Comment by flir
1 year ago
I'd say there's been (at least) three overlapping generations: The academics (.edu email addresses), the geeky amateurs (dial-up internet), and the app users (the social media crowd).
Not trying to denigrate the third generation there, it's just that for them it's a mature product, like a TV or a car. They feel no need to tinker with what BigCorp is selling them.
Instead of overlapping generations, there's a gap of a whole generation of 'mainstream' internet users between the geeky amateurs/dial-up internet which arguably ceases being the dominant usecase already in mid-1990s before the dot.com boom starts due to this generation, and the app users which get seriously started only from around 2010.
Those users were large numbers of mainstream non-geeky people, but they used websites on desktop computers, not through the walled garden of facebook on a phone.
Where do the aol users fit? Part of the early app crowd?
If I have to fit them to the model (which tbh I don't think bears close inspection) they're the vanguard of Generation 3. AOL was the first of the walled gardens. A proto-FaceGramTok.
> A proto-FaceGramTok
I love it. Though FaceTokGram rolls off the tongue easier.
1 reply →