Tedium - Where The Action Was 💬

Today in Tedium: The website Orkut.com is a site you’ve probably visited even if it feels like a vague memory today. It is Google’s first attempt at a social network, and one that became a success largely by chance; it started with modest goals and grew pretty quickly, although it never reached Facebook scale. Named for its creator, Orkut Büyükkökten, the network surged for a time, but eventually fell into decay, eventually going offline in 2014. After a few years of attempting to build a follow-up network, Orkut is back on that original domain, promising a follow-up. “I’ve always believed that a friendship is more than a friend request, and I have dedicated my life to helping millions of you build authentic connections with your neighbors, family members, employees and the beautiful strangers who come into your lives,” he wrote. You kind of want to root for Orkut Büyükkökten, knowing that the odds are against him in reviving this old social network in a new way. But it’s in his spirit that I shine the that “didn’t make it” list on social media. Even if the community is dead, the people that made it are still worth discussing. — Ernie @ Tedium

3. SixDegrees.com

Era: Web 1.0, late 90s

User count at peak: 3.5 million

Status: Active (surprisingly)

Yes, we can credit Kevin Bacon for the birth of modern social media. This site, dating to 1997, is often credited as introducing many of the ideas of modern social networks. In many ways, it’s the first social network that looks like a modern social network.

So, imagine my surprise when I loaded up SixDegrees, and found that it loaded up an actual website. Now, do I recommend you sign up to this site and try to find new friends? Absolutely not; the site does not support https, which is a big problem in the modern internet era, especially given that the site necessarily asks for your info.

But maybe you’re willing to take a chance.

(via TechCrunch)

6. FriendFeed

Era: Web 2.0 circa 2007

User count at peak: 1 million

Status: Offline

There were really two interesting things about FriendFeed, one which came at the start of its life, and one which came near the end of it. The network was formed by a number of former Google notables, including Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh, figures that helped launch some of Google’s most famous tools, including Gmail and Google Maps. The network they built could be used as a dedicated network, but its magic was that it was effective at gathering together lots of different social networks and websites into an aggregated feed.

Never the most popular tool, but one with a strong cult following in the tech community, the thing that made FriendFeed interesting was what happened to it after it was acquired by Facebook—that is, not much for many years. While the tool wasn’t updated, and the acquisition seemed to be an effort to get the talented Taylor into an executive role with the company (he served as Facebook’s CTO), it wasn’t killed off until 2015, at which point Taylor had been gone for three years. It had a cult following that kept it alive longer than many of the other social networks on this list.

Taylor, in particular, would go on to have an even bigger career—today, he’s the co-CEO of Salesforce as well as Twitter’s current board chair.

9. Secret

Era: Smartphone era circa 2014

User count: Undisclosed

Status: Offline

Part of a broader trend of social networks that emphasized anonymous messaging, Secret lived for just 15 months before one of its founders, David Byttow, shut down the network for good.

Secret was where you went when you wanted to blurt out an opinion on something without having your name attached to it. If this sounds like a bad idea for a social network, possibly even a worse one now, you don’t know the half of it. There was a degree of joy in using it without the vestige of identity affecting interactions, but in many ways, it encouraged some of our worst impulses.

Byttow cited this reason for shutting down the network—which had received notable amounts of funding from major venture capitalists. “I believe in failing fast in order to go on and make only new and different mistakes,” he said.

While the time for this type of network seems to be in the past, it’s worth noting that competing network Whisper never stopped operating, and YikYak relaunched just last year, while another business-focused anonymous network that launched after Secret, Blind, seems to be going strong.