[HN Gopher] Facebook Is the AOL of 2021
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Facebook Is the AOL of 2021
Author : afrcnc
Score : 182 points
Date : 2021-08-30 18:29 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.zdnet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.zdnet.com)
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > But there our story ends, because that chapter has not yet been
| written.
|
| I think it will be harder to unseat Facebook than it was for AOL
| simply because of size.
|
| At its peak, AOL had around 34 million subscribers. Thus you
| could easily grow and build by service by appealing to people who
| had never been on AOL and who we're not enmeshed in the AOL
| ecosystem.
|
| Facebook has billions of users. There aren't enough people in the
| world who have Internet access to allow someone to build a
| massive service out of people who have never been on Facebook.
| Add to that Instagram and WhatsApp and there are not that many
| people who are on the Internet but not a part of Facebook's
| ecosystem.
| adventured wrote:
| Facebook doesn't get unseated, it splinters, losing potency
| gradually (assuming regulators keep them from buying the
| competition).
|
| Facebook will still be the dominate global social network 10-20
| years from now. What will change is that there will be more
| niche social networks with approaches/audiences/subjects-of-
| focus that Facebook couldn't cater to well enough (which is why
| Pinterest, Snap, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, Imgur
| exist).
| nemo44x wrote:
| My mom discovered Facebook last weekend and opened an account and
| is trying to figure out how to use it. I considered opening a
| short position in FB today.
| dheera wrote:
| The biggest turnoff about AOL to me is that I wanted the internet
| to be a world thing not an America thing.
| kube-system wrote:
| Most ISPs operate in a specific area, even today.
| dheera wrote:
| Sure, but that's usually a logistical limitation, not that
| you're supporting only having that specific area online.
|
| Also in general the word "America" turns me off unless used
| to refer to the entirety of North and South America, and
| wreaks of US-centric view of the world.
|
| United States of America (USA) != America
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Geez, that article takes its time to get to the point doesn't it,
| WTF is the detour to Snap! and Friendster for?
|
| Skimming the second half it seems the author got lost, he started
| talking about all the ways Facebook with its terrible anti-
| consumer actions isn't AOL...
| djhworld wrote:
| A lot of people I know have online lives that live within or
| around facebook and nothing else.
|
| They get their news from facebook as the news/media organisation
| posts updates to their feeds, which they can share with others
| via WhatsApp or messenger. No need to visit the news sites it's
| all there.
|
| They get their local second hand marketplace through Facebook
| Marketplace, no need for eBay et al.
|
| They get their local community updates, gossip, business
| recommendations etc. through Facebook Groups. No need for
| nextdoor or neighbourhoood specific websites/forums.
|
| They can find local businesses through the Facebook as the
| businesses have a Page that describes what they do, testimonials
| from previous customers, bit of a social feed to add some
| personality/'blogging'. Contactable through messenger. The
| businesses don't need to setup a website, Facebook offers all the
| tools.
|
| You never have to leave, especially on iOS/Android if you use the
| facebook app. Even links to external sites are rendered in a
| webview, so no need to look at URLs.
| function_seven wrote:
| I've been dragged into Instagram.
|
| For months now I've been searching for some good used
| furniture. Mostly MCM stuff. I'd prefer private party sales,
| but am open to dealers as well.
|
| For the personal side I was checking Nextdoor, Craigslist, and
| OfferUp. Hours of scrolling and modifying search queries and I
| couldn't find anything worth checking out. Those sites are for
| $50 couches and $20 bookshelves.
|
| For the dealer side, I was just searching the web. My
| impression was that furniture dealers were either a dying
| business, or all search engines _suck_. The only results I kept
| getting were Pinterest, 1stdibs, or Chairish. These are sites
| with insane markups where (I suspect) you 're supposed to be
| smart enough to haggle down. I gather they also take a large
| cut, so not many dealers list with them at all.
|
| I finally got a clue and re-animated my ancient IG account.
| Whaddayaknow? That's where everyone is! Suddenly I've found and
| followed a couple dozen resale shops that offer all sorts of
| cool stuff. All within an hour of where I live. Half the time,
| the URL they have in their bio is a dead website. Or, it exists
| but hasn't been updated in months. They've given up on having
| their own website and sell only inside the walled garden now.
