Not to take anything away from these guys... but big chunks of what constitutes a "social network" like Facebook go back many more years than this. Go back to the 1980's (at least) and look at folks dialing into BBSs with dial-up modems (acoustic couplers, even!) and phreaks using telco loopback test circuits to set up illicit conference calls, etc. The idea of an online "social circle" was very real back then as well.
The problem was that they did something unethical: They mass-published pictures of people who didn't approve of it. Facebook.com didn't do that. (I won't get into how many unethical things they DID do, though.) They also published the entire student list as well.
Yes, both of those things were publicly available. But much like Google Street View, the fact that they're public doesn't necessarily mean they are easily obtainable, and so people object.
Are you sure? I believe Zuckerberg's diary described him doing precisely that when he first got the ball rolling at Harvard (which seems like an appropriate stage for comparison vs the Steamtunnels guys.)
That's also precisely why he realized that one of the keys for Facebook was people uploading their own pictures and information. I bet he wouldn't have had that epiphany if he didn't do Facemash first. Not that I'm condoning what he did or anything.
"In addition to the Facebook component, Steamtunnels also featured a restaurant guide, events calendar, bulletin board, online radio stations, a textbook price comparison feature and maps of Stanford’s physical steam tunnels on campus, the founders said in a recent interview with The Daily."
Social recommendation:
"You can get a movie review from Siskel and Ebert, but wouldn' t you rather hear it from friends you trust?" he asked."
Value in data:
"In exchange for traffic at its site, Six Degrees sells advertising on the site and its demographic information compiled from member questionnaires."
The wall:
"Logging in brings users their own personal bulletin board, where only their first-degree circle may post messages. A powerful internal search engine lets users locate those with similar interests, contact Six Degrees members worldwide and spin out from their sphere of influence. "
You can speculate about why it didn't get further.
I would speculate the network of people online regularly just wasn't dense enough for adoption, it didn't have the viral hook of signing up to view photoss, and the dense clusters (universities) to grow the network out from.
someone at my high school ran a "social experiment" website called petridish.net back around '98; he didn't have proper backups, and one day it lost a significant chunk of itself. Yet another "also-ran".
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 38.7 ms ] threadYes, both of those things were publicly available. But much like Google Street View, the fact that they're public doesn't necessarily mean they are easily obtainable, and so people object.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#Facemash
Everyone would be a millionaire with the benefit of hindsight.
Reporter: "So knowing what Facebook has become now, would you have stuck with it?"
Founders: "Of course!" (laughter)
Article: "The founders say that they would have kept trying much harder at the Facebook component if they knew how huge a similar site would become."
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://steamtunnels.net
http://web.archive.org/web/20110112002443/http://www.steamtu...
Too bad - it would have been fun to explore the remnants of this site.
This is like comparing web portals to Google.
This old article from 1998 is worth a look: http://www.dougbedell.com/sixdegrees1.html
Social recommendation: "You can get a movie review from Siskel and Ebert, but wouldn' t you rather hear it from friends you trust?" he asked."
Value in data: "In exchange for traffic at its site, Six Degrees sells advertising on the site and its demographic information compiled from member questionnaires."
The wall: "Logging in brings users their own personal bulletin board, where only their first-degree circle may post messages. A powerful internal search engine lets users locate those with similar interests, contact Six Degrees members worldwide and spin out from their sphere of influence. "
You can speculate about why it didn't get further. I would speculate the network of people online regularly just wasn't dense enough for adoption, it didn't have the viral hook of signing up to view photoss, and the dense clusters (universities) to grow the network out from.
Still, they were thinking far ahead of the game.