By Julie Jaenicke: “I am a Southernish (Kentucky) transplant who has been surviving New England for 7 years. Playing the piano, making jewelry, and hiking are a few of my favorite distractions. And, as an avid animal lover, tofu and spending time at local shelters are of similar importance. I am a TV buyer at Mullen, and am currently learning how to buy video across all media platforms. This is my first attempt at entering the blogosphere.”
I migrated North to attend Colby College in Waterville, Maine in the fall of 2002. Like me, Mark Zuckerberg was settling into his Cambridge dorm room. At the end of our sophomore years, Zuckerberg would use Harvard, along with Ivy League, and select Northeast colleges, to launch an online community that has since revolutionized the way users interact with other people via the internet.
Colby College was among the first colleges to gain access to the newly conceived social networking experiment and as a result, I have had the opportunity to watch Facebook grow into what is now a network with over 350 million users.
Facebook reached the Colby campus at the beginning of my Junior year. When first conceived, Facebook was exclusive to those colleges given entry to the network, and as a member I felt comfortable and safe within the tight-knit community. Facebook was still in its infantile stages – the site’s only functions were walls, groups, and photos – but for all of us students, it was a fantastic outlet for our inner voyeur. And, for a Kentucky transplant, Facebook educated me on the incestuous and exclusive nature of the college network in the Northeast. It seemed as though everybody knew everybody, and this made posting and staring at pictures of friends at other schools all the more enjoyable for native Northeasters. In hindsight, it was the perfect market for Facebook to grow organically.
As college was winding down, Facebook was only beginning to gain strength. High school students were first allowed to join my senior year, which changed the complexion of the site. High school students do not communicate like college students, and so Facebook had to adapt to the younger generation. Meanwhile, we college kids scrabbled to de-tag incriminating photos before they were exposed to our little siblings just gaining access to the community. By adding a new generation and developing applications and games, Facebook was able to progress into much more than a site devoted to pictures of frat parties.
As an “old” Gen Y-er (I’ll sadly be leaving the 18-25 age group shortly), it is crazy to think back on my first experiences with what is now one of the most important websites ever created. Once Facebook grew out of the dorm room laptops and into the desktops of high school students, it became part of the home and the family. The site has evolved into a behemoth, and completely transcended all generations. Today, it is all too common to find a poorly typed and impossibly formal message from your mother awaiting reply in your inbox. It has meshed seamlessly with any email provider, so the user knows about an upcoming party and can log-in to find out their aunt just watched one of her favorite Grateful Dead concerts in DVD. As one of the original Facebook abusers, I can confidently say I did my part to ensure Facebook’s development.
Photo Credit: prospere
Author: Julie Jaenicke – I am a Southernish (Kentucky) transplant who has been surviving New England for 7 years. Playing the piano, making jewelry, and hiking are a few of my favorite distractions. And, as an avid animal lover, tofu and spending time at local shelters are of similar importance. I am a TV buyer at Mullen, and am currently learning how to buy video across all media platforms. This is my first attempt at entering the blogosphere.
[...] Growing Up Facebook | The Next Great Generation [...]
Cool post!
For me, the revolutionary aspect of Facebook was that it scoffed at the idea of crummy, “discovery oriented” design. I'm referencing MySpace, of course, a completely horrific slop of code that grew way beyond its merits, simply because people were so desperate for its promise: social networking (or whatever it was called back then). To this day, MySpace is an insult to human beings, selling borderline un-drivable code to a public that MySpace executives just don't care/believe knows any better. Even more insulting, it remains an utter mess. Even Friendster wasn't the POS that MySpace is. Zuckerberg may have stolen his code (I believe he did), but his first instinct (hey, that's valuable code!) was right on, and his instincts ever since have been equally prescient.
It's funny because my college (Boston Unversity) was also one of the early schools outside the IVYs to show up on facebook so my experience is really similar. I also remember getting the physical version of facebook my freshman year. I wonder if schools even still do that? It was interesting for me because it brought up some social interaction challenges. For example, if a guy in one of my classes starts winking at me and messaging me through Facebook, should I say hi to him in class?
[...] Growing Up Facebook | The Next Great Generation [...]