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Comment by meeper16 | Hacker News Reader

1. facebook did not "invent" anything, especially compared to Google, they copied text entry boxes and messaging, which anybody could easily duplicate from myspace and reworked the design. Google invented something.

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Facebook was very innovative, just not technically innovative. Their two big innovations were the real name policy and only letting in elite uni students to create social demand. Both seem obvious in hindsight, but nobody else at the time implemented both of these policies.

real name policy and only letting in elite uni students

Are we really going to describe these things as "innovations"?

Well if you are the first to introduce something then I think it is fair to say you are being innovative. They were both critically important to the success of Facebook so I think we have to give credit where credit is due.

A real name policy cannot possibly be an innovation, or if it were it predates all modern technology. FWIW, Usenet culture was overwhelmingly based on people communicating under their real names. Ergo, not the first to do so. The second - initially limiting your userbase to an exclusive demographic, is but a restriction or marketing maneuver at best, and again hardly the first to do such a thing.

You have to be intensely desperate to list these two trivialities as innovations.

The application of an old idea to a new domain is what most innovation is. The real name policy had an important effect on the early Facebook in discouraging trolling. This made it a far more friendly environment for most users. I am a strong believer in the importance of using real names online - after all I am using my real name here even though I do not have to.

I personally think that limiting the early user base to elite universities was the more important innovation for Facebook’s success. It allowed them to control their growth while creating an “aspirational” platform that could be scaled out later. I am surprised that more companies haven’t tried the same approach - it would be hard to do now, but the value in targeting this community is still there.

That must have been a different usenet than the one I was using, which was full of people like you with names like Farty McTwatwaffle.

You can't dismiss Facebook for copying myspace then in the same breath credit Google without respecting all internet entities that tested the waters before it. I was using Netscape Navigator, mapquest, yahoo, hotbot, lycos, and altavista before any of this Google Chrome/maps.google.com/ Google Search/Gmail stuff came along.

Google's products make you more efficient. Facebook's products make you less efficient.

Efficient at what?

I don't know about you, but I find Facebook an extremely efficient way of keeping up to date with my family and organising events with them. Certainly beats long email threads trying to work out Christmas plans or group trips. Facebook is a social network, and that's what it's good at, if only for the reason that everyone is on it so there's none of the friction involved in getting people to use some other tool.

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