[nyczomg]

Social media existed before the iPhone/android. I remember needing to be at home on my computer to check myspace, xanga, and even thefacebook. Not sure how I feel about this article (it's interesting at least) but the existence of phones/apps does coincide with a lot of changes to our relationship with social media and a lot of changes to social media itself.

Perhaps without smartphones in everyone's pocket we would use social media much differently and that industry would have grown differently....

[VyseofArcadia]

You did have to be more deliberate about it though. Checking socials and posting to socials required physically going to your computer, sitting down, and doing it. It wasn't something you could just to absent-mindedly with the convenience of just putting your hand in your pocket.

[pas]

And we sat at home and waited for mIRC, ICQ, or MSN Messenger to chirp, of course.

What really changed is that good old Moore's law delivered systems where personalized feeds are not just possible, but they are the norm. And with a bit of tweaking, add infinite scrolling, spice up the recommender system to inject a bit of noise/variance, and ... voila! you are in a nice Skinner box.