FACEBOOKTHE WALL · NIA-06

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Specimen2007–2011

To operateWrite on a wall, change your relationship status, and poke somebody. It all lands in the feed.

2007–2011

Replaced by the Timeline in 2011.

You wrote on people, not to them.

Early Facebook gave you a Wall, and writing on it was a public act — visible, permanent, and readable Wall-to-Wall so anyone could follow the whole exchange. Status updates were forced into third person: the box began with your name and the word is. Then came Facebook Zero, and Nigeria came online in earnest.

On the record

  • The status box prefilled with your name and 'is', so everything read in the third person.
  • Wall-to-Wall showed both halves of a conversation between two people to everyone else.
  • Poking had no defined meaning and was never given one.
  • 0.facebook.com launched May 2010 — a text-only Facebook that carriers served with no data charge.

What people said

PokeWall-to-wallTop friendsIt's complicatedSuperwall

The Nigerian Internet ArchiveNIA-06