A History of Boredat in 9 Versions

Happy New Year!

Believe it or not, we're coming up on Boredat's 4th birthday. It is appropriate to write an official history of the Boredat product (from what is known today) since one has never been written. This history will focus on the evolution of the product only. Commentary will be kept to a minimum.

Brief background: Boredat has been around in some way or another for 4 years and has had a very tumultuous life. It has had good