Social Networks Before Smart Phones Part I Podcast Transcript

Why did online social networks start in the first place? What need did they serve? We'll continue to explore this question as we look back to the early 90's and America Online ("AOL") and what it made possible.

Taryn Ward  Hi, I'm Taryn Ward.

Steven Jones  And I'm Steven Jones.

Taryn Ward  And this is Breaking the Feed, Social Media: Beyond the Headlines.

Steven Jones  We're taking a closer look at the core issues around social media, including the existing social media landscape, so that we can better understand the role of social media plays in our everyday lives, and in society.

Taryn Ward  To start, we'll look back at where it all started online social networking before smartphones.

Steven Jones  By thinking about where social media started, and why and thinking about how it's changed, and why we're a better place to consider which of these changes had been for the better, which have been for the worst and for whom.

Taryn Ward  We hope to appreciate the current landscape and anticipate the decisions regulators, big social and consumers are likely to make moving forward more fully. But we'll see if any future speculation for another episode. 

Steven Jones  Today we're looking specifically at pre smartphone online social networking in the West.

Taryn Ward  We'll start as always with the question, Why did online social networking start in the first place? In other words, what need did it serve? Or what need was it at least designed to serve? In this case, uniquely, the answer is simple to connect. Even if that meant slow internet speeds, that horrible dial up sound, and fighting for the use of a single phone line in 1990. People demonstrated their willingness again and again to persevere.

Steven Jones  This episode will be the first of two focused on the evolution of pre-smartphone socials, and we'll cover through to 1999. The second will cover from 2000 to the rise of smartphones in 2008.

Taryn Ward  To start, let's go back to the early 90s. Steve, could you help me set the scene what was happening in the UK in the early 90s?

Steven Jones  Okay so, the early 90s, the Berlin Wall had come down at the end of 1989. I mean, it's shocking to me that it's actually that long ago for a start, and probably for anybody who was alive and approximately my age at the time, but that changed an awful lot of things. I mean, immediately, it didn't change very much. But it really changed a lot. Because that war which had been slapped across Europe, disappeared, the Soviet Union fell very quickly. And you know, the structure of how the West was sort of like integrated changed, right? We didn't have this enemy, in the city that I lived in Plymouth was the biggest Dockyard in naval Dockyard in all the Western Europe had reportedly five five makers and warheads pointed at it. And all of a sudden, those weren't pointed at us anymore. Or at least we believe that they were not in immediate risk of being fired. And the era of Thatcher was come to the end, the 80s were definitely the decade of Thatcher and I suppose Reagan, and many of us did not remember those years fondly for the things they did to British society. But we hadn't quite reached the point of cool Britannia, which was ushered in with, with Tony Blair, and how were we wrong about that? So it was a it was an interesting time. I think it was a little bit more hopeful, then then things are now that, that, that social, political change have made the UK a more hopeful place.

Taryn Ward  Yeah, I think there was a similar mood in the US for what what I remembered, there is a continued social liberalisation, I think we all felt that there would be an increased capitalist influence, which we saw play out. It was definitely the era of Seinfeld and grunge and new generations of video games and Pokemon. And even Titanic, which as you said, feels like a whole lifetime ago now. But at the time, all these things were new and in really exciting. Also, just a few notes on what technology was like back then, satellites were sort of a new thing. So some homes had satellites for really the first time, cable television was on the rise. And so we went from having three channels, or four channels to having seemingly endless possibilities, and even early cell phones. So in our car, we had one of those cell phones that sort of came in a bag, and he could move it from, from place to place but had to be I think, plugged into the car. So it was early early in these technologies, but it was it was all there. Yeah,

Steven Jones  I think that's right. At that point. Personally, I had just started university. And because we had a child, my wife and I bought a computer, it was a it was a 386 SX 16 megahertz. And the only computer that was faster than that, at the time was in the biology department, there was only one of them, everything else was operating on 286. And these numbers mean nothing to somebody who's anything like useful, but that was the peak of computing power. And we had this in our house. It was not of course connected to anything. And you know, we didn't really think about it that the first than I thought about first idea ahead of connecting the computer to something outside the house was WarGames which was what 1993 That didn't end well for anyone. So you know, it was just a box that did stuff for us in the corner of the of the room. Yeah,

