In some ways, social media started with a bet by a bunch of startups that, if presented the right way, regular people would share whatever they wanted

The Massive Army of Volunteers That Built AOL in the 90s

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2021-08-09 14:30:04

In some ways, social media started with a bet by a bunch of startups that, if presented the right way, regular people would share whatever they wanted to on their platforms without expecting any sort of compensation.

Give them a place to list their profiles or share their thoughts, get a little ego stroke, and they’ll be totally fine with sticking around for free. Sure, you actually go to Twitter because of the people, but the people who run the network get all the money even if you generate a significant amount of their traffic. (It makes you wonder if a certain former president will send an invoice.)

This is a weird line of thinking, I know, but given the recent news involving Tumblr , I kind of got curious about whether there was a situation where this equation flipped—where people were using a platform for free and suddenly expected to get paid for it. And it turns out, there was.

And it was a biggie: The version of AOL that entered millions of homes via dial-up lines in the late 90s, thanks to an army of volunteers that carried the network’s weight on their unpaid shoulders.

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