Facebook’s Ghost Unicorn
How can you be first to market, have a prophetic product with traction, and still have to shut down your business? This is the real story behind the first college social network. It signed up 75% of campus within its first month. Seeing the undeniable traction, the founders left school to focus on it full-time. Campus Network had all the makings of Facebook, and yet it failed a year in. Startups bite the dust all the time, but what’s remarkable about this one is that it got so many things right. Not only did it launch before Facebook, but the product was far more advanced. Where did it go wrong?
Campus Network was a pioneer. It had the first versions of what would later become iconic features including a profile, feed, and comments on photos. Meanwhile, Facebook was basically an online yearbook.
The problem: it was only 2004. Campus Network was a radical set of cutting-edge features — light years ahead of familiar convention. Facebook, a site that only had photos and poking, was compelling because it was novel enough to pique interest but familiar enough to breed trust. Fun + not scary = just right.
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