|
| It's a shame.
|
| I still haven't logged into Facebook proper. I probably should
| find out if Marketplace is better than Craigslist, et. al. for
| classified ads.
| zucked wrote:
| Marketplace is far more active in my area. It's not better,
| IMHO (the search is all but unusable) but there's more stuff
| to be had and items showing up in one place (often FB
| Marketplace) aren't always on the other (CL, offerup, etc.)
| zzleeper wrote:
| Out of curiosity, where exactly on IG do you find MCM
| furniture? Is there a specific hashtag or?
| function_seven wrote:
| For me, it was one local shop that had an abandoned
| website. (I actually drove to their old location, trusting
| the address on the site).
|
| When I talked to the owner, she said something like, "Oh.
| Yeah, I post everything on Instagram now."
|
| So I followed that business on my IG and looked at other
| shops she follows. They're mostly local, so I did as well.
| After a few of those, Instagram took over and started
| recommending me more and more places. About 10% of the
| recommendations are more local shops, so I keep adding
| them.
|
| I don't search by hashtags (yet?), but looking through some
| of the posts in my feed, these seem to be the common ones:
| [#furniturerestoration #midcenturymodern
| #midcenturyfurniture #midcenturydesign]
|
| This whole experience has made me feel what my parents must
| have in 1996, when I was teaching them about e-mail and the
| difference between "slash" and "backslash" :)
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Maybe try aptdeco.com?
|
| (Haven't used it myself so can't testify)
| function_seven wrote:
| I just checked it out and they seem to have good stuff
| listed. Prices are also decent. Unfortunately they're not
| in Southern California yet.
|
| Bookmarked anyway. Hopefully they add more regions soon..
| Thanks!
| subpixel wrote:
| Facebook might not be the place to find high-end furniture,
| but it is everything that Craigslist was, and before that
| newspaper classifieds were, especially in rural areas.
|
| I've recently purchased these items via Facebook groups and
| marketplace, all of which were listed no place else:
|
| - the exact boat I had wanted for years
|
| - a ton of home brewing gear
|
| - lightly used children's shoes, at $75 off list price
|
| - a chest freezer
|
| - a 4k monitor
|
| I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it is outrageously
| effective.
| daveslash wrote:
| It seems like I completely mis-remember things...
|
| IIRC, in _addition_ to being an "online portal" to online
| content, it was also an ISP. Back in those days, most internet
| access was via a Dial-Up modem. If you wanted to get online, your
| computer had to _make a phone call_. Where we were, dialing
| outside of the region defined by our _prefix_ (the 3 numbers
| _after_ the area code) was considered a "long distance call" and
| was like 10 cents per minute or something. Connecting to the
| internet _ran up your phone bill ~ fast!_ if you did not have a
| LOCAL ISP. IIRC (which is questionable), AOL had toll free
| numbers, but they 'd charge you for your time online - so your
| internet bill came from your ISP only and not from ISP + Phone
| Company. Part of AOL's marketing gimmick "first 1,000 hours
| free!" or some such amount of time to get you to sign up.
|
| This was nearly 30 years ago, and I didn't really understand how
| it all worked back then, and my parents paid the phone bills (not
| me!) so my recollection may be full of partial-truths or
| downright falsehoods. But point being - I think the article
| really understates AOL's role in being an ISP (especially for
| rural folks who didn't have local ISPs).
| magila wrote:
| Large dial-up ISPs had huge lists of numbers you could use to
| dial in with so that you could pick the one which was local to
| you. I'm not sure how this worked on the provider side, but
| customers pretty much never payed by-the-minute fees to dial
| into their ISP.
| jaredsohn wrote:
| That matches my experience. We were limited by the number of
| hours for our local ISP, too. Think they even had different
| plans for how many hours per month we wanted.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I left Facebook years ago and have no reason to go back. I can
| share photos and videos with friends and family easily enough.
| Most of the online relationships were pretty superficial as well,
| so I don't need them anyway.
|
| Facebook does have some value, but it seems like the signal to
| noise ratio is very low. I'm not sure how rare my case is though.
