2008 – Remember when MTV was music television?
2010 – Remember when you could control what Facebook showed as public?
It all started so well.
They had the audience: Facebook had that demographic that just seemed to span everyone from those old enough to push keys on a keyboard to the insomniac old age pensioners looking to liven up their bleak later years in life.
They had the features: What started to most people as a way to either vent publicly or just share media online evolved into a complete social experience, one that we often felt (and still do) obliged to keep up to date constantly, lest we miss out on the next big thing. You could tag pictures, see pictures of yourself taken by others, comment on status, vent about your work, share your likes and dislikes with others – and more.
They added value: What started out as just indicating hobbies, grew into fan-clubs and groups you could participate into. They added the logic to the server backend that detected trends such as large numbers of people registering the same interests and then auto-creating groups with those names into which you could participate and contribute