The early days of internet. What was social networking like?

Everyone is on Facebook now days.  My mom never used social networking prior until Facebook came along and I do have to say it’s a great tool to keep in touch with friends and family.  But it wasn’t to long ago that we didn’t have all these social networking platforms as we do now like facebook, twitter, instagram, snapchat, whats app..etc.  What was it like then? Does anyone remember? Well I do remember everything, just as if it was yesterday.

The first time I had the chance to experience anything hands on about the internet was back in the early 90’s at elementary school (Morningside)  I had a computer teacher named Mr. Ferrari who took all the class to the school library to have us talk to a penpal.  I remember we would all write a list of questions on a piece of paper and then the library assistant would take those questions and submit them on the computer. They told us that the kid was somewhere out of Europe and he would get all the questions that were submitted and when we came back, we would have our responses. The next time we went to the library again, everyone was all excited to find out what this kid who we haven’t met somewhere around the world had to say. One of the questions that I remembered that someone asked was, “What is your favorite music” and his reply that was read out to us was “Red Hot Chili Peppers” and all of us were all “OOOHHHHH” giggling and getting crazy to a simple answer, but we were little kids so everything was surprising and most importantly during those times, many parents didn’t allow us to listen to music like that so it was kind of taboo in a way.  It was during this time that my interest in computing went up more.

Now I always had a computer at home just no internet. This was during a time where if you had a computer, you were labeled “rich” most computers around that era were easily in the $3000 – $5000 range.  My mom worked in payroll in the accounting department at Magnetek (later became Jefferson Electric) and needed a PC at home for certain work related things and also was going to school to finish her degree. I remember getting excited when the computer was setup since I could play all these games that other people who owned consoles such as Nintendo and Sega couldn’t play.  There was another kid at school named Victor who I think happened to be the only other kid in the whole school who happened to have a computer and I remember him sharing some free games with me and being able to play them.  I started seeing these commercials  on Television about Compuserve and AOL back in the day and getting on the internet and I would tell my mom to get me internet but we couldn’t afford it.  Also I learned that the only way you could get online during that time, is that you needed to have a modem that connects to your phone line and dial a number.  The computer that I had didn’t have a modem so this required saving up all my allowance and doing extra chores around the house like cutting the grass, washing the cars to have enough to buy the modem.  Once I had about $80 dollars or so I called a number from a magazine and ordered a 14.4kbps modem (fastest available at the time). Even paid Cash on Delivery to the UPS driver and had to bust out my quarters and everything. I was super excited and my brother, who’s older than me was also excited.  I followed the instructions, all the lights turned on and hooked it up to the PC by serial cable.  Then I ran the AOL software that came with the computer and was super anxious to see what it did, prior it never did anything since I didn’t have a modem but I had always prepared mentally for that one day, I knew it was going to happen 😀  and sure enough it went through and after registering an account with my moms credit card, the famous sound “Welcome” was heard, and I was like AHH SHIT ITS WORKING!!! and slowly information started appearing on the screen little by little and like 10 minutes later some news showed up and I knew then that I was “connected” to the internet.  I met my first online friend,  a girl named Elizabeth Stahlman with the screename “Bethelis” and we would spend hours each day chatting back and forth.  She lived in Florida and it was amazing that we could chat in real time considering the distance, the internet was definately something.  That first computer I had, ran on a 486 processor, so it wasn’t really that powerful and thus I was limited to what I could do with the AOL software which was pretty much just join chat rooms and chat with people and explore whatever content it had available, but even then it was unique and it opened up a whole new other world that not many people had access to, an underground world.

Technology is always changing and every year  there is always something bigger or faster that comes out and thus the revolution came when the Pentium processors started coming out and it was until that particular moment, I could actually enjoy getting on the internet.  My mom knew that the computer we owned had become obsolete and we needed to get something better and at the time a company called Gateway started becoming popular on the market and so the 2nd pc we purchased was a top of the line Pentium 233mhz with MMX technology with 32MB of memory and it had an internal 56kbps modem which was the fastest you could get.  Not only could I run AOL software but having a better computer allowed me to popular browser at the time Netscape Navigator and browse the internet.  Prices for computers went down significantly as different manufacturers Compaq, Dell, IBM,  HP,  Gateway competed against each other and thus brought affordable computers to families.  During my middle school years, more and more friends would have computers at their home and being on the internet was just part of the being cool as a teenager.  Slowly and surely the way people started socializing started to change.  Back during the AOL days, you didn’t have any status updates or letting people know what you were doing but there was a buddylist available that allowed you to see who came online and who didn’t and of course chat rooms.  Friends and myself would stay up late each school night and join random rooms and start spamming and annoying people and since there wasn’t really any type of moderation in the day we would get a kick of emptying a room entirely.  As time passed, social networking started slowly evolving to independent messaging clients that ran on your computer such as Yahoo Messenger, MSN messenger, Mplayer, Hotline (underground chat network) and others.

