I roasted MySpace hard back in the day, but now I kind of miss it. I was all too happy to move over to Facebook and leave MySpace behind.
For me, the exodus from MySpace to Facebook marks the inflection point were smaller internet communities died and were replaced with services from megacorps.
At the time, MySpace was an echo of free homepage sites on providers like AngelFire and Geocities. My friend group had moved over to MySpace from a custom site our friend hosted on a server in his living room. His web site did pretty much everything that MySpace did, MySpace just did it better.
I don't want MySpace back, but I do want some of the cool interactive content back that seems to all but have died out.
Strangely, I kinda see it being the first thing where "everyone must get into".
Before that, the web was a mishmash of communities, websites, shops and services. Even instant messengers were way more open and utilitarian, and more like Email: I would use Odigo, Adium or whatever, to use ICQ, AOL, etc. And you just talked with your internet friends.
But when MySpace launched, it was a strange situation where you needed an account, otherwise you weren't seen as "cool" by people you knew from non-online spaces. I was in my 20s and in bands, so not having one was just unacceptable.
After that, there would be those "migrations" where "normies" would follow. Using Email, ICQ or AOL wasn't seen as cool, so you should go to MSN. Myspace wasn't cool anymore, so you had to go to Facebook. And so on and so on. Even techies got into it: having a Hotmail instead of Gmail was seen as a bad thing... and so on.
Funnily enough, my experience is a combination of both yours and the GP’s. MSN Messenger vs AIM was what I perceived as the first big megacorp battle on the internet with ads everywhere and it was the first set of platforms people just had to be on. That’s when the internet went from IRC/BBS/small forum communication for nerds to my non-technical school friends using it.
The cool kids (nerds) later just used Pidgin or whatever, but I remember that era as being the first intense competition over the internet. Probably says more about my age than anything else.
Can you tell me more about that? The cool interactive content. I'd love to hear more details about your experience and what you miss.
For me the main thing I miss is Flash. I know there's Ruffle as Flashplayer replacement but the culture around Flash (and most of the authoring tools) has basically died.
(I talked to a bunch of Flash animators I knew back in the day and every single one was surprised to hear that Flash is still available, they just changed the name. Big fail on Adobe's part...)
As for the cute 90s and 2000s web designs, have you seen NeoCities? That spirit is alive and well there :)
The other thing I miss is that everyone would put their email in their form signature and you could just add everyone on MSN. People were super chill in those days, I made a lot of friends that way.
Nowadays the only unsolicited messages I get are from people trying to sell me something.
Good one:
Actually Unity is something that Flash could became/evolve to in the long term, basicly both are "runtime environment for entertainment playback"
Comments
I roasted MySpace hard back in the day, but now I kind of miss it. I was all too happy to move over to Facebook and leave MySpace behind.
For me, the exodus from MySpace to Facebook marks the inflection point were smaller internet communities died and were replaced with services from megacorps.
At the time, MySpace was an echo of free homepage sites on providers like AngelFire and Geocities. My friend group had moved over to MySpace from a custom site our friend hosted on a server in his living room. His web site did pretty much everything that MySpace did, MySpace just did it better.
I don't want MySpace back, but I do want some of the cool interactive content back that seems to all but have died out.
Strangely, I kinda see it being the first thing where "everyone must get into".
Before that, the web was a mishmash of communities, websites, shops and services. Even instant messengers were way more open and utilitarian, and more like Email: I would use Odigo, Adium or whatever, to use ICQ, AOL, etc. And you just talked with your internet friends.
But when MySpace launched, it was a strange situation where you needed an account, otherwise you weren't seen as "cool" by people you knew from non-online spaces. I was in my 20s and in bands, so not having one was just unacceptable.
After that, there would be those "migrations" where "normies" would follow. Using Email, ICQ or AOL wasn't seen as cool, so you should go to MSN. Myspace wasn't cool anymore, so you had to go to Facebook. And so on and so on. Even techies got into it: having a Hotmail instead of Gmail was seen as a bad thing... and so on.
Funnily enough, my experience is a combination of both yours and the GP’s. MSN Messenger vs AIM was what I perceived as the first big megacorp battle on the internet with ads everywhere and it was the first set of platforms people just had to be on. That’s when the internet went from IRC/BBS/small forum communication for nerds to my non-technical school friends using it.
The cool kids (nerds) later just used Pidgin or whatever, but I remember that era as being the first intense competition over the internet. Probably says more about my age than anything else.
Later Yahoo public chat rooms.
Loud, noisy, fun
Can you tell me more about that? The cool interactive content. I'd love to hear more details about your experience and what you miss.
For me the main thing I miss is Flash. I know there's Ruffle as Flashplayer replacement but the culture around Flash (and most of the authoring tools) has basically died.
(I talked to a bunch of Flash animators I knew back in the day and every single one was surprised to hear that Flash is still available, they just changed the name. Big fail on Adobe's part...)
As for the cute 90s and 2000s web designs, have you seen NeoCities? That spirit is alive and well there :)
The other thing I miss is that everyone would put their email in their form signature and you could just add everyone on MSN. People were super chill in those days, I made a lot of friends that way.
Nowadays the only unsolicited messages I get are from people trying to sell me something.
- I miss is Flash -
everything of it you can do with HTML5 & JS nowadays, god thanks! :) (though, compiling "one file and doubleclick" is not that convenient)
I mean, by the same logic, anything you can do with Unity, you could have just done in assembler hahah. Don't underestimate the power of convenience!
Good one: Actually Unity is something that Flash could became/evolve to in the long term, basicly both are "runtime environment for entertainment playback"
Ah, also Newgrounds