“We’ve known for over a decade that people come to Reddit to talk about the products they love – take r/BuyItForLife for example, a community of over 1.5 million redditors who have been sharing recommendations and advice about their lifelong, must-have purchases since 2011. These updates will uplevel the search-and-discover experience for both brands and our users by tapping into our differentiated value as a hub for actionable conversation”
Napster and Kaza on dialup, PC set to auto redial after 3 hours to keep within the terms of my unlimited data plan.
Just over 20 years on one of the earliest “social media” websites, and I wasn’t exactly young when I joined that.
Ahhh good old Napster I forgot about that one… Waiting hours to download a full track only for someone to answer the phone part way through.
The glory days :)
To add to your list of chat programs, the pre MSN chat program that came with Windows, followed by Gooey and Odigo
MSN was a blast… I can’t say I used Gooey or Odigo they don’t ring a bell :)
I remember eventually progressing into IRC relay chat (the app I used to use was called MIRC) and that was a blast.
I remember the first time talking to someone on MSN and they were in America. I’m not exaggerating when I say it blew my mind ! I could reach out and speak to someone that far away almost instantaneously. It was and still is phenomenal to me. So much so I eventually changed careers to become a developer :)
I still keep in contact with a couple of people from Gooey (it shut down around 2002 I think), it was an excellent chat platform, you had chat rooms linked to whatever webpage you were on, very good for common interests. We even had a few meetups, I was working contract work at the time and had a 3 month spell were I travelled around the UK visiting various Internet weirdos.
That’s pretty epic not going to lie !!!
I remember I became really friendly with a girl from Malta. We wrote a few letters back and forth after meeting on ICQ but unfortunately life then got in the way and we lost touch. I have scratched my head on so many occasions as to what her name was I would love to reach out and see what she’s been up to all these years.
Kudos to you staying stay in touch all this time. That really is awesome :)