I was a freshman at NYU in 2004 when Facebook launched there. I really miss Facebook in those days. It was so minimalistic but that was part of its charm. If Facebook looked and acted like it did today in the early days there is NO way it would have caught on. In fact, I may be in the minority, but I barely use Facebook at all these days.
One of the core ideas that I think really made it great was there were only two privacy options (if I remember correctly). Make your profile visible to just your friends, or just people in your network (nyu.edu email in my case). You could see pictures and names of other people, and you could see a limited profile if they sent YOU a friend request, but that was it.
Another thing is it was really easy to find people with common interests. For example if you listed a certain movie or book you liked, you could click on it in your profile and it would show you everyone else who also liked it (ordered by your friends first, then people in your network ordered by friends in common, then locked profiles of people outside your network).
It's a shame that they have gotten so far away from what they once stood for.
>Another thing is it was really easy to find people with common interests. For example if you listed a certain movie or book you liked, you could click on it in your profile and it would show you everyone else who also liked it (ordered by your friends first, then people in your network ordered by friends in common, then locked profiles of people outside your network).
I was surprised by the claim that it was more private in those days, for just that reason. It was much easier to search for complete strangers (within your university) based on quite specific criteria.
One of the core ideas that I think really made it great was there were only two privacy options (if I remember correctly). Make your profile visible to just your friends, or just people in your network (nyu.edu email in my case). You could see pictures and names of other people, and you could see a limited profile if they sent YOU a friend request, but that was it.
Another thing is it was really easy to find people with common interests. For example if you listed a certain movie or book you liked, you could click on it in your profile and it would show you everyone else who also liked it (ordered by your friends first, then people in your network ordered by friends in common, then locked profiles of people outside your network).
It's a shame that they have gotten so far away from what they once stood for.