Ten years ago I was on the core team help­ing Sony envi­sion and develop an inno­v­a­tive online ser­vice for Euro­peans. Sony Inter­ac­tive Ser­vices launched “Friend­Fac­tory” in the UK and Ger­many as a pilot in 1998; they hoped to get enough trac­tion to work the bugs out of the busi­ness model and then expand into other coun­tries. It was an amaz­ing inno­va­tion for its day — most likely the world’s first social media mar­ket­ing plat­form — but way too early.

With the ben­e­fit of 20/20 hind­sight, I can see that it was an early pre­cur­sor to Twit­ter, but also offered per­sonal blog­ging, com­mu­nity build­ing tools, and other aspects of social media.

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