The Social Network: Remember When Facebook Was Cool?
October 13, 2010
Our recent company outing to see The Social Network was a fun evening. The movie itself was well-paced and showed an insight into the beginning of the largest online social media site in the world. Others have interpreted the portrayal of Mark Zuckerburg by Jesse Eisenburg as dislikable or obsessed with making himself popular. He actually struck me as your typical genius programmer—somewhat socially awkward, prone to saying the wrong thing in an offensive way occasionally, and generally with his head in a computer at all times.
Instead of pondering the course of events that can dramatically change friendship when money is involved, I was actually left with a nostalgic feeling for the old Facebook. The movie spells out each step of the way why and how Facebook became compelling to its target audience of college students. First, the ability to virtually interact with people and in some cases spy on them. The exclusivity of the network itself-your school had to be added, and you needed to have a .edu address at your school to sign up for an account. The ability to find out someone’s relationship status, a great feature for amorous college students . The simplicity of the site that made it user-friendly and easy to navigate. The fact that there were not huge ads everywhere in the beginning, something that Sean Parker cautioned against in the beginning stages of development. All of these things reminded me of when I started using Facebook back in college, when everyone was logging in to check their wall posts and accept friend requests. Now Facebook is such a ubiquitous part of everyday life that it is hard to imagine being excited about it anymore. I don’t get excited about checking my email after all.
However, getting rid of most of these early compelling points has made Facebook into the juggernaut it is today. Opening up the doors to people outside of college expanded the potential user base by millions. Adding advertising has increased revenue into billions every year. Facebook has effectively squashed its former competitor MySpace and quickly adopted features popular on other social media sites. The “status update” came out quickly after a failed attempt by Facebook to purchase Twitter, and the recent Facebook Places application with location-based ability adopted the now-popular Foursquare model. As long as Facebook continues to swiftly change to meet market demands without alienating its core group, it will be around for a long time. However, will it ever be cool again? I might have to ask a current college student to find out the answer.