Taryn Ward  Similarly, we had a family computer in the early 90s. And I think a lot of people did, but a lot of people didn't. And they didn't do a whole lot, certainly not like what we use them for now, I'm sure that even the old cell phone floating around in my kitchen somewhere has more capability than the Family Computer, which was sort of, you know, prized possession back then. I think back to that time, when I think about technology and my life more generally, I think about America Online, AOL. And I know that probably wasn't a thing in the UK quite the way it was in the US, hence the name America Online. But I think that's a great place to start thinking about online social networks, partially because it starts to look more like what we use now at least in terms of basic functionality. So members of AOL could go on and create chat rooms and searchable member profiles. You could talk to people you knew people you didn't know, I remember the old chat rooms, the classic question, A/S/L, which was, you know, age, sex location. And we really believed people, we, we believed, whatever, whatever that number was, whatever that location was, it was, you know, it was like gospel truth.

Steven Jones  I remember this exactly. It wasn't America Online, it was Yahoo chat rooms, I think that we used but once we had dial up, and let's remember, connection speeds in the UK now at 18,000 times faster than they were, and whole generations of people will grow up without ever having heard that horrible screeching sounds that the computer makes when it connect, but we believe them. And on the whole, they were telling the truth, it was remarkable, at least in the at the very beginning of the rise of this movement. I think most people were being truthful.

Taryn Ward  Well and that was lucky, because for those of us who were still teenagers or young adults, there wasn't really any supervision to speak of, you know, our parents had no idea how this technology worked, or, or what dangers it presented, or, or that there was a need for any sort of safeguarding. We had this roll-top desk in a sort of library office room in our house was the Family Computer. And we were one of the lucky ones who had an AOL subscription. This is you know, the height of luxury because we didn't have to use the free CDs to get internet. And we had a family account where you could create child accounts and child settings. But we all knew each other's passwords. So it was my job to go in and set up my child settings account, and to limit what I could do and what I could see and how it all worked. And of course, I had the password for the main account. So I could go in and change it at any time at, at the settings or just use main account and chat in these chat rooms, which of course, were a lot more fun than the ones that were limited to to younger people. I remember back then, the primary uses for AOL were for news to get the news, chat rooms, and email. Over time, a well sort of started to morph into AOL Instant Messenger AIM, which is a free download, you didn't have to subscribe. It wasn't about connecting to the internet, it was just a way to chat. And I think this is where we really start to see some other, other features come in, still the dial-up days, we're still sharing single phone lines. But this was a way to talk to multiple people in a short period of time instantly. So it was a step up from email. But there was no way to text and there was no you know, cell phone service to speak of. So it was this great technology that allowed I think, especially teenagers to sit at home and feel like they were connected to their friends and to talk to them or were tied to them at least over the computer. And by that time, you could really start to personalise things, your profiles, your away messages, even the fonts and colours. In fact, I would say that AIM more than AOL, but, but really both are so tied up in my experience of that period of time. If I ever wrote a coming-of-age story, fictional or not, it would have to be a really central feature.

Steven Jones  Well, undoubtedly, we will read that story at some point. It's really it's really interesting, isn't it that this was brand new technology. If you think about it, now we have this in our pockets. We pick up and much better, faster, slicker multimedia experience texting people, but we were so happy to be able to sit in a room in our case. It was like under the stairs, I think, you know, this little alcove under the stairs where the computer was pushed. And we sit there talking to strangers because we just needed to connect to people.

Taryn Ward  Yeah, it really felt important. It was I think a was definitely more about talking with people you already knew. But AOL was, was about these chat rooms. And to your point earlier, most people were telling the truth. And that was really important because I didn't actually get up to anything problematic in the chat rooms remarkably, I don't know that there was that much to get up to or at least if if there were things to get up to. I never discovered them. It really was talking about people who lived in different parts of the country and mundane questions or sometimes questions about philosophy and life. But it was it was a much more innocent time online.

