So one parallel in history that Threads brings to mind, especially when we discuss the possibility that it may become federated, is AOL.
America Online, those of us over 40 may recall, was a dialup service people paid to access via modems over their telephone lines in the early 90s. It had competitors like Geocities and a few others, but it was the largest company of its type at the time
@mjf_pro Oof, yeah. I was on BBS's at the time up until I got my internet connection from my university in 1994. Every college student got one at the University of Minnesota Duluth that year, in fact.
In 1994, there were dozens of BBS's and they were so active you could barely get into them because their phone lines were all tied up. By 1995, there were maybe two or three BBS's left operational in Duluth, and they were virtual ghost towns. I kinda miss them. 😞
Also, in the early 90s, the internet started emerging from academia, and with the invention of the world wide web, really started picking up steam. You still had to use your modem over telephone to connect to it, but you were instantly connected to the whole world. Amazing!
AOL got worried. They knew that if they didn't adapt fast their goose was cooked, so they did the most sensible thing they could think of: connect their enormous user base directly to the internet
Now you need to realize that, at the time the internet has a small but growing userbase. They trended towards the technically savvy end of the spectrum. It was favored by social outcasts because it let them connect to people without all that messy face-to-face nonsense.
AOL was grandma and grandpa. AOL was the sportos taking about sportsball with other sportsball enthusiasts. AOL was full of non technical people who didn't really care about protocols or open standards.
But... It also lost a bit of magic. The internet sort of felt co-opted almost overnight. It wasn't this sort of safe space where people who didn't fit in elsewhere (the LGBTQ community, furries, and so on) could feel safe anymore because their chatrooms were suddenly filled with people who were famous for using their CD trays as coffee cup holders.
And with the influx came a huge rush of bigotry and exclusion of the minority.
At the time we were all wide-eyed and naive of what was to come. The dot-com boom eventually busted in 2000, then 9/11 followed by a really nasty economic recession.
But that period of time leading up to that was pretty intense. The internet was new and shiny and everyone heard of it. Many scoffed at it because it was "hard to use" but people kept joining it even during the slow times.
So yeah, Threads is the new AOL. It's gonna land here and it's gonna be loud
What's going to be the end result? Hard to say. I want to say we're less naive than we used to be, but on the other hand the amount of institutional memory we've all seemed to have forgotten collectively speaking is massive, so I'm not so sure.
But one thing is for sure. It will be different. And we'll have to be prepared for that.
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