Too Soon?

Sometimes brilliant ideas come along and their biggest downfall is they were ahead of their time. There's an old saying with start ups, "Being early is the same as being wrong." One that comes to mind is Xpage.com. Xpage was around during my middle school years, so early 2000's. Xpage was a social media site that gave users their own "page" to design to fit their personalities that other users could visit and leave messages. The problem was, technology wasn't advanced enough, so Xpage didn't have much to offer in the way of customization. The site never took off with the older crowd, tens or adults. It seemed to attract the middle school group, but only held their attention for so long. Dial up Internet was what most homes still had at the time, so loading and customizing pages did require patience and for no family members to need the home phone line. Smart phones weren't a thing yet, so this social media site was limited to users updated from a home or school computer. IT did, however, pave the way for Myspace to come along when technology was slightly more advanced and it attracted the attention of kids and adults, and offered more customization, communication, and media. Myspace was huge, but even it was still just a little too early. Facebook came at the just perfect time and won over Myspace users with its much more advanced site. Besides attracting kids and adults, Facebook attracted businesses who began advertising, conducting business, and communicating with consumers. Many businesses were able to start up via Facebook only. It's now a huge, multi billion dollar company that's not going anywhere anytime soon. Facebook is big part of daily life for many people now, something Xpage just couldn't be years before.