Social Media, Circa 1997

Canadian blogger SuzeMuse had a great post today about social media not being new at all. As a social media veteran of over 11 years, I can assure you she's right. Her post inspired me to take a trip back to web 2.0, circa 1997.

Back then, I was a stay-home mom, desperate for social interaction but totally isolated from actual friends. The only thing I had to keep me company was a computer and a dial-up connection. What started as a Google search for an ovulation calendar led me to an “expecting club” of women who were also trying to conceive—and with that, my social media journey began.

Through the magic of one of my favorite web tools, the Wayback Machine, I was actually able to dig up the page that started it all for me. This is a snapshot of the page in 1997.

Guess the concept worked because here’s the 2008 version of the same site.

Ok—you say-—maybe there were online communities back then, but not web 2.0 stuff like reviews, blogs or videos. Actually, look again: granted, the 1997 version doesn’t have blogs, but it does have groups, reviews and videos (sorry, link to the videos is broken).

As SuzeMuse, well, muses, about Twitter one day just vanishing--imagine your most valued social network suddenly disappearing? It happened to my online mom community-—multiple times. But Suze is exactly right: somehow we were always able to pick up the pieces, rebuild and regroup. Somehow (can you say social networking?) we’d always manage to spread the word to one another and find the newly-created group. Imagine trying to find and contact all of your Twitter followers--but without Twitter. Good luck with that.

Oh, and forget luxuries like free social networks—our boards were either hosted and supported by one woman’s techie husband, or built on rickety, unreliable services that would go down at the drop of the hat and stay down for days, if not permanently. Imagine 100 women all waiting breathlessly to hear whether Sally’s pregnancy test was positive after watching her trying to conceive for 7 years and having the boards suddenly be gone for a week or more? Happened. Ditto for labor, births, and other cliff-hanger moments.

We have had some awesome meetups—10 or more of us at a time, some traveling from as far away as Australia and Norway. Flying from Australia to DC to meet up with a bunch of women you’ve never even laid eyes on and know only by virtue of an online social network? If that isn't a testament to the power of social media, I don’t know what is.

All I know is that anyone who says social media is just a fad hasn’t had the experiences I’ve had. Social media is here to stay, period.

5 Fun Facts

Susan Murphy aka SuzeMuse, an awesome Canadian blogger, somehow found me worthy of being memed. The concept of being memed--or tagged--is you tell 5 things about yourself, then tag (e.g. link) to 5 other people asking them to do the same. You get to shock the world with your shameful secrets and spread some link love. Even if you couldn't care less about my 5 fun facts, scroll down and check out the people I tag because you might discover some cool new blogs.

Ok--let me see if I can scrape together 5 fun things about myself.


1) I bought my wedding dress for $9.99 on eBay. We were eloping in Vegas, so nobody was going to see it anyway, but I wanted to at least look "bridey" in the pictures. I combed eBay and found some girl selling her prom dress, took a chance and ordered it and it was perfect. We got married at the Wynn (in our suite--how cool is that?) and when we walked around the hotel for the photos a million people all told me how gorgeous the dress was. (Yes, that is a photo of us.)

In fact, the whole outfit--dress, veil, tiara (I was determined to wear a tiara even though I was almost 40), shoes--cost under $50. Ok, well I already had the shoes, but still.

2) I once wore the same pair of socks for an entire semester without washing them.I got to college and promptly took up with the hippies--something nobody who knew me would have ever called. Don't ask me why, but I just decided to see how long I could wear the same pair of ragg wool socks (worn, of course, with Birkenstocks) without washing them. It was also, coincidentally, the semester I had a 1.54 GPA and almost got kicked out.

3) I had a radio show in college. You'd never know it now, but once upon a time I was a cool DJ. I even had Dave Wakeling, by that point of General Public fame, as a guest. He dubbed me "Ranking Maggie" and gave me a tambourine signed by him and Ranking Roger.

4) I was one of the original PayPal users. This fact is probably not fun to anyone but me, but I remember when PayPal started they offered $5 to open an account and $5 for each person you got to sign up. Talk about a brilliant exercise in social media--guess it panned out for PayPal pretty well. That was also back when I used to sell stuff on eBay all the time and friends told me I should start a business selling other people's stuff on eBay. If I had taken that advice I'd probably be a millionaire by now.

5) I was a guest on the Oprah Show. This is my fun fact trump card. I was one of the "real life desperate housewives" on the episode featuring the cast of the then-new show, Desperate Housewives. An Oprah producer and a camera crew came to my house, followed me around and filmed me for 9 hours, all to make the 2 minute clip they featured on the show. They totally scripted me too--told me what to do, how to look, what to say, etc. I figured, whatever, I just want to meet Oprah and who's going to see it anyway--everyone's at work at 4 pm on a weekday, right?

Wrong. Every single person I've ever known happened to be watching Oprah that day. Friends from high school, friends from college, neighbors, friend's moms, teachers at my kids' school, coworkers...everyone. Oh well, the adventure was well worth the stigma of forever being known as "Maggie from Oprah" and being shunned by most of the moms in my community.

Ok--now it's someone elses' turn:

1) My sister, Cassie of Cute and Evil fame.

2) Lindy Dreyer, association social media blogger/starlet and her counterpart

3) Maddie Grant. They just launched a new company, SocialFish, to help associations dive into social media. Sorry ladies--I'm sure you've been memed before but you're the first two people who came to mind!

4) Penelope Trunk. I'm going to pull a Tim Ferriss and go out on a limb here. Penelope Trunk is a superstar and doesn't know me from Adam, but hey, she's big on sharing fun facts about herself.

Ok, poor Patrick is going to kill me if I don't sign off now, so I'm going to have to sleep on who to pick for #5.