Steven Jones  Yeah. Before this people would sit in rooms and have shortwave radios, or citizen band radios, I think hit the UK in the 70s. I seem to remember some of them were my mum's friends having citizen band radios and aerials stuck out from the shed in the backyard. And it's the same sort of thing. You weren't really using those to talk to people you knew in the case of Shortwave, very often people were talking to other people around the world. So there seems to be this fundamental thing that drives humans to want to communicate to people, including people that we really don't know. I mean, but this was a much cooler and faster way of doing it and having a pen pal through school, right. Remember those schemes? I bet they don't exist anymore. Because what would be the point of having a pen pal now?

Taryn Ward  Yeah, it's true. I don't think they do that anymore. Our children certainly don't have pen pals.

Steven Jones  Yeah. I mean, who writes, If I write something down? It's because my phone is that handy? Probably. What did AOL make possible and inspire? Well, I think, you know, I talked already about Yahoo. And, and definitely Amazon, you know, all of these. All of these subsequent companies were founded off the success of AOL was, I don't think AOL was a big thing in the UK, I remember computers coming packaged with CDs with a name or AOL on them. But other than that, we haven't really used it. But they really did set up the potential for the things you could do with a computer. I don't think anything's which came afterwards would have been possible without AOL and AIM being online. Part of the issue, of course, initially, was that the penetration of computers into the market wasn't big enough. People didn't have people didn't have that might, you know, until mid to late 90s. But obviously, there was tremendous potential there. When did you remember things like shopping? Or, you know, looking for things to buy? Coming to the to the US?

Taryn Ward  That's a good question. I think it was a little bit later, I think it was probably later 90s Before it was really something that people did regularly. I remember there being a couple of opportunities here and there. But I think most of the ads we saw on the internet, then were for things in real life, rather than to buy other things on the internet, or to go to another place on the internet. I definitely remember a sense, though, that this initial barrier had been broken. And feeling like there were so many new possibilities and opportunities, whether it was for information or shopping, a sense that it was really just beginning. And for young people especially, it felt so optimistic. There were so many opportunities that felt like they were just unfolding before our eyes, the idea of all these potential jobs and careers that didn't even exist yet, we would have our pick from you know, this long list of of fulfilling jobs that paid more than we could ever imagine being paid for doing relatively little, but something that really fulfilled us, and this inevitability that we would be better off than our parents generation in every way, not just financially, but our education level, our happiness, how we related to people, the environment, politics, all of it. And I think this all tied in together, because it did feel like the very beginning of something. Yeah,

Steven Jones  Yeah, I think that's, I think that's right. And the brightest among us saw the potential for that, you know what that future could be, I guess, and set it out trying to trying to build it. Part of the problem with advertising online, requires photos and with the dial-up speeds that we had, let's be honest, downloading photos, and looking at things was going to be a pretty onerous experience. I don't think I remember, at work, we got our first actual connected computer, probably around 1994, I was doing my PhD. And my supervisor was actually given the computer by the department. But the last thing he wanted was to have a computer on his desk and actually be at the beck and call of people sending him emails. So he gave it to us to us. And for us, it was brilliant, because there was a UK online repository of data publications was called BIDS. I don't know that. PubMed probably existed then in rudimentary form, but we didn't have access to it. But we had bids. And that meant we could download data about publications that we use or wanted to read. And prior to that, we had monthly booklets come out, very, very, very tiny writing and he had to go through and highlight all of those things and and ask for them. So that was the first real that was the first time we had a computer that was really connected to a system that you could actually access. And it was all in DOS or sort of like command prompt. There was very little graphical interface.

