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You had to go to Harvard
Nobody likes Facebook anymore. I’m not going to argue against that for sure — even though I do have to admit it’s the first way my now-wife and I communicated in advance of the college reunion where we actually got together.
So I guess I can’t 100% hate it and wish it never existed.
That said, they say those who don’t learn the lessons of history are destined to repeat them. But what about learning some of the lessons — and maybe even separating them from the source — so you can copy them?
Right, Facebook — which 20 years ago made a bold move that could have cost the company its key advantage, only for it to stand out in retrospect as a milestone on its way to becoming the renamed juggernaut it is today.
Here’s the story. I’ve long maintained — and I’m not alone — that the only reason Facebook had its initial success (compared to so many other social media networks starting at the same time) was that originally you had to be a student at Harvard University to become a member.
From there, they democratized things, barely: by adding Yale University, Columbia, Princeton, and Stanford.
Eventually they branched out to the entire Ivy League and other elite universities, and then to all colleges, and eventually to high school students and employees of certain companies.
Point being: it was a walled garden where the walls kept getting pushed farther and farther out. But, there was still a wall.
In September 2006, however, about 30 months after launch, that all changed. This was the moment when any breathing human being with an email address could create a Facebook account.
“[M]oments ago Facebook removed the restrictions on registration and anyone can now become a member by joining a geographic network,” TechCrunch reported that morning. “They’ve also anticipated backlash from existing users who liked Facebook just fine as an exclusive club, thank you very much.”
So, how did it turn out? That’s mostly rhetorical, since everyone knows darn well how it turned out, but let’s put some numbers on the answer:
“Prior to open registration, new users were joining at a rate of about 20,000 a day. A few weeks after opening up Facebook to everyone, that number had changed to 50,000 a day, and rising.
Growth in Facebook’s user numbers began to look like a hockey stick going only steeply upward.”
That’s from Brian McCullough’s “How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone.” He goes on to point out that over the next year, Facebook hit the 25 million registered user mark with more than 20% of them beyond college age.
Again, I know that Facebook now has a reputation at best for being a stale social network where your grandmother still posts memes.
I mean, if it weren’t for soccer, a couple of local town forums and ski groups that I’m in, I doubt I’d ever open it.
But, back then this was a big deal.
One more bit of context, and then we’ll wrap the lesson up with a bow. The context is that Facebook opened to everyone just three weeks after it first introduced the News Feed.
It’s a fairly uncontroversial feature now that nevertheless led to near-virtual riots at the time.
In fact, concerns over privacy, and the idea that Facebook would broadcast to everyone in your network, led people to see this as a bug not a feature, so to speak.
Anyway, Facebook delayed the open launch as a result.
Now, the lessons. They say there are riches in the niches. I’ve got to imagine that a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg saw quickly that as a Harvard University student he had access to one of the richest niches of them all.
Of course, Facebook is now Meta. And, Meta is now quite a few iterations past what Facebook was doing and expanding to 20 years ago.
Even people who thought it was neat back then flat-out hate it now.
But that decision back in 2006 is still worth remembering.
Sometimes the thing that gets you from zero to successful is exactly the thing you have to be willing to leave behind.
Just maybe separate the teacher from the lesson you learn.
Sobibor
When I saw months ago that the anniversary of the Sobibor revolt was this week, I knew I wanted to write about it. I also sort of speed-watched the entire Escape From Sobibor movie on YouTube again, and I became interested to learn what happened to some of the real-life characters who had a bit less screen time due to the limitations of a 2-hour movie.
Maybe it’s my Life Story Magic experience, but one chain of results stopped me in my tracks:
First, Selma Wijnberg and Chaim Engel, inmates from Holland and Poland, who fell in love in that horrible place and were among the few who escaped in 1943. They made it to America and were married for nearly 60 years until Chaim’s death in 2003.
But second, it turns out that the actors who played Winjnberg and Engel in the movie in 1987 — the Duth actress Ellis van Maarseveen and the Welsh actor Robert Gwilym — met on the set, fell and love, and got married themselves. (In fairness, van Maarseveen and Gwilym’s marriage ended in divorce after 16 years, but they had two children together.)
Obviously, I’m not trying to write a “on the bright side” type of coda to that story. But it is amazing how things like this can come out of horror.
Other things worth knowing …
Yahoo News: Federal agents raided the Washington home of Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar on Monday, marking a dramatic escalation in President Trump’s confrontation with the outspoken lawmaker. Fox News reported that the search was linked to a criminal fraud investigation concerning immigration paperwork submitted on behalf of the Somali-born congresswoman by her late father when she was a child.
Reuters via Yahoo: Elon Musk has spent roughly $366 million on the 2026 midterm elections so far — $276 million just since July — trying to help Republicans retain control of Congress, making him likely the single-biggest political donor in this year’s races. There is a lot at stake for Musk, with House Democrats calling for investigations into his government contracts as SpaceX CEO and his work running the Department of Government Efficiency.
The Independent: A major cyberattack targeting commercial refrigeration systems across France left more than 150 supermarkets facing millions of euros in damages after hackers remotely altered fridge temperatures overnight. Rather than shutting systems off, the attackers reprogrammed cooling regulators to force a continuous defrost cycle, driving internal temperatures up to 50°C and spoiling vast quantities of fresh produce, meat, dairy, and frozen goods.
CBS News: British comedian and actor Russell Brand appeared in a London court Monday for the start of his trial on rape and sexual assault charges. Brand, 51, has pleaded not guilty. The charges involve six women and alleged offenses between 1999 and 2009. The trial is expected to last up to 10 weeks.
The Guardian: Anthropic has barred users from exhibiting “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” toward its models, as the company’s leaders continue to ponder machine consciousness. The ban does not apply to common user frustrations, model testing, or “dark creative themes.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said he cannot rule out the possibility that AI systems are conscious.
CTV News: A passenger who helped avert a catastrophe on a FlyDubai flight after the pilot was stabbed mid-air last month credits a Canadian TV documentary series for knowing how to seize control of the aircraft. The long-running show “Mayday,” which examines real-life air disasters, appears to have given him the knowledge — or at least the courage — not to make things worse. “It’s nice to be associated with a story with a happy ending,” said executive producer Alex Bystram.
Hollywood Reporter: Coming soon: a Miami Vice reboot — a new movie starring Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler as Tubbs and Crockett.
Thanks for reading. Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this at Inc.com. See you in the comments!