ten years ago, in 2001, what did people have instead of facebook?

[Maddie]

i know they had msn back than, but would people use it like they would use facebook nowadays? i mean would they write statuses, upload pictures of themselves etc? and if they didnt than what would they have instead of facebook?
oh yeah and please dont say myspace cuz i searched it up on wikipedia and it says it launched in 2003

[Helloâ„¢]

the concept of online social networking didn't really exist back then, so there was no alternative.

[Christopher Harris]

In 2001 we were just starting to use cell phones. The closest to Facebook were blog sites like Livejournal and Xanga, but no one particular site was the social network of choice.

[Casey]

I think in 2001 I used mostly Xanga (online journal) and AIM. Social networking wasn't a big thing back then. You didn't upload photos of yourself everywhere and tell everyone what you were doing every second of every day. Hell, I didn't have a cell phone until 2001, and I was a senior in high school!

[Ubuntu Linux]

Blogs then Myspace, then bebo, now facebook, but can you guess whats next?

[Carla Jingle]

I suppose they had myspace, that was very similar and was launched in 1999, although it didn't really become so popular until 2002-2003.

[Olaoluwa]

HI 5 THIS IS ALSO A WONDERFUL SITE

[Dangeroo]

Modern Social Networking:
- 1997 Sixdegrees.com
- 2000 Makeoutclub
- 2002 Friendster
- 2003 MySpace
- 2003 Linked in
- 2004 Bebo
- 2004 FaceBook

[Fallen Angel]

Myspace lol.

[mcbengt]

Short answer: nothing was used back then like Facebook is used now.

Some observations:

(1) No one site had such large numbers of people on it. Social sites did exist then, but they tended to be used by very specific subgroups of people (e.g. people with particular hobbies or interests). A big reason Facebook is what it is, is that basically everybody is on it. Imagine if only like 5 of your friends were on it, for example. You would use it totally differently.

(2) Specific to photos, it was *really* rare for phones to have cameras in them (if it was even the case at all--- I don't remember anybody I knew having one). Whatever phone cameras that did exist were expensive and made really low quality pictures. This was true more generally of digital cameras: they cost a lot, and weren't as good as what you find in even cheap phones now. So the whole idea of sharing photos with your friends online hadn't developed because the technology wasn't there yet.

(3) Internet access was much more tied to computers then. Most phones did not have the capability of going on the Internet, and whatever phones and plans that allowed it were much more expensive. And computers were more commonly actually *plugged in* to networks. Wireless internet service in public places essentially did not exist. (The technology certainly did, and it was in use--- but like, Starbucks did not have wireless in 2001, airports didn't, most college campuses didn't. etc.) In fact it wasn't that common for computers to be sold with wireless network cards at that time. These days almost any computer you buy will come with one built in. Back then you usually had to add it as a separate option when you ordered a computer, or buy a card separately and install it yourself. Since wireless wasn't that widespread in public places, most people did not do that. You just wouldn't use the Internet outside of your home, or work.

(4) Internet access was slower. A lot of people still had dial-up connections at that time (in some areas, faster Internet was only beginning to become available for cheap). This limited the ways people used the internet (in particular, video was much less common, and lower quality than now).

Personally, when I communicated online at that time it was mostly in email and instant messaging. Instant messaging with AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ all existed then. But again, it wasn't quite the same as how Facebook is now, because everybody wasn't on these things. If you were at a particular school, maybe *some* of your friends would be on *one* of them, and nowhere near as frequently as most people people check Facebook these days. At the time it was common for different groups of people to be on different ones--- like, at my college, for some reason, ICQ was what people would use, if they did IM at all... whereas at a friend's school, everybody who chatted was on AIM. There wasn't one place where everybody was.

Also, it's hard to convey now, but then it was still kind of "weird" or--- not exactly "nerdy", but "technological"--- to be chatting with your friends on the Internet. Basically, outside of older people who worked with computers as part of their jobs, only young people (college and high school students) did it, and only some of them. A person who was on IM every day in 2001 was, on average, much more computer-oriented than a person who checks Facebook every day in 2011.

Texting hadn't really taken off in the USA (I think it was already very common in Europe), so if you needed to hear from someone, and they weren't part of the group of your friends who checked email or IM frequently, you would just call them.

Generally, people in 2001 just communicated a whole lot less. People didn't really take photos at parties/gatherings/etc like they do now. If you went off to college, you probably wouldn't see pictures of your closest friends who went to other schools, or anything--- you'd wait until you saw them again in person.