WI: Facebook in 1994

The idea of a platform dedicated to sharing photos and videos thriving in a world of 28k modems just caused my mind to boggle...

Well, if it's big among college kids at first, maybe an earlier use of T1 lines at universities would make it workable. That would mean colleges would have a LOT of use of their servers for Facebook, which probably means fee hikes and faster installation of T1 into dorms.

It probably makes the leap to people's home computers faster, since cable modems became a thing in the mid-90s, but it starts off with techies and people who can spring for cable internet.
 
The internet speed of 28.8 or 56.6 would not be anywhere near sufficient for this. You'd be waiting literally minutes for the Facebook home wall to load, let alone anything else in detail. Forget videos - my 56.6 back in the day gave me 1mb per 5 minutes very roughly. Also, social media thrives on posting stuff as it happens and in the moment - not making a mental note of it to draft on notepad and then upload later so you don't hog the phone line for too long. The rest of my family needs to use the line too, to talk to people!

Also, without digital cameras, how are photographs going to get on the computer in the first place to put online?

I had a scanner in the late 1990s.

FB doesn't have to be complicated. If it starts in 1994 you have minimal graphics and status updates are mostly text.
 

wikipipes

Banned
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Well, there were plenty of news webpages in 1994.

Also, Pizza Hut

PizzaHut.jpg
 
We should AHC a more advanced internet infrastructure circa 1994. Even just being five years more advanced would cover a lot of ground for the scenario.
 

Wallet

Banned
We should AHC a more advanced internet infrastructure circa 1994. Even just being five years more advanced would cover a lot of ground for the scenario.
I really wanted this thread to discuss the social, culture, economic, and political effects a earlier internet would bring more so then the technical feasibility
 
within higher education however, 'fast ' internet was a thing by the mid 1990s , I attended University in the UK in two stints ( change of courses) first in 96/7 and then 98- 2001 in both cases students had access to fast internet with reasonable recreational use allowed outside of 'office hours' in on campus and in accomodation based computer rooms , in the later case we could also dial up for the cost of local call from home at 56k
 
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I really wanted this thread to discuss the social, culture, economic, and political effects a earlier internet would bring more so then the technical feasibility

Fair enough. Then we should handwave and assume internet technology is about early 2000s level in 1994. We don't have to get into specifics about the how, since that is plausible. And we can go from there.
 
Ah the joys of tiny jpeg images, hoping no one picked up the phone and knocked you offline and social interaction limited to message boards and the time when email was actually the only way to communicate at length.
 
Ah the joys of tiny jpeg images, hoping no one picked up the phone and knocked you offline and social interaction limited to message boards and the time when email was actually the only way to communicate at length.

jpg?
That was in the future. early-mid '90s was all gif and rle, from being popularized by Compuserve
 
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