I grew up in New York City and now live in Ottawa, Canada. Back in the day, Facebook was only for college students. In other words, you had to have a .edu email address or your university/college had to be listed on facebook for you to be able to sign up. Every time I visited New York, people asked me: “are you on Facebook?” But of course the only Canadian University that was on Facebook back in those days was McGill (mainly because McGill has such a big American population).

Facebook registered in Ottawa, Canada!

Wanting to see what this Facebook phenomenon was, I registered the University of Ottawa on Facebook. I went through the drudgery of listing all the classes & majors available at the school to get us registered. About a month later, the University of Ottawa was added! Success! I was the first person to sign onto Facebook in Ottawa. I needed to get more people to sign on. I started to tell friends about it and managed to convince a group of people.

The Nay Sayers…

Most people though said things like “why would I want to expose myself on the internet?” Most people didn’t see a point in giving away their privacy. Those that were into social networks were typically using Orkut, Hi5, and Friendster and did not want to change.

But, Facebook took over anyway! Why, you ask?

1) Facebook had a clean-cut and predictable interface.

2) Facebook was exclusive. It was only for University/College students.

3) Facebook was amazing for photo-sharing. You would attend a party and then get to share all those photos with your friends.

At the end of the day…

The Nay Sayers ended up being the biggest Facebook addicts… No names mentioned

Aydin.

Posted By: Aydin Mirzaee