Taryn Ward  Yeah, and around that same time classes on typing in Excel and PowerPoint and how to use the internet really started To take off. And I remember often we and I'm using that term loosely because you know, I'm not super techy, and I certainly wasn't then, we often knew more than the people teaching these classes, because this is how we're spending our free time. Like the professor who didn't want a computer on his desk, I think there was, there was more reluctance against from people who were older, about how these things were going to work and fit into their lives. And we were really just purely excited. And we had reason to be because soon after this, we saw some more specific networks pop up. And the whole purpose of these networks was to connect people. One that I think worth mentioning is classmates.com. This came through in around 1995. It was designed to help people find classmates and colleagues and to connect and to sort of see what people were up to and to exchange information. And Steve, I think when we were preparing for this, you mentioned that you actually used classmates.com.

Steven Jones  Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I did. Because I guess I'd been out of high school for a while I left high school in an ad for and got a job and went back to university later. And even out of university for a few years. So we used it, but there weren't a lot of people in the UK on at least, you know, probably because those of us who are tech savvy enough to use it, it was only a few years since we've left university life, I think three years, maybe two. So you know, there just wasn't the imperative to join. So I didn't find a lot of people through it. Facebook, when it came out in 2008. That was significantly later after we left university. And so there were a lot more people who were on there looking to reconnect. But it was fun, I never get again, driven by the desire to easily connect with people you've lost touch with.

Taryn Ward  That makes sense, I can see why that would that would appeal. The other network that came out around the same time period. And this is slightly later in 1997. With six degrees.com. The idea behind this one was no person is separated by more than six degrees from any other person. And the founder in a fairly recent, I think I forget if this was an interview or something, a personal exchange, but the founder really believes that it was simply ahead of its time. So you know, very, very dedicated still to the idea. And for good reason. I think if we look at some of the socials that are popular now. But at the time, most people didn't have extended networks online yet. So after accepting a connection request, there was little to do, and it wasn't designed to meet strangers. So there was sort of this natural dead end.

Steven Jones  Yeah, I mean, I love the idea of six degrees of freedom. It's sort of captured my brain for some reason. And the film, it was a film made right with Will Smith, and then there's the Game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. I mean, it sounds preposterous that you're only six degrees away from everybody else. But I think it's probably true. And so I can see why the founder thinks that is ahead of its time, I think it's there is still an element of truth in that. And we've talked about this idea of like the social bubbles, which connect, you can easily draw a line between my social bubble and Obama, for example, I'm definitely less than, than six degrees away from him. So that's remarkable. I'm sitting in Canada, in the middle of the prairies, why would I have a pretty close connection doesn't make any sense. But it's true. And that sort of connecting with people, the idea of being able to connect with people, this really it was really cool, I think, and I'm not sure that that's her role with social media is really having right now. You know, I think that's been lost. So if I, if I was the founder of Six Degrees, I'd be a little bit annoyed that it didn't really catch on the way that it could have done, because I think it would have sold a good niche.

Taryn Ward  Yeah, I think that's right. I think, before we move on, it's worth thinking about three networks that did survive. These were niche demographic driven market, socials. So in 1997, we had Asian avenue.com, in 1999, black reddit.com. And in 2000, MiGente all three of these actually still exists today. And when we talk about some of the new socials, and we see how they're really designed to go after a very specific demographic, or a group that has a hobby in common, or some sort of experience that's very specific. It's interesting to think back and look at something like Six Degrees, which was designed to appeal to everybody, and couldn't really take off for whatever reason whether it was because it was ahead of its time, or due to very practical constraints of its time, we can look at these and really think about what has staying power over time.

Steven Jones  And that's a good place to take a break. In our next episode, we'll look at how online social networks evolved from 2003 to 2008, when smartphones really started to become a factor,

Taryn Ward  We'll post a transcript of this episode with references on our website. You can find this and more information about us at TheBrightApp.com. And if you'd like to take a deeper dive into the earliest online social networks, check out our episode on Early Internet socials.

Steven Jones  Until next time, I'm Steven Jones.

Taryn Ward  And I'm Taryn Ward.

Steven Jones  Thank you for joining us for Breaking the Feed, Social Media: Beyond the Headlines.