I'm from that generation, all my friends were on MSN. That was the equivalent of Facebook at the time, everyone was there.

It was still not at all what Facebook is. I did school works on MSN but there was no history or always on conversations. We scheduled being on MSN to works on something. MSN was the equivalent of a room.

Facebook is the equivalent of a board, you put it there and you let people read it whenever they want, whenever they can. This is game changer. In University, most of the times, we didn't have to schedule time to works on it at the same time, it was and stayed in the Facebook conversation. It was actually quite rare that we were all on it at the same time.

Same goes for events organization. Never ever would I consider doing that on an IM. The difficulty of an events organization is finding time for all people to come together, you can't do that on an IM. Email could do that sure, but it's a clusterfuck, much more slow paced and people are much more prone to ignore them.

So yeah, IM was part of the solution but their ephemeral natures were a huge issue. Yes there were alternative, but they all came down with pretty issues themselves and one of the biggest, is simply that it wasn't used enough by others. I was barely able to convince people to switch from Facebook to Slack for school projects.

> and people are much more prone to ignore them

I think this is the key that separates Facebook from group emails. Facebook got people into the habit of checking something regularly, so regularly that you could expect that if you post something today, they'll see it within a few days. People never had that habit with email, which is a lot more like mail: you check it when you're waiting for something specific. But you check Facebook when you're bored and want to be entertained with short paragraphs or videos or by participating in gossip.

Your parents were on ICQ? And AIM? They set up a Myspace account?

Facebook is easy to use and accessible everywhere. This is coming from someone that hasn't had a Facebook account since 2009. GP makes great points and the title to this submission is pure clickbait.

When ICQ, AIM, MySpace etc were popular, the babyboomer generation was not really widely adapted to computers like they are today. I don't think Facebook has been the reason they eventually did, either -- my grandmother, for example, doesn't have Facebook, but e-mails and texts.

My whole family was on ICQ when I was a kid. This may not actually be true but my understanding back then was that ICQ was pretty popular internationally (most of my family lives outside of the US).

Yes, ICQ was popular just before the internet went full on mainstream, MSN and Yahoo messenger followed it up, followed by a brief Google chat and Skype stint and then a void filled up by the social networks and eventually the mobile messengers like WhatsApp.

MSN being killed is still so weird to me, I get that The Netherlands is a small country, but they had full 100% market dominance, after MSN got killed I bet some researcher could have seen people in The Netherlands just had a communication dip for a year or two.

My parents let me log into their AIM accounts, before I was old enough to get my own, and then we kept in touch. We moved to Yahoo messenger, and my Dad still keeps in touch with me via Hangouts. We migrate; instant messaging is an easy tech, and there's always something available to use, so we just grab whatever's convenient and go.

At MySpace's height, it was starting to penetrate the Baby Boomer market. It was heading the same direction that Facebook as able to achieve.

My parents being on Facebook is a con not a pro.

I was on AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Chat, as well as Friendster, Tribe.net, MySpace, and Orkut. True, Facebook didn't invent social networking, but it was significantly better than all of the others.

The messengers were different beasts; in fact, Facebook didn't get instant messaging for quite some time.

Facebook had two things going for it over the other early social networks - the UI was comparatively good, and they platform-ized early. Nowadays folks get angry about "apps that steal your data" but back in that era the apps were the interesting thing. Facebook itself didn't have an event planning system; you relied on third party apps for that.

Facebook also executed well in a way that the other platforms didn't. Friendster just outright failed to scale. But even the other platforms were stuck following the conceptual model of a dating website - they were all about customizing your "page". Zuckerberg gets credit for recognizing the value of a "feed of what your friends are up to" and shifting the core interaction, despite angry protests from entrenched users.

Saying "Facebook didn't invent social networking" is far too dismissive.

By saying "Facebook didn't invent social networking" the parent wasn't implying that Facebook didn't bring anything new. They were dismissing the idea that before Facebook you had to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to facilitate social activities over the internet. As a teenager using AIM in the 90s, I certainly wasn't shelling out thousands to talk with my friends every night.

I was there. I was 12 in 1995 and mostly accessed the Internet at school. In my teen years I eventually built my own computer and participated quite enthusiastically in the burgeoning social networking culture. That time spend became a core part of my identity.

But it was insular, normal people didn't care for it. Facebook was the first social network everybody used.

Just adding that this is very America centric. In my experience Facebook still is a niche product for teenagers and moms of all ages in central Europe.

The only platform that 'everbody' kinda fits may is Whatsapp, but then again there is Asia and Line/WeChat.