to be this

752
00:44:55,320 --> 00:44:58,840
Speaker 1: amazing thing, like You're gonna go and see the chocolate factory.

753
00:44:59,080 --> 00:45:01,040
Speaker 1: They're going to be disappoin I did it, and Google

754
00:45:01,080 --> 00:45:04,479
Speaker 1: Plus was kind of not at fault for all of that,

755
00:45:04,800 --> 00:45:06,920
Speaker 1: partially of fault, I guess. And it did have some

756
00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:09,720
Speaker 1: cool features. One of those was that you could organize

757
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:12,880
Speaker 1: the people you know into different circles, Like you would

758
00:45:12,920 --> 00:45:17,480
Speaker 1: literally drop and drag names into different circles. So, for example,

759
00:45:17,520 --> 00:45:19,719
Speaker 1: you could have a circle that you make for your

760
00:45:19,760 --> 00:45:23,200
Speaker 1: close friends, and another for family members, and one for

761
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 1: co workers, and maybe one for acquaintances. You could have

762
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:29,359
Speaker 1: people belong to more than one circle if you liked.

763
00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:31,640
Speaker 1: So let's say that you know there's a cousin you're

764
00:45:31,640 --> 00:45:35,040
Speaker 1: particularly close to, so that cousins both in your family

765
00:45:35,120 --> 00:45:38,280
Speaker 1: circle and your close friends circle. When you post something,

766
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:42,320
Speaker 1: you could choose which circles in your network could see

767
00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:45,200
Speaker 1: that post. So maybe you want to post something about

768
00:45:45,200 --> 00:45:48,080
Speaker 1: a birthday party and you just want friends and family

769
00:45:48,120 --> 00:45:50,200
Speaker 1: to see it. You don't want to include like coworkers

770
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:53,760
Speaker 1: or distant acquaintances that kind of thing. It was pretty

771
00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:56,239
Speaker 1: easy to do that, easier, I would argue, than the

772
00:45:56,239 --> 00:45:59,000
Speaker 1: way Facebook does it. You could also create a circle

773
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:02,040
Speaker 1: for no good knicks whom you wish to ignore, and

774
00:46:02,120 --> 00:46:04,600
Speaker 1: you wouldn't see those folks on Google Plus, and they

775
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:08,120
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to see your stuff either. Google made

776
00:46:08,160 --> 00:46:10,520
Speaker 1: things a bit blurry with Google Plus, and that if

777
00:46:10,560 --> 00:46:13,000
Speaker 1: you were to make a Google account for stuff like

778
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:16,840
Speaker 1: YouTube or Gmail, that was a Google account that was

779
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:20,799
Speaker 1: good across all Google services. So let's say you sign

780
00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:23,280
Speaker 1: up an account so that you can have a Gmail address.

781
00:46:23,680 --> 00:46:26,719
Speaker 1: Your Google login would give you access not just to Gmail,

782
00:46:26,800 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 1: but also you could have a YouTube account so you

783
00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:32,040
Speaker 1: can start uploading videos if you wanted. Uh, you would

784
00:46:32,080 --> 00:46:34,800
Speaker 1: have a Google Drive account where you could store files

785
00:46:34,880 --> 00:46:39,520
Speaker 1: and use services like Google Docs. Google Plus was part

786
00:46:39,560 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 1: of that package, and I think it's safe to say

787
00:46:41,800 --> 00:46:44,320
Speaker 1: there were a lot of folks who had a Google account,

788
00:46:44,680 --> 00:46:48,280
Speaker 1: but they rarely, if ever, would duck into Google Plus.

789
00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:51,719
Speaker 1: That became more apparent when you started looking at engagement

790
00:46:52,280 --> 00:46:55,600
Speaker 1: versus the number of active users. Google Plus had a

791
00:46:55,719 --> 00:46:58,839
Speaker 1: high active user number within the first couple of years

792
00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:02,040
Speaker 1: of launch, really high, like it was on track to

793
00:47:02,080 --> 00:47:06,160
Speaker 1: be a Facebook competitor, but those users were barely spending

794
00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 1: any time at all on the actual platform. In January,

795
00:47:11,320 --> 00:47:14,520
Speaker 1: CNN reported that users were spending about three and a

796
00:47:14,600 --> 00:47:17,600
Speaker 1: half minutes on Google Plus for the month of January,

797
00:47:17,680 --> 00:47:20,680
Speaker 1: whereas they had spent seven and a half hours on Facebook.

