Does anyone even remember Xanga? Some say social media started in forums, that social discussions and connections were already created online, when forums were still popular - but personally, I feel it all really started with the first high-angle MySpace selfie shot by turning a grey Samsung flip phone and a contorted index finger pressing the OK button on the keypad.
Let’s take a (cringe-worthy expression coming up) trip down memory lane (I will never say this again).
There was your first website on Geocities, Tripod, and Angelfire. Because you didn’t know HTML very well and did not grasp the usefulness of a CMS, you would upload your Notepad-made blog on it, and would update it manually. It looked worse than a retro 90s bomber jacket on a hipster, but still you had a little sidebar where you would link all your online friends’ blogs. Your friends commented on your angsty posts, and you commented on theirs. Then you’d finally understand that LiveJournal does the same thing but a lot better than you can with your measly HTML skills, and you sign up for an account, and add a million friends and participate in a zillion communities.
Then someone says: “add me on Myspace”. Or Xanga. Or Bebo. Or Vampire Freaks. Or anything else. And then next thing you know you’ve got accounts on each of them, but have no idea why or how to really use them.
And by “you”, I mean “I”. This is really my personal path to social media. We all have different ones, and we all started on different platforms, at different times. In my case, I found it quite hard to understand how to use these things. But that was before Facebook, which I suppose is part of Facebook’s appeal – a simpler than simple interface. Let’s first take a look at these social media fossils, however, and see where they stand now.
Myspace
Myspace, in light of Facebook’s rise, has suffered a very cruel fall. At its peak in December 2008, Myspace attracted 75.9 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S., but by May 2009, that number had already dropped by 25%. What happened to a platform where you could promote your music, shamelessly flirt with online contacts, run personal political campaigns, and whose users were proud to be part of the Myspace generation? (It’s a testament to how old this is, as the article linked at the end of the previous sentence dates back to 2005. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire came out in 2005. Wow.)
It’s empty. Dead. It’s a ghost town. Except for the faceless band pages no one actually goes to anymore.
This is not an anomaly. MySpace made a series of mediocre business decisions that eventually led to its downfall: full-page blockbuster adverts on the homepage (high bounce rate), no international language support, to name a couple. The only real last publicity push it got was the Arctic Monkeys. YouTube now has replaced MySpace for musical talent-showcasing, by and large.
Xanga
I would definitely compare this to Instagram. A place for teenagers to post things with a lot of XXXXxxxxxXXxx’s and +ﾟ*｡:ﾟ+’s, Xanga was a very prolific blogging platform. You could even set your page to play your favourite Trance song by uploading an illegal mp3 downloaded from Kazaa. At its height in the early 2000’s, Xanga boasted 30 million users – that’s the same amount as the population in Malaysia, and at the time, quite impressive. How this translated into your life? All your schoolmates had Xangas and posted angsty things on them. Or at least, they would if you lived in the U.S.
Nowadays, Xanga is kaput. Pushing up the daisies. In May 2013, the Xanga team wrote a very sad blog post, admitting that they were in a terminal phase and were announcing that they wanted to embrace a different path, one not unlike Wordpress’ – becoming a paid open-source blogging site.
Did it work? Nah. Why would you ever pay to blog, especially from Xanga? Come on.
Bebo
Now I’ve never had a Bebo (“Blog Early, Blog Often”) myself, but because it has been mentioned with such affection and nostalgia by my peers here in the UK, I feel it is my duty to report on its current health (or lack thereof). Apparently, AOL once paid $850 million dollars for it, and …
… never mind.
Bebo has since been bought back and Michael Birch for 0.11% of its original value (they must have really wanted to get rid of it), its golden-haired founder. You can find him gazing at you below.
He is planning on “re-inventing” it, although it’s been a year since that announcement (or rather, tweet) and well… nothing’s really happening.
Yahoo! 360
Now this is a funny one, because it seemed to have only taken off in one single country – Vietnam. God knows why. It was so popular there, they even developed a Vietnam-only blogging application called Yahoo! 360 Plus Vietnam. I think it has something to do with the fact that computer literacy wasn’t great at the time, and that one of the first things that the computer guys there (who used to come by your house and install things on your PC for you like pirated Windows ME and Norton Antivirus) would install on your PC was Yahoo! Messenger. Then brand loyalty worked its magic.
Yahoo! 360 was a very good blogging platform, with integrated networking as you could add all your Yahoo! Messenger friends on it. A genius move, that MSN did try out but failed. I’ve only just read about MSN Spaces today. Yahoo! 360 however was discontinued in 2009, much to the dismay of young Vietnamese bloggers and social networkers (and all of my Vietnamese friends), who all, and I mean ALL, migrated to… Facebook.
Skyrock
Another very country-specific one here. Skyrock is a French blogging platform, which started out as Skyblog. It was very simple, with a few customisation options (you could change your cursor, the background, and so on). Every single French teenager had one of these, mainstream, anti-conformist or otherwise. It was such a great platform for self-expression and angsty poems. Skyrock is actually still alive today, as France, much like Japan, or any other country with its own nationally preferred social media platform, has taken a lot longer than countries like the US or the UK to get on Facebook. It’s got a public newsfeed that gets added onto every second (I checked) and its own radio station. Well done, lone survivor.
Anyway...
The point I was really getting at is how people’s behaviour on social media has changed. Facebook is the first platform that has made it really, truly ok for someone to broadcast the fact that they are on it, and to add all their real-life friends. All that old stigma and awkwardness about hiding the deepest darkest thoughts you posted on Xanga is gone, and has paved the way for a different kind of stigma and awkwardness. The rise of Facebook and Twitter has raised questions about the need for Aaron from Illinois for example, to broadcast the fact that he has just bought a Coke Zero and to live tweet his drive back to his mother’s house. It has raised questions about security – how safe is our personal information online? Who gets access to this? How safe are we from employers? Can we now get fired for saying silly things on our personal Twitters? (The answer is yes – Justine Sacco, a PR executive is a great example). It has also raised questions about how much social media as it is now has changed social behaviours – instead of calling someone up to ask about their holiday in Guam, we just go on Facebook and peek at their holiday album. Unfriending someone has become a real personal offence. Is social media invading our offline social lives?
Social media now, for a lot of us, is part of our day-to-day, and has weaved itself into our offline social interactions – that’s undeniable. Some feel this is invasive, some have embraced the change. Barriers are being blurred every day, and this is one of them. Our online lives and our offline lives aren’t so separate anymore. Facebook and Twitter have definitely done something that Myspace hadn’t even come close to doing, and that’s why I think it was about time that those old social media networks got scrapped to clear the way for these new ones.
I once felt the reticence that many still feel about integrating social media so deeply into my offline life, but I’ve changed my mind long since. I don’t really understand why it’s still a bit strange for me to admit that, like a million other Facebook users, the first thing I do in the morning is check my Facebook notifications.