OMG, Guess Who Just “Viewed My Profile?”

Posted on by Nathalie Budiman

Do you remember “Friendster”?

And I’m referring to the pre-2011 version, before it turned into this weird social gaming website (basically a dumbed down version of Steam).

Well I definitely do. Friendster, often considered as the “grandfather” of social media, was my life in primary school. And it is also what made me first understand the notion of “identity”. You could tell who’s-who from their Friendster profiles; popular girls decorated their profiles with pink texts, “emocores” showed-off their absurdly long bangs in their display pictures, and jocks spammed everyone’s newsfeeds with numerous photos of famous soccer players. You could even tell which “friend group” a person belonged to because everyone made sure to list all of his or her bffs in the description box.

And who can forget the infamous “who’s viewed me” featured. I remember calling my friend (through my family’s landline phone, of course) every time I saw my crush’s profile appear in that page. It was absolutely exhilarating, and I would squeal and scream every time this happened, much to my baby-boomers parents’ chagrin.

Friendster and MSN Messenger ruled the social world in the early 2000’s. And til this day I still laugh at the weird nuances that came with using these platforms.

Laughs aside, these early online platforms truly did shape the social landscape of my generation. For better or worse, our identities were shaped around online social networks. I have been conscious about “online identity branding” since third grade – a pretty mind-boggling idea for a nine-year old to wrap her head around.

Just a year ago, I tried logging back into my Friendster account for nostalgia’s sake, but after typing in the website into the search bar, I got this page instead.

Man, has times changed.

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