I Miss the Early Days of Facebook

A few weeks ago I watched The Social Network, unsure of what I would think of it. Some thought it was great. Others called it boring...

Well, boring could not be further from the truth. Just because there's little "action" doesn't make a movie boring. I found The Social Network to be one of the most intense/thrilling movies I've seen since Slumdog Millionaire. I can certainly see why it was one of the favorites to win Best Picture in February. (It ultimately lost to The King's Speech, which I have not yet seen.)

Anyway, on to the meat and potatoes of this post... Watching The Social Network brought back a handful of memories from the early days of Facebook. I didn't even know what "a facebook" was until I heard some of my fellow RA's talk about it one day in August of 2005 (about 18 months after it had been created).

Something they chronicle in the movie is allowing more and more colleges to access Facebook. Thus, the only way to log in was to have a college email address -- the reason many at Pitt State even bothered getting an account. One RA even held a floor program, where she took all of her residents to get an email address so they could all be on Facebook too.

It was something only available to college students, and I think that's when Facebook was at its best.

Sure, these days you can do some pretty cool things on there, but I still miss the simplicity that Facebook used to have. You had your information. You had a wall. You had a few pictures. And you didn't have any advertisements. (In the movie, it shows Zuckerberg being very much against advertisements.)

Another one of my favorite scenes from The Social Network is when Zuckerberg listens to a classmate talk about how great it'd be if you could tell whether or not a girl was single just by looking at her. Zuckerberg promptly runs back to his dorm room and adds "Relationship Status", "Looking For", and "Interested In" to everyone's profile.

I can certainly relate to this: That's how I found out a girl I liked had a boyfriend. A couple months later, that's how I found out she and her boyfriend broke up. A few months later, that's how others knew she and I were officially a couple. And two years later, that's how everyone knew we were engaged.

So maybe I miss those early days of Facebook as much for sentimental value as I miss them for simplicity and exclusivity. Regardless, I'll continue to use Facebook even with the continual changes that are made. But if you too want to conjure up some old memories of the early days, I recommend watching The Social Network.