> It's amazing that the core features of a modern social network were invented so far back.
The core feature of a modern social network was invented like 100kya. Doing this stuff on a computer is just a straightforward application. Email is mail. Chat/talk is talk. Finger is a bulletin board. All of those showed up within a few years of serious multiple user systems.
Microphones and transducers, laser inteferometric digital storage and perception-based frequency band audio compression are "novel". And by construction here, a big shared communication device that can be used to store bulletin board material is novel.
The fact that there are real inventions worth celebrating doesn't mean we should celebrate every obvious use of those inventions.
Is SMTP and the decentralized nature of email not a real invention? There are a thousand ways to build something like finger, whether centralized/decentralized, what info is disclosed, to whom, privacy models, how it gets updated, what media is included, etc etc.
Given it could have been a variant Facebook, much like MySpace could have also been Friendster before it shows how there is a lot of real innovation in things that seem obvious in hindsight.
I’d argue there are many, many more “obvious” ways to port existing social conventions to the digital domain that haven’t yet been done.
The core feature of a modern social network was invented like 100kya. Doing this stuff on a computer is just a straightforward application. Email is mail. Chat/talk is talk. Finger is a bulletin board. All of those showed up within a few years of serious multiple user systems.