Flaming Death

This tale begins in the year 2006, in the city of San Francisco, where a young man named Jack Dorsey had a burning idea. Inspired by the concept of short, status updates and the efficiency of SMS messages, he envisioned a platform that would allow people to express themselves in brief bursts of 140 characters or less. And so, the foundations of Twitter were laid.

But like any good story, there were twists and turns along the way. Jack Dorsey, along with his co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams, faced numerous challenges in bringing their creation to life. Funding was scarce, and the team encountered technical hurdles that threatened to ground their ambitious project before it ever took flight.

However, like the resilient little bird they had chosen as their mascot, the team persisted. In March 2006, Twitter officially took its first fluttering steps into the world, with its first-ever tweet sent by Jack Dorsey: “just setting up my twttr.” The simplicity and novelty of the concept quickly caught the attention of early adopters, and the platform began to gain traction.

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At the time, nobody would have believed that an old saying would come true: If you fly too high, you get too close to the sun. And like Daedalus, son of Icarus, Twitter fell toward flaming death.

The Palace of Horror

I would like to testify that I was officially involved in the affairs of the ASTROCOHORS CLUB that day. On that day we had noticed an unusual blip in the lower band. As it turned out, this was the first contact with an alien realm, where an evil overlord was trying to seize control and rule the realms from his Palace of Horrors.
But as I found out, his arrogance over a few freaks was his undoing. He wanted to dominate them all, this lord of freaks.
This is the story of a downfall.

The Lord of the Freaks – Part 1: The Fellowship of the Freaks

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The Lord of the Freaks – Part 2: The Two Freaks

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The Lord of the Freaks – Part 3: The Return of the Freak

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This was a journey that took three years to be completed. Thanks to the brave inhabitants of this strange world, a catastrophe was averted. The connection between the realms has been closed. But it seems like there are some happy hobbits on our side who want to make everyday life better. If so, we can only welcome it. Until then we will have to wait and see.

Me at the zoo | YouTube

If you only have one dimension available, things can get tiresome quickly. But maybe this coin has two sides. The creativity must not be limited. And that was exactly the idea when a couple of friends had something to discuss: Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

The inspiration for a new kind of video website obviously first came from Janet Jackson’s role in 2004 Super Bowl incident when her breast was exposed during her performance, and later from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, which led to the idea of a video sharing site. Hurley and Chen said that the original idea was a video version of an online dating service, and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not. They created posts on Craigslist asking attractive women to upload videos of themselves to YouTube in exchange for a $100 reward. Difficulty in finding enough dating videos led to a change of plans, with the site’s founders deciding to accept uploads of any type of video.

Hurley and Chen developed the idea during the early months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen’s apartment in San Francisco.

The domain name www.youtube.com was activated on February 14, 2005, and the website was developed over the subsequent months. The first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23, 2005.

You never know where things are going. But maybe it is worth adding a new location to this story. So there is a new department of the ASTROCOHORS CLUB:

ASTROCOHORS CLUB Videos,

starting with a simple visit at the zoo. Because the elephants, you know…

But…

What will you do, when they get you?

What will you do, when they break you?

If you continue, what will you… become?


(c) 2005 YouTube

Parts of this article contains information from the Wikipedia article “YouTube“. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.

Freezing Torture

In the dormitories of Harvard University, a young man named Mark Zuckerberg sat hunched over his computer, peering into the digital realm with a glimmer of ambition in his eyes. Little did he know that his late-night endeavors would soon sow the seeds for what would become one of the most influential and pervasive social platforms in the world—Facebook.

Our tale begins in the early 2000s, a time when the internet was rapidly transforming the way people connected and communicated. Mark, a brilliant computer programmer with a penchant for innovation, saw an opportunity to create a digital space where students could connect, share ideas, and build virtual communities.

Armed with a passion for coding and a burning desire to leave his mark on the world, Mark embarked on a journey to bring his vision to life. With the help of his college roommates, Andrew McCollum, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place.

In February 2004, Facebook emerged from the depths of Mark’s dorm room, originally known as “TheFacebook.” It started as an exclusive platform for Harvard students, igniting a spark of excitement and curiosity among the campus population. The concept was simple yet powerful—a digital space where users could create profiles, upload photos, and connect with friends and acquaintances.

As word of this novel platform spread like wildfire, the demand for expansion grew. Mark’s brainchild soon reached other prestigious universities, spreading its roots to Stanford, Columbia, and beyond. With each new expansion, the social network evolved, adapting to the needs and desires of its ever-growing user base.

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But like any great tale, there were hurdles to overcome. Facebook faced challenges in balancing user privacy, dealing with controversies, and fending off competition from other budding social platforms. Yet, through it all, Mark’s relentless determination and the collective spirit of his team propelled Facebook forward, transforming it into a global sensation.

As the platform expanded beyond college campuses, Facebook became a virtual melting pot, bridging gaps between people, cultures, and continents. It evolved from a mere networking tool into a juggernaut of social interaction, encompassing everything from personal connections to business ventures and societal movements.