Stacy Horn, 66, is an author and the founder of East Coast Hang Out, or ECHO, which is widely regarded as the first social network. She joined Cybercrime Magazine Podcast host Heather Engel to discuss her background and the startup of ECHO in 1990, as well as its impact on broader cyber culture and the future of social media on the Internet.

Here’s an excerpt from a 2023 story on ECHO in MIT Technology Review:

When Horn, 37 at the time, founded ECHO in 1989, she wanted to create a digital space that was social and unequivocally New York. Members had to meet two requirements: they had to be geeky enough to navigate a cumbersome, text-based digital platform in the early days of the internet, but culturally in tune enough to foster the types of conversations you might hear at a West Village dinner party.

Horn enlisted her graduate school friends (she was a recent graduate of New York University’s interactive telecommunications program), as well as members of other bulletin-board-style platforms.

One primary source of inspiration was the California-based online community known as the WELL (for “Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link”), started by Stewart Brand in 1985. Brand is well known for being a counterculture impresario in the Bay Area during the 1960s, editing the widely distributed Whole Earth Catalog.

Just as the WELL brought together experimental, self-­sufficient individuals who foresaw the endless possibilities of computers, ECHO defined the New York web scene and influenced the design of contemporary social networks, creating lifelong friendships in the process. [Full Story…]

Listen to the Episode