| How many people in there 20-40s feel the same?
| dummydata wrote:
| I feel the same. Most my friends just use Instagram (for memes
| mostly). I like using just Snapchat for sharing photos with my
| close friends, which is better than sharing with literally
| everyone.
|
| Of course, you still have people who's primary motive is to
| farm for likes. I don't see their attitudes changing anytime
| soon..
| warp wrote:
| Here in Ecuador most of my immediate friends and family have
| moved to sharing photos and videos in private whatsapp groups.
|
| So they've moved away from Facebook the product, but not
| Facebook the company.
| matt_s wrote:
| I mostly use it for family that is on there. The "feed" is
| horrible, filled with ads and timely things always appear out
| of order. Stuff from neighborhood sometimes shows something
| from 3 days after something occurred higher than something
| today.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Yeah I don't know how people get their news this way... It
| drives me insane that it'll consistently show me weather from
| 4 days ago but not today. NOT USEFUL.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| AOL never had the reach of Facebook, even adjusted for era,
| population, anything really.
|
| HN has been predicting Facebook's demise for years, and it keeps
| getting bigger, making more money, etc etc.
|
| Despite what you might think, Facebook isn't a giant Nuremburg
| Rally that will impale itself on race hate and political
| polarization...that's just the twisted worldview you're imposing
| on it.
| eigengrau5150 wrote:
| I've suspected this for a long time. It's just too bad you can
| have a Facebook account (or for that matter, Twitter or LinkedIn)
| and still get hired in tech. Having a presence on social media
| should be treated as the same negative hiring signal as putting
| an @aol.com email address on your resume.
| [deleted]
| seattle_spring wrote:
| HN moment.
| fourseventy wrote:
| I stopped reading at "a software program called TCP/IP"
| bastardoperator wrote:
| My personal take.
|
| AOL died when private rooms stopped being private and the
| personal filing cabinet (unlimited storage) was discontinued. AOL
| easily had the biggest warez scene, once that was over and nobody
| could share files they went elsewhere.
| emerged wrote:
| Man proggies were so fun. The other day I was remembering the
| way proggies had their own unique skins which made them fun to
| use and collect. Then it hit me, music production plugins are
| basically the modern equivalent. They have all sorts of custom
| art and unique interactivity / features.
| silisili wrote:
| Someone named Len(I think) had been archiving them, but I saw
| that site no longer exists sadly(lenshell.com).
|
| Fear not, someone apparently made an archive of the archive!
|
| http://lenshellprogarchive.com/hell.html
| silisili wrote:
| I think it started when broadband started rolling out
| nationally in the late 90s. My whole neighborhood for example
| was on dialup, everyone used AOL(for the most part), and just
| like that, it was gone once @home rolled fiber optics. AOL
| didn't seem to have any plan for that. Our family actually
| wanted to keep AOL, but they still wanted their 24.99 or
| whatever for the privilege, and well, few people found it worth
| it.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Yep. Basically this. Everything else is silly speculation.
| Download speeds went from agonizing, even for the time!, to
| eye watering fast.
|
| I remember downloading 300MB in roughly 30 minutes to an hour
| back then. To me that was absolutely incredible. And it was!
| For the time.
|
| Whatever AOL was doing back then was irrelevant. Warez moved
| from place to place. People knew this and responded to the
| changes over the years as things naturally evolved.
| silisili wrote:
| Yeah, it completely changed how the internet and computers
| in general were used. Early advertising was 'look how quick
| it is, youll save so much time.' But that turned into 'hey
| this doesn't suck, I'll spend more time online!'
|
| The biggest change for me, personally, was going from an
| HPB to an LPB. That brings back old memories. Does that
| terminology even exist anymore?
| tpae wrote:
| ... says zdnet
| patorjk wrote:
| > People even discovered more of the Internet, such as things
| like "file transfer protocol," where they could get lots of stuff
| no one had ever seen in the form of files. Programs such as
| "finger" let a person see who had been online, which, again, blew
| people's minds. People were so excited by the World Wide Web,
| they never wanted to go back to AOL or Compuserve or Prodigy.