798
00:47:21,560 --> 00:47:24,680
Speaker 1: That's not even competitive, right. And There's a lot more

799
00:47:24,680 --> 00:47:27,600
Speaker 1: I could say about Google Plus and that experiment, including

800
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:31,480
Speaker 1: how Google forced YouTube creators to have accounts linked to

801
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:34,239
Speaker 1: Google Plus accounts for a while and how all of

802
00:47:34,280 --> 00:47:37,480
Speaker 1: that turned into a total disaster, But I think that

803
00:47:37,520 --> 00:47:41,640
Speaker 1: would warrant its own episode when it comes to explaining failures.

804
00:47:41,920 --> 00:47:45,279
Speaker 1: I think Google Plus really fell short of expectations. It

805
00:47:45,320 --> 00:47:48,400
Speaker 1: didn't provide enough of a reason for people to leave

806
00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:52,799
Speaker 1: Facebook for Google Plus. And also Google did a great

807
00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:55,759
Speaker 1: job at alienating a large percentage of its user base

808
00:47:55,840 --> 00:47:59,239
Speaker 1: by you know, forcing the linking of accounts together. Now,

809
00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:02,239
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna this with a quick overview of

810
00:48:02,280 --> 00:48:05,480
Speaker 1: the social networking site l O E l l O

811
00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:10,160
Speaker 1: created by Paul Budnitts and Todd Berger. They launched the

812
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:13,200
Speaker 1: site in two thousand fourteen, and the founders were trying

813
00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:15,719
Speaker 1: to do something that I think was a really nice

814
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:19,280
Speaker 1: idea just ultimately didn't take off. They wanted to launch

815
00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:23,960
Speaker 1: a social networking site where you are not the product.

816
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:28,239
Speaker 1: That was actually a quote in their manifesto, and that

817
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:31,400
Speaker 1: gets back to hell. Facebook makes money which is largely

818
00:48:31,440 --> 00:48:35,440
Speaker 1: through advertising, and we the users, are the product that

819
00:48:35,520 --> 00:48:39,200
Speaker 1: Facebook is selling. Facebook is selling access to us to

820
00:48:39,400 --> 00:48:42,759
Speaker 1: various advertisers. And it's not just the fact that there

821
00:48:42,800 --> 00:48:44,880
Speaker 1: are a lot of people on Facebook. I mean that

822
00:48:44,920 --> 00:48:49,839
Speaker 1: alone makes it valuable, but it's also that by interacting

823
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:54,200
Speaker 1: on Facebook, by sharing our interests, by commenting on things,

824
00:48:54,200 --> 00:48:58,319
Speaker 1: by liking things, we're giving Facebook an extremely detailed look

825
00:48:58,680 --> 00:49:03,080
Speaker 1: at who we are, sp pole at our preferences. Facebook

826
00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:06,279
Speaker 1: knows what we like and what we don't like. It

827
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:08,799
Speaker 1: knows what sort of stuff catches our attention and what

828
00:49:08,800 --> 00:49:12,359
Speaker 1: we're likely going to just scroll right past. That means

829
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:16,400
Speaker 1: advertisers can target people who are most likely to respond

830
00:49:16,640 --> 00:49:21,160
Speaker 1: to their ads. A Facebook user isn't valuable just because

831
00:49:21,200 --> 00:49:24,520
Speaker 1: they use Facebook. They might be valuable because they happen

832
00:49:24,600 --> 00:49:28,600
Speaker 1: to like shoes or sports or you know, a particular band.

833
00:49:29,040 --> 00:49:31,920
Speaker 1: And so much of Facebook's decisions, many of which have

834
00:49:32,000 --> 00:49:34,919
Speaker 1: proven to be detrimental to society in the long run,

835
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:39,439
Speaker 1: are motivated by the desire to serve customers, which would

836
00:49:39,480 --> 00:49:42,200
Speaker 1: be their advertisers, and they want to serve them the

837
00:49:42,239 --> 00:49:47,719
Speaker 1: best product, which is our information. Elo said to Heck,

838
00:49:47,760 --> 00:49:50,920
Speaker 1: with all that our social network isn't going to have

839
00:49:51,040 --> 00:49:53,560
Speaker 1: ads on it. The idea was you would get a

840
00:49:53,600 --> 00:49:58,200
Speaker 1: stripped down ad free experience on Elo. You could build

841
00:49:58,200 --> 00:50:01,200
Speaker 1: out your social network, you could have a profile, all

842
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:04,640
Speaker 1: without fear that all your activities were really just metrics

843
00:50:04,680 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 1: that were being analyzed by algorithms so that the service

844
00:50:08,040 --> 00:50:11,839
Speaker 1: provider could sell ad space to you. But the delusion

845
00:50:11,960 --> 00:50:14,440
Speaker 1: of interested users who flocked to l O when it

846
00:50:14,560 --> 00:50:17,279
Speaker 1: was still nothing but an invite field where you would

847
00:50:17,320 --> 00:50:20,400
Speaker 1: just type in your email address indicated there was going

