2009.11: Chez DiDi - Social Networking in 1996
The original Chez DiDi http://tr.im/chezdidi
DiDi stood for "Discussion en Direct", French for "Live Discussion". At its peak, Chez DiDi had about 2,000 members in France, Canada, Australia, the USA, Belgium, Israel and a few North African countries. For obvious reasons, DiDi is barely relevant today but a few of the original members still meet on a new Laconica version put up a few months ago. The first mention I find on the net is a post I probably placed about it in December of 1997.
DiDi began without the need to login but after I woke up to pages of horrible racist posts, I wrote a registration and login system in C with admin tools to mute or delete members. In the 10+ year history of DiDi, the login was never compromised, even though a few people were kicked and desperately wanted revenge.
One thing that set DiDi apart was the French language. The French-speaking Canadians were very into the Internet from the beginning, more so even than the French. It was natural then for a lot of Canadian students to join DiDi and chat there much of the day. Once I logged in as admin and found two people having "virtual sex" there, all via text chat.
What I was most happy with in the DiDi experience was the "DiDi Party" that was held in Belgium in the late 90's with people coming to attend from France and Belgium of course but also from Israel, Tunisia and Wisconsin. The fact that a little PHP could bring together 20 or so people from these diverse countries was heartening. We also had a few lunches in Paris with people coming from as far off as the US and Australia. Bringing people together was the greatest thing about Chez DiDi, a small social network created in 1996.
In the last few days, someone posted on the original Chez DiDi site: "Somone stole your idea! See Twitter.com"