|
| This person's explanation for why AOL died does not match up with
| my memories. I remember regularly using AOL's built in web
| browser (which was just a wrapper around IE) to surf the web. The
| reason my family switched away from AOL was because we could get
| faster internet through our cable company. It had nothing to do
| with FTP, fingering, or "discovering the world wide web".
|
| > The business people decided that there should be a way to make
| something like AOL, even though everyone thought Web sites were
| amazing and didn't want to go back.
|
| Again, this just doesn't line-up with how I remember things. I
| remember people liking the sense of community AOL had (the chats,
| IMs, forums, etc). It was other factors (faster internet, etc),
| that led to AOL's downfall.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| TIL FTP took down AOL. Did a human actually write that? Wow.
| AOL died because it was a walled garden filled with manure and
| very few actual plants.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > a walled garden filled with manure and very few actual
| plants.
|
| Sounds like Facebook in 2021.
| MBCook wrote:
| Honestly it was Disneyland compared to FB. Because it was a
| paid service they tried to keep it clean and nice.
|
| It never would have hosted the kind of anti-vax-blow-up-
| the-government stuff and promoted it as prime content like
| FB.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| There was plenty of that nonsense back in the day, too.
| And plenty of novice users who just cared about owning
| the "libs", or making fun of Bush. We were just a lot
| better about putting this stuff in the right perspective.
| OzzyB wrote:
| What you really mean is that it was US centric and wasn't
| spammed to death by bot networks and state-backed actors
| that want to sow division.
|
| The fact that you had to get the disk and pay with a
| credit card created one of the best online user
| experiences we had.
| RJSquirel wrote:
| >Honestly it was Disneyland compared to FB.
|
| Except for the "Eternal September" part of the park.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| There will always be an Eternal September in any mass
| communications system that is open to the public.
|
| Disneyland has been operating for 70 something years and
| there are still thousands if not millions of first timers
| arriving every year.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Yes but Disneyland has refined its crowd control and
| experience to fine point. You don't see the chaos and
| mess because Disney spends a lot of money (and has lots
| of people working the parks) to contain and direct it.
| Even something as simple and common as a guest getting
| sick on a ride, Disney has a response team to handle it
| and keep the "Happiest Place on Earth" image alive.
|
| Try that kind of curation and moderation in an online
| forum for people that size and within a week you'd have
| the right wing yelling about "cancel culture" and GOP
| senators calling hearings on Big Tech censors.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The September That Never Ended was Bad.
|
| It resulted in the Web suddenly becoming open, and full
| of ill-informed opinions, and populated by large crowds
| of ignorant, obnoxious, know-nothing users, wearing cargo
| shorts, Hawai'ian shirts, and socks and sandals,
| wandering around, pawing all the exhibits.
|
| The September That Never Ended was Good.
|
| That's when the _real_ money started to hit the Internet.
|
| All those Teslas that average-level programmers are
| driving around, these days, are because of all those
| "tourists," and their loud shirts.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| > All those Teslas that average-level programmers are
| driving around, these days, are because of all those
| "tourists," and their loud shirts.
|
| I am average programmer, but not SV. I still haven't been
| paid well enough to buy a Tesla.
| narrator wrote:
| For those of you with absolutely no memory before 2 weeks
| ago, the censorship didn't get going anywhere for the
| most part until about 2016. Before that, the internet was
| not considered a serious enough information channel
| compared to mainstream media to impose much censorship
| on. After the Trump election, the mainstream woke up,
| freaked out, and the screws got tightened everywhere.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| It's the type of myopic perspective that I would expect from
| a comment here instead.
| madrox wrote:
| And the price. AOL charged by the minute and were slow to
| switch to unlimited...much like Blockbuster was reluctant to
| kill late fees and ended up losing to Netflix's DVD
| distribution (even before they got into streaming).
| jamestenglish wrote:
| I had the exact same reaction to reading those lines. Everyone
| I knew was more than happy to use AOL to surf the World Wide
| Web it was only when their cost and speed stagnated next to
| competitors did people jump ship.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| AOL thought they were an ISP, when really they were a media
| and community company. I was a kid in the 90s, and my
| friends' parents didn't want them on the broader internet.
