The web is only about 25 years old (half my age!) and changes rapidly. Sites come and go, even if they were big. I was thinking about some of the social sites I've used that have died a death.
I was on Orkut, but never used it much. It was just another to try and as it was owned by Google I expected it to last. It was big in Brazil, but shut down in 2014. My biggest moment there was a visit to my profile by Def Leppard singer Joe Elliot, but that's just because I share a name with his former guitarist.
Google have not been great at running social sites. They have Google+ now, but they shut down Wave and Buzz, as well as Reader. Wave was a way to have conversations between groups of people. I see it's now owned by the Apache group. Buzz was more of a microblogging platform. I actually like Google+. There are some cool people there and it has good features, but it's not really taken off as they might hope.
identi.ca was a more open alternative to Twitter with very similar features. I found a cool community of open source advocates there. It could be federated, i.e. you could run your own server. They have moved on to some other products, but I don't hear of them much.
One of the first social sites I used was Multiply. It had a good set of features. You could easily share various types of media and group people something like G+ circles to choose who could see each post. I managed to get some family and friends on there, but it turned into some sort of shopping site aimed at the far east.
The most recent casualyu was Tsu. This was one of a number of sites that had the prospect of making money for users. I was into it for most of its life and we built a great community, but the management was not great and eventually their funding ran out. I took out $200 over the 20 months or so and gave away about the same to various charities. Some people made a lot of money there, but they couldn't seem to keep the big names they had at launch. Several million people signed up, but many did nothing or just spammed posts with 'nice' comments in hope of making something.
I know sites like Friendster and MySpace were around long ago, but I didn't use those. The latter is still around, but how often do you hear of it? I know it was bought for many millions at one stage and is probably worth a lot less now. Facebook and Twitter are the biggest now and it's hard to imagine that they could be shut down, but we just don't know what the future holds. This sort of business has no precedents. I'm hoping that Steemit, or something a lot like it, can become a major player so that users can get rewarded for the content they create. I think web advertising will peak as there can only be so much money in that. There's only so much stuff people can buy.
I'd like to see users take back some control of their data. We used to have our own blog sites, but people want the social side and for everything to be really easy, preferably an app. I think Steemit could diversify by offering different aspects, e.g. long form blogging, microblogs, pure images, videos etc. I know work is already going into some of those. The next year or two are going to be exciting. Enjoy the ride!
Update: Of course the death of Vine was announced this week, but I don't think I ever used it.
That's an interesting review. After TSU went down, I looked around for somewhere else to go. I didn't realize how much paid social media had existed before. I think Newsvine was the earliest I found. They paid people for writing news, but they were bought by NBC. Now it's used as the comment system for NBCnews posts. So much for collaborative journalism.
Another I found was Hubpages. I thought about posting there, but it looked to me like its best days were behind it. So many posts were rewrites of information - like they were trying to create a knowledge base instead of connecting people. I think the changes in Google SEO hurt them because I rarely see any HubPages articles come up in search anymore.
I still like how TSU was able to build connections between people so easily. Their interface for looking at photos was really nice.
Empowering the gig-economy. And, how some companies failed the great migration to content via cell-phone platform. And, why doesn't steem have a Vine category?
I'm with you i like Google Plus. I wish they put more effort into it. And i was circled by U2 for awhile. That was very cool.
I agree and I've also been on Tsu and on Multiply.
But what about a great one which was a making money blogging platform: Bubblews.com? - any memories or experiences to share here regarding this great one?
I never used that one and I see it has shut down. Did people get paid?
Oh yes, we've got many hundreds of dollars just for pulling in views from anywhere and for shares and likes.
I remember when Filipinos left Friendster for Facebook. It was a rapid, mass exodus.
The first site I joined with is SMS.ac but I think it is still alive just changed the name to FanBox. The site paid its members but turned to be a scam site.
Then I joined Friendster, mySpace, Hi5, Tagged, etc. but they were not paying. I lost interest joining social sites since Friendster closed.
Bubblews came paying its users so I tried. Then PostAnyArticle and PersonaPaper. I didn't reach payout at PersonaPaper before the site stopped paying but Bubblews and PostAnyArticle paid me many times before they disappeared. 😊
Today, my favorite paying sites are myLot and bitLanders 🤑🤑🤑because I can comment as much as I want. 👍And my favorite non paying site is Twitter because there's a lot of good articles tweeted everyday.
Steemit is already mobile friendly (I prefer phone browsers than apps) but not user friendly.