In 2006, on Facebook, you'd create a profile and list what residence you lived in and what sections of what classes you took. Literally everything on your profile was basically a select query that let you see who else lived there, and who else was in that section. It was awesome. But it also had the potential to have a much larger creep factor, and obviously didn't scale because not everybody was in college.

You're mostly right. There is a lot more sophistication now, but most of the advances facebook has made are in two areas:

-Mobile. Making messaging a central strength of the platform. Figuring this out is a big piece of why the stock is doing so well. -Conversations. Facebook has become the default place for people to discuss (or, more accurately, shout about) media/news. I mean both news from external sources and personal life events.

Everything else is reorganizations of existing features in new ways, like the shift from the wall to the timeline. It was a new feature that better fit an existing goal, not an expansion in the scope of the service.

They effectively destroyed Facebook when they got rid of all of the college class info -- all of the curated content that had to be done on a school-by-school basis. When they got rid of groups (before later re-adding them). The newsfeed.

There was a time somewhere in 2006-2007 where Facebook was an utter shell of its former self, looked weird, and wasn't particularly useful.

And the amazing thing was, they were right. They did what they needed to do to pivot from what it was (a college information source) into a global social network superpower. It sort of reminds me of the Steve Jobs quote where if you don't cannibalize your own products, someone else will.

>> Is Facebook 2016 really that different to Facebook 2006?

My students talk of a much greater "creep factor" in that they now assume everything done via facebook is being examined by men in black suits behind concrete walls, or fat men in basements wearing sweatpants. It's no longer considered an appropriate place for candid conversation.

> It's no longer considered an appropriate place for candid conversation.

So what are they using instead? Whatsapp? Other messaging app? Instagram?

Snapchat.

And don't make the mistake of thinking Snapchat is just about nude pics. It is mostly used for saying things you want to disappear rather than have everyone reread in the morning.

As soon as people like me know, they move on. The day that professors (me) cops (old people) and parents (very old people) start noticing a platform it's time to switch. Some of my students are using services more popular in Asia. But many, particularly females, simply aren't sharing information about themselves as they might have 5-10 years ago. The novelty is gone.

In 2006 Facebook was all about college. I remember you could even list your classes right on your profile and get grouped with people taking your same classes.

But you're right, "blogging for normal people, restricted to friends and family" sounds like it will always be Facebook's core offering.

Sure but Livejournal could do that. What Facebook is good for is event planning, it very quickly becomes part of your "real life". Google screwed up massively by not integrating G+ and their calendar offering from day 1.

Google's attempts to integrate G+ and calendars fared poorly.

http://www.businessinsider.com/robert-scoble-google-events-p...

For much the same reason many of Google's other attempts to integrate^Wintrude on people's personal lives have fared poorly. Social integration isn't a coding problem.

If I remember correctly, 2006 was before the "news feed" switch. That was a huge shift that changed how people interacted with Facebook, and communicated with each other on it.

Yup. You used to actually click on and read peoples' profiles, and they'd post directly on your wall. 2006 is also about when they added photos.