Ben Thompson, writing for Stratechery, pulled together an excellent look at what Facebook was and what it has become. A bit of a long read, but full of insight.

This quote from a 2004 op-ed in the Harvard Crimson:

The thefacebook.com scene includes reams of carefully coiffed, immaculately manicured, evening-garbed Harvard students grinning eagerly on page after page as we present our own ideal image of selfhood to fellow browsers…

And this 2009 quote, from David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect:

“You have one identity,” [Zuckerberg] says emphatically three times in a single minute during a 2009 interview. He recalls that in Facebook’s early days some argued the service ought to offer adult users both a work profile and a “fun social profile.” Zuckerberg was always opposed to that. “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.”

This is a core value.

Then, as Facebook grows and your friend list expands over time (this quote from a Bloomberg article):

People have been less willing to post updates about their lives as their lists of friends grow…Instead, Facebook’s 1.6 billion users are posting more news and information from other websites. As Facebook ages, users may have more than a decade’s worth of acquaintances added as friends. People may not always feel comfortable checking into a local bar or sharing an anecdote from their lives, knowing these updates may not be relevant to all their connections.

According to one of the people familiar with the situation, Facebook employees working on the problem have a term for this decline in intimacy: “context collapse.” Personal sharing has shifted to smaller audiences on Snapchat, Facebook’s Instagram and other messaging services.

A fascinating read, all down the line. Nice job, Ben.