I’m going to start off by going through a brief history of my experiences using the Internet and social media. I will attempt to detail the parts of it that are important. Then I’m going to present an idea related to the history and the important parts.
Myspace
Myspace is a social networking website founded in 2003. Apparently it existed in a previous state as an online data storage/sharing site, and considered originally requiring a fee for the basic Myspace services. In that year I was 9 years old, and it wasn’t until a couple years afterwards that I made a profile (though it wasn’t until much later that I actually started using the site frequently). When I first made my account, I remember Tom from Myspace sitting in my friend requests and scaring me away. It bewildered me that some random guy found my profile so quickly after making it, and, not knowing anything about it, promptly stopped even considering using the site for a while.
Random Warcraft Custom Game
At that point I only used the computer to play Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne custom games and talk to childhood friends on MSN Messenger after school. I never ventured far into the Internet back then. Mostly it was a place for finding video game guides and cheat codes, though not soon later it was for pirating all the things: games, music, and eventually video editing software (I wanted to be a YouTube celebrity when I was younger, but maybe I’ll get to that eventually in a different blog post). As a youngster it wasn’t actually that the Internet ever brought me to finding a community of people with common interests. Even when there were social media websites, I don’t feel I ever participated in creating any media. Information stolen from the Internet led me to enjoy the things that I did, but it was entirely a personal experience.
u·nique /yo͞oˈnēk/ adjective
being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else.
When I actually got around to using Myspace, attempted to socialize with my contemporaries, the cool thing was having a unique profile page. It was interesting back then how customized the pages could be. (I can’t remember if one could use external resources to manipulate the page or what, but most pages perplexed me as I didn’t understand how my page looked so basic compared to other peoples’). However, having to navigate all the different varieties of pages became cumbersome. Some people put music on the page that nobody could mute, whereas other people made their pages so sparse that it eliminated most of the interesting content to look at. Since people made the contents of their pages was unique, there was no way to know where to look to find something specific and furthermore no way to validate whether something was on the page or not. The user personalized himself, but eliminated his content; for me it wasn’t ever an experience to actually socialize.
I think this was ultimately the fall of Myspace. Around this time I began experimenting with other sites. Mostly I was following my friends around who wanted to go to other places; social media didn’t really mean a lot to me at the time — I was still playing a lot of Warcraft — so it was arbitrary where I made my next profile.
When Facebook came around, I think it was the lack of customization that actually made it more popular than Myspace. Myspace wasn’t really a place to share with friends, it was a place to share the different possible ways to make default pages. Later, as Facebook was implementing cover photos, I remember people lamenting that the reason they moved to Facebook was because they didn’t want to have to endlessly tweak their profiles like they had to with Myspace. Other than that it was a place to communicate with each other, and to share content about their lives — it was a place to socialize.
Random IRC Client
In all honesty, both places, Myspace and Facebook, are terrible at communication compared to other platforms like Discord, Slack, Gitter, or even IRC — though those services are just simply trying to fulfill a different purpose. In any case Facebook took the reigns on social media, making the Internet a place to share the content of one’s life with a ubiquitous platform. One could post something and get feedback from friends who could either like or comment on it. That’s still pretty much all that Facebook did and still does.
Facebook allows people to share comments, pictures, news, organization profiles, etc. People often host events through Facebook, and there are groups people can create for specific topics. I’ve always used Facebook for its messaging services (though not good, it’s ubiquitous among my peers), and the developers at Facebook are always slowly implementing new features into the messaging service that make it constantly nicer to talk to people. Thinking back, I think Myspace did all of this too, but I could be wrong about that. Regardless, it must have been the ubiquitous nature of Facebook profiles making it more popular. Every page is a stream of content produced by the people one wants to see, and the content will be the same for every person who comes across it. For me, however, the streams of content never seemed to contain anything that interested me. I still scoured the Internet to steal information from it, never contributing.
Now, however, emerging sites operating with the idea to stream only personalized, relevant content exist. One such example is Reddit.
As people tire of Facebook, places like Reddit become more popular. I’ve been a frequent Reddit lurker for probably years now. It has a great model for containing like-minded individuals. Communities of people exist within subreddits, and every subreddit looks the same. It is a ubiquitous experience, and it seems people still find that enjoyable. Reddit, by itself however, does not actually host any content. It links to content elsewhere on the Internet. This is fantastic design, as Reddit then doesn’t need to figure out how to host the different kinds of content. Reddit relies on a culture of anonymity, however, so those who post content most often don’t matter. Also, it is frowned upon to post one’s own creations. Self promotion leads to undesired content as usually poor content creators are more numerous than good ones. In this way, everyone posts content which is not their own, creators cannot make claim to the content they create, and the base of users further remains anonymous.
My idea
The Internet is a wonderful place for sharing content, and people like to find themselves attached to a ubiquitous experience. I have always used the Internet to learn about and enjoy content, though, in my case, there is no social media website which has ever brought me to finding a community of people whom I’ve felt common among. Either the content didn’t match what I desired, or I couldn’t exist in the community other than being an anonymous voice (meaning I couldn’t have a real, social experience).
- Myspace
- No ubiquity
- No content or just not a lot of content
Myspace provided an experience allowing people to be unique through page customization, but this often led to the elimination of content and I don’t remember ever having the streams of content as in more contemporary websites.
- Facebook
- Ubiquity
- Content attached to self, but limited by what Facebook can hold and by the interests of friends
Facebook gives a ubiquitous platform for sharing content, though the content is only deliverable to a small community of people who probably do not care about it.
- Reddit
- Ubiquity
- Links to content of limitless scope available on the Internet, but not attached to self
Reddit provides ubiquitous subreddit containers for desirable content, but personal attachment to content is impossible; it does not provide a social experience.
- Idea
- Ubiquity
- Content of limitless scope, but also attached to self
There should be a social media platform containing streams of quality information, where people can contribute to the content and attach themselves to the creations they provide. It should provide a social experience where anyone can contribute, yet remain democratic in a way to entertain only the most interesting content.