848
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:23,160
Speaker 1: to be a problem. The service wasn't really ready to

849
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:26,200
Speaker 1: handle the number of people who wanted to try it,

850
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:30,840
Speaker 1: which of course led back to that whole exclusivity feel again. However,

851
00:50:31,040 --> 00:50:35,000
Speaker 1: LO chose to keep accepting new users rather than shut

852
00:50:35,040 --> 00:50:38,239
Speaker 1: down operations or you know, close off choke points. They said,

853
00:50:38,239 --> 00:50:41,120
Speaker 1: we're just gonna deal with this. If the service goes down,

854
00:50:41,120 --> 00:50:42,839
Speaker 1: we'll get it back up as fast as we can,

855
00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:45,279
Speaker 1: but we don't want to end up making this like

856
00:50:45,360 --> 00:50:49,080
Speaker 1: an exclusive club. According to analysts, a lot of LO

857
00:50:49,160 --> 00:50:52,200
Speaker 1: users would get access to the site and then not

858
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:55,520
Speaker 1: do anything else. A company called r g A Metrics

859
00:50:55,760 --> 00:50:58,480
Speaker 1: took a sample of more than a hundred fifty thousand

860
00:50:58,680 --> 00:51:01,719
Speaker 1: l O users and found that thirty six percent of

861
00:51:01,760 --> 00:51:05,640
Speaker 1: the accounts they looked at had never posted anything, and

862
00:51:05,719 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 1: only twenty percent of users who had signed up remained

863
00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:14,080
Speaker 1: active users six days afterward. So in other words, one

864
00:51:14,080 --> 00:51:17,279
Speaker 1: out of every five users who signed up would still

865
00:51:17,320 --> 00:51:21,080
Speaker 1: be active six days later. That's not great. Elo seemed

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00:51:21,120 --> 00:51:23,840
Speaker 1: to have a lot of initial appeal but no staying power,

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00:51:23,880 --> 00:51:25,760
Speaker 1: and I think a big part of the problem was that, well,

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00:51:26,400 --> 00:51:29,680
Speaker 1: everyone was already over on Facebook. So unless your whole

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00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:33,480
Speaker 1: social circle is making the move with you, then it

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00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:36,240
Speaker 1: doesn't do you any good to jump off Facebook because

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00:51:36,280 --> 00:51:38,160
Speaker 1: no one you know is on the new network. It's

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00:51:38,200 --> 00:51:41,920
Speaker 1: the same problem lots of other attempts have had. Posting

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00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:44,400
Speaker 1: on Elo was kind of like posting on six Degrees

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00:51:44,480 --> 00:51:47,680
Speaker 1: way back in There's a good chance no one you

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00:51:47,760 --> 00:51:50,040
Speaker 1: knew was ever going to see it. It was sort

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00:51:50,080 --> 00:51:53,160
Speaker 1: of a catch twenty two problem. L O would pivot

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00:51:53,280 --> 00:51:56,120
Speaker 1: like a lot of other social networking sites, and it

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00:51:56,239 --> 00:51:59,120
Speaker 1: ultimately changed its focus to be more of an artist

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00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:03,120
Speaker 1: centric network. L is a great place to discover artists

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00:52:03,120 --> 00:52:05,839
Speaker 1: who are working in different types of media, but it's

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00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:09,080
Speaker 1: not a replacement for Facebook, and it makes you wonder

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00:52:09,120 --> 00:52:11,840
Speaker 1: if anyone will ever create a social networking site that

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00:52:11,920 --> 00:52:17,200
Speaker 1: has the appeal and stickiness of Facebook. Some days that

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00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:20,279
Speaker 1: just seems like it's impossible, that it's no way that's

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00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:23,239
Speaker 1: ever going to happen. But then there was also a

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00:52:23,280 --> 00:52:26,440
Speaker 1: time when it was obvious quote unquote that my Space

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00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:28,920
Speaker 1: was going to be the future of social networking, and

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00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:32,920
Speaker 1: that played out very differently. So who knows. Maybe Facebook's

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00:52:32,960 --> 00:52:38,080
Speaker 1: also too big to fail. Wink wink. That's all for

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Speaker 1: this episode of tech Stuff. I hope you guys enjoyed it.

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00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:43,560
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions for topics I should tackle

892
00:52:43,600 --> 00:52:46,160
Speaker 1: in the future, reach out to me on Twitter. The

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00:52:46,320 --> 00:52:50,279
Speaker 1: handle is text stuff H s W and I'll talk

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00:52:50,320 --> 00:52:58,640
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I

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00:52:58,719 --> 00:53:02,240
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,

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00:53:02,560 --> 00:53:05,720
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

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00:53:05,840 --> 00:53:11,920
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H