One software in particular called ICQ took off immediately because of its simplicity and way of chatting with people.  You basically registered a 6-8 digit number and that was your personal contact number, I still happen to remember mine and it actually still works! ICQ had many features such as chat logging, and customizable buddy lists that made it hugely popular but as quick as it rose and grew in popularity it also met a premature death.  ICQ had a lot of potential but like many companies, sometimes the creators just sell out and thus sold the company to AOL which was still big at the time and with that ICQ went down hill.

 

 

 

 

 

MSN Messenger started emerging slowly when Windows XP came out and it was competing against a strong Yahoo Messenger.  Yahoo Messenger had a lot of chat rooms you could go into and find a subject to discuss and chat with people. With popularity always arises problems and soon the chats of yahoo started filling up with sex bots and spammers that eventually people started leaving it to join MSN messenger.  MSN didn’t have any particular chat rooms however the interface was pretty easy and adding people by just their hotmail address seemed to be popular.  Since the MSN messenger software used hotmail, you didn’t need to be logged into hotmail to find out when you received a new email, the software would just tell you that you had a new email and that would allow you then to check your email if you wanted. Features such as custom emoticons and games were added which made it pretty popular.  I remember meeting people in parties and instead of asking for phone numbers, the saying was “pasame tu hotmail (give me your hotmail)” or “agregame al msn (add me to msn)” and sure enough you would go home, sit on your computer and add the person’s email in the search box and hit add person and if the person added you, an alert would come out and you could start chatting.

 

 

 

Messaging clients started to be overtaken by Social networks and the first few to become mainstream was myspace, hi5, cpixel, friendster.   Myspace came out and took the whole nation by storm.  It allowed people to be creative and make custom profiles, put music, pictures and a lot of other things.  Hi5 was good but was more known through latin america than the US.  Myspace grew very quickly and soon I started adding people daily from back in high school. With the quick growth of myspace that also brought in problems, with people adding so much to their profiles it was impossible to go into a profile without it freezing up your browser but none the less that never detoured people and soon myspace was everywhere.  It all started going south when Tom Anderson (the first founding president) jumped ship and sold the company and made out with a cool $300million in cash, who wouldn’t do the same and not worry about anything for the rest of your life?

 

I had heard of Facebook while using Myspace at it’s peak but since Myspace was super popular I thought, well why the need to make so many social accounts. I had deactivated my yahoo messenger account, stopped using ICQ, didn’t need to be using all these platforms if everyone was on Myspace and MSN messenger but while I was living in New York around 2006, a good friend of mine named Yulia had told me about it, she didn’t have a myspace account so when I moved back to Texas I wanted to keep in touch, she kept telling me to get it but never told me why but eventually I caved in and opened an account just for the sole purpose of not losing contact.  At first I didn’t use it much and hated it since it didn’t allow any custom profiles with music and show the creative side of me but little by little close friends started making the transition and closing their accounts and making the permanent switch to Facebook. Around 2009 just about everyone that I had on myspace had moved over so I figured, myspace is shit now so I closed that account then.  Just about everyone now is on Facebook and I think it’s a great tool to have to keep in touch with people you know.  I’ve personally have found a lot of classmates back from elementary and family members who I lost their contact information.  My family just had a family reunion about 3 years ago that we organized strictly on facebook and I am sure there are many other families who have done the same.  Other competitors have tried to challenge Mark Zuckerberg such as Google with the creation of Google Buzz but that never took off and then through Google+ but even as many people signed up originally with Google+ it still hasn’t been adopted by many people.  Twitter knowing it couldn’t ever compete specifically against Facebook head on, adopted a different form by microblogging and getting popular among the celebrities and rich and powerful. Instagram started becoming hugely popular that Facebook bought it for $1 billion bucks and Whats App as well started becoming popular among cell phone users across the world that it also was bought out by Facebook.

As everyone adopts social networking one way or another, it’s interesting to see even in 5 years what platform everyone will be on. I predict that Facebook will still around and be popular but wonder if there will be another main social site available.  I have a lot of reminiscent moments of back in my child hood before the whole popularity of the internet.  You knew where everyone was by seeing everyone’s bikes outside of a certain house.  You could see people playing on the street which you hardly see now a days if any.  Calling people on the phone and talking to someone’s mom and dad “hola señora, se encuentra arnulfo?”  Having your friends stay over the weekend and play video games. Good ol times.