With all the backlash recently against Facebook, I’ve been thinking about writing a post about the Good Ole’ Days, back when I joined in college. UChicago was probably 10th or 15th on the list of schools allowed to join Facebook, and within UChicago users, I was number 28 to sign up (you could tell this back then because your user ID included the ID for your school followed by your ID, in my case it’s: 2900028). Now that there are 200 million users on Facebook, I felt it’s time to share some things that later users may have missed or that were never publicized.
So, user 200,000,000, here are some things you missed in the last few years:
- The Creator: Every time Facebook would open up at a new school,user ID 1 would be reserved for The Creator, aka Mark Zuckerberg. He would friend all of the early users for each network. At some point, he must’ve thought this was unprofessional, didn’t scale, or something, and he got rid of this account. Now if you go to a URL like http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=2900001, you’ll see it just redirect you back to the homepage with no warnings or errors.
- The Official Beer Pong Tournament: Back when Facebook didn’t know how to make money (oh wait…), they tried lots of questionable tactics. One of the more “successful” ones, at least until the lawyers got involved, was the annual Facebook Beer Pong tournament. They would invite people from all networks to come to a beer pong tournament where they charged entry fees and took a cut. Sadly, I don’t think this lasted more than one or two years.
- No outside network contacts: It took quite a bit of time before you could friend people at other schools. This meant that Facebook really was just a directory of the people at your school and nothing more. There was no connecting with high school friends, business colleagues, or anyone else. If they didn’t go to your school, they didn’t exist.
- Date Registered: For bragging rights, there was a field on every profile page for the Date Registered. Being one of the only features of the site at the time, it was actually something that people cared about and took more seriously than I can rationally explain now.
- Lack of…: Speaking of lack of features, as the 200 millionth user here are some you’ll take for granted, but were not always part of the system:
- Photos. It was years before there was any photo system in Facebook, so feel lucky to keep up with your friends visually.
- Wall. The wall did come pretty early, but it wasn’t always there. This was really the first step to interaction on Facebook. Before that, it was just a directory.
- Status. These days, keeping up with someone is as easy as following their status. Back then, not so much.
- News Feed. The news feed was by far the most revolutionary thing that Facebook ever did. It not only changed the way people interact with Facebook, but really with the web as a whole. It’s probably the most copied feature of Facebook, and for good reason. Facebook is nothing today without the News Feed.
Welcome, 200,000,000th user, and enjoy yourself.
Sincerely,
Ian
