First of all the focus on sharing/timeline, and how we subscribe to those we befriend. Earlier networks seems to have more of a focus on "profile" creation and curation.
Early versions of Facebook were like this too. I remember the outrage in my friend groups when Facebook added the "News Feed" feature. That was around fall of 2006, I think.
I joined Facebook in the summer of 2006 (I'm sure many posters here preceded me -- I would love to know more about Facebook's features and "culture" before then). It used to be the things you could do on Facebook were pretty much limited to:
* Update your profile. including university-centric things like your course enrollment (which you could use to connect with classmates). Facebook also presented statistics like the "top 10 most popular books" at your university, based on user profile data.
* Update your "status". This was always directly preceded by "$YOURNAME is" in the status update UI, which is why if you read old Facebook statuses they're in the third person and lack a subject, like "is SO GLAD finals are over!!" instead of what you might see today: "SO GLAD finals are over!!" or "I'm SO GLAD finals are over!!"
* Upload photos to albums, and post comments on them
* Visit your friend's profile to read their status (I don't remember if past statuses were available; I think not), post on their wall, view their profile, poke them or browse their photos.
* Create groups and invite your friends to join them. Groups had walls and profiles, too.
There was no aggregated feed of your friends' status updates. There was no feed of your friends' activities. Really, there were barely any activities to begin with: comments on posts and even the vaunted "Like" button were implemented well after I joined ("Likes" on comments came well after each of those). Skimming Wikipedia, it actually looks like "Like" didn't come until 2009, even though it feels like it's been around forever.
Exactly, Facebook took hold on campuses before the news feed, before games, before most of the present-day experience. I joined in Fall 05 and it was very much like a college-centric MySpace. Most of the activity happened on your profile and people saying silly things on your Wall (and the pokes haha, it seems so quaint now). You listed your interests, hobbies, bands you liked. There were no Pages, but I think you could see who else in your friends or network listed those bands, later they converted these lists to Likes on Pages.
Photos may have always been there but it was before the smartphone era so it wasn't anything like now, it was more meme posting and random shots of someone passed out drunk. I don't think there were albums at first.
Groups were really popular right away, lots of joke groups but also study and other interest groups where people would post information and organize events. Whereas MySpace and other networks were fun places to hang out, stuff was actually "happening" on Facebook, it became the place of record.
Damn. Groups were a part of FB in 2005. I now remember knowing this but had completely forgotten I'd read that fact before. I'm surprised you're the first comment to mention groups being there early on.
Early versions of Facebook were like this too. I remember the outrage in my friend groups when Facebook added the "News Feed" feature. That was around fall of 2006, I think.
I joined Facebook in the summer of 2006 (I'm sure many posters here preceded me -- I would love to know more about Facebook's features and "culture" before then). It used to be the things you could do on Facebook were pretty much limited to:
* Update your profile. including university-centric things like your course enrollment (which you could use to connect with classmates). Facebook also presented statistics like the "top 10 most popular books" at your university, based on user profile data.
* Update your "status". This was always directly preceded by "$YOURNAME is" in the status update UI, which is why if you read old Facebook statuses they're in the third person and lack a subject, like "is SO GLAD finals are over!!" instead of what you might see today: "SO GLAD finals are over!!" or "I'm SO GLAD finals are over!!"
* Upload photos to albums, and post comments on them
* Visit your friend's profile to read their status (I don't remember if past statuses were available; I think not), post on their wall, view their profile, poke them or browse their photos.
* Create groups and invite your friends to join them. Groups had walls and profiles, too.
There was no aggregated feed of your friends' status updates. There was no feed of your friends' activities. Really, there were barely any activities to begin with: comments on posts and even the vaunted "Like" button were implemented well after I joined ("Likes" on comments came well after each of those). Skimming Wikipedia, it actually looks like "Like" didn't come until 2009, even though it feels like it's been around forever.