Facebook--The very early years

Facebook started as a book. It was social media, as it existed in 1967.

Original Facebook

It wasn't called Facebook yet.  It was called the Harvard Register. 

It was a picture book of the official freshman photos, submitted by us and accompanied by information we had submitted about ourselves.

We found the information interesting, so the organizer was able to monetize the creation.  There were ads that were particularly well suited to interest incoming freshmen.

It is the Facebook system--the early version.

Everyone bought the book--actually two books.  One for men, pictured here, and a smaller one for women. (There were four times as many men as women at Harvard back then.) Some people spent time learning names and faces in advance so they could greet people by name. If a guy noticed a girl who caught his eye across the room in class he could go to the woman's edition and thumb through pictures, find her, and know her name.

I poured over the women's book and so did other other guys. It was a catalog of beautiful, smart women classmates, so of course we were interested.

Back in the 1960s there was no swiping right or left.  It was a book, on paper,  prepared by the Yearbook publishing people and sold at the Harvard Coop, which is the name for the Harvard affiliated bookstore. It cost about $5--or about 3 hours work at minimum wage--the equivalent of about $30 now.  It was worth it.  

The women's book was a quarter the size of the men's and cost about half what the men's version cost.  It was well worth it. I have mislaid my copy, but it was similar to the men's, except for size. 

We look young because we were young.  Lots of students were 17 when they started school, and these photos were taken as part of our college applications, frequently taken the year before at age 16. We had supplied our addresses and expected majors ourselves. My photo is in the lower left of the left page. Of more interest is the young man in the lower left of the right page, Charles Schumer, now Minority Leader of the Senate.

Photo, name, home address, major.  

Boy meeting girl was always an important part of the Register. The back pages gave handy listings of local colleges, especially women's colleges: Pembroke, Mount Holyoke, Wheaton, and Wellesley.  It listed direct phone numbers for the various women's dorms, in the style of the era. No area code. There was a word prefix and then 5 digits, e.g. LOngwood 6-8795 for Wheaton College.  CEdar 5-9735 for dorm building at Wellesley College.

Helpful directory for Women's colleges

Below is a close-up of listings, this one for James Koch, would would later become the founder of Sam Adams brewery.  Other classmates are Tom Stemberg, later the founder of Staples; Franklin Raines, later Chairman of Fannie Mae; Frank Rich, later the columnist and executive producer of the TV show 'Veep'; singer Bonnie Rhaitt, who started with us then dropped out; playwright Chris Durang, whose plays have been produced at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland; Drew Gilpin, later a historian and currently Harvard's president. 

In the years after these photos were taken for this early version of Facebook many of these people would become nearly unrecognizable, having grown beards and long hair. It was the era of anti-war protests and agitation for equal numbers of men and women.  Some students occupied the administration building. The college president at the time called us the "worst class ever." 

Close up of a photo and listings.

Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify at Congress later today. He is being questioned about Facebook and privacy. It is a new concern. In 1967 we supplied personal information to the college, and the yearbook people put it into a book. It just happened. 

At the time I didn't know anyone who asked the question "who gave these people the right to publish our faces and home addresses?"  Instead, we were happy to have been included.  For most of us, it was the first time our names appeared in a book. Maybe some women would notice our face and name.