| AOL was considered safe. While they should have leaned into
| that, they also had an uphill battle - people now paid their
| cable companies for internet access, and didn't want to pay
| AOL's (high) prices for access to content.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| Your memory of AOL isn't old enough, then. I remember AOL
| before they had a web browser, which they later reluctantly
| added in a bid to keep relevance. You remember the latter days
| of AOL, when the writing was on the wall.
| patorjk wrote:
| I setup my own geocities website in 1998, so they had to have
| had it then. According to the document here [1], AOL's web
| browser was introduced in 1995.
|
| [1] https://www.technologizer.com/2010/05/24/aol-
| anniversary/2/
| nostrademons wrote:
| 1998 is the later days of AOL. Its heyday was 1991-1995,
| when basically everybody got multiple AOL disks in the
| mail, you'd have TV advertisements telling you to visit a
| certain AOL keyword, and they were basically the only user-
| friendly way of getting online. (The competition like
| Prodigy or Compuserve had very clunky user interfaces, and
| GEnie and BBSes were text-only.)
|
| The writing was on the wall for AOL as soon as Netscape and
| Yahoo came out in 1994.
| markandrewj wrote:
| I find many of the articles on ZDNet, and CNET, are either
| inaccurate, fluff, or clickbait.
| taf2 wrote:
| Exactly, AOL failed to move on broadband because the
| subscription model they had with dial up internet was very
| profitable. Additionally, the cable companies realizing the
| opportunity were not about to let AOL to continue to collect
| rent over their wires... Facebook is very different from AOL.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Though what allowed cable/DSL companies to move into the ISP
| business was the complete decoupling of content from access.
| In 1991, when there was no practical WWW and you navigated a
| bunch of proprietary content by typing in AOL keywords, a
| cable company would've had to implement a full graphical
| browser and a large library of content to be useful. By 1998,
| when we had Netscape and IE and Yahoo and millions of
| websites, those industries were all disaggregated and we just
| needed the pipes.
|
| There's a lesson in unbundling here, but it probably doesn't
| apply to Facebookin quite the manner the author intends.
| hakfoo wrote:
| I suspect the problem is that they had no infrastructure to
| sell. They should have been doing co-branded offerings
| fulfilled by local telecoms. Once people are calling to say
| "I called the local telecom and ordered DSL/Cable direct,
| close my account", they're trying to negotiate customer
| retention from the back foot.
|
| I know plenty of people held onto AOL for a long time because
| of specific communities-- their chat service was more
| accessible than IRC, and as mentioned elsewhere, tying it to
| a bill and an identity was a good way to keep it from getting
| too toxic.
|
| My family held out until 2006 or so because of one such
| community. We were willing to put up with 56k slowness until
| I got a webdev position and needed the ability to do work-
| from-home with a reasonable turnaround.
|
| There was a definite point though where you could tell they
| had decided to give up on investment. The client was ever
| buggier and weirder, they stopped offering Usenet, and their
| internal forum system got retooled in a way that nobody
| really liked. I suspect at the end, the chat service was
| probably their last moat for their userbase.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| AOL is the reason I got broadband. I tried to cancel and they
| gave me 6 free months of high-speed to stay with them, with a
| recurring rate that was $10 more than the provider who
| delivered the high-speed to my house.
|
| After the 6 months was up, I cancelled AOL and stayed with
| the provider.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Ahh, I was thinking MySpace...
| mclightning wrote:
| Do not delete your Facebook. Delete your friends, delete your
| posts using scripts widely available.
|
| This is what I did. You will not have any way to "re-activate"
| it, this way. You will keep your access to fb signin, events and
| messenger.
| emerged wrote:
| Can you link to such scripts?
| johntran wrote:
| Not sure why this is being downvoted. Deleting posts via
| scripts gave my Facebook a second life. I just use it for
| messenger and events. Highly recommended.
| mclightning wrote:
| Exactly, and I put a cover picture explaining the situation
| (it is a closed account blabla), so I didn't receive any
| judgement from friends. Having removed friends, also means I
| can not go back in a smooth manner. It is a good way to cut
| yourself off of facebook's network effect without losing
| access to events, fb signin, messenger.
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(page generated 2021-08-30 23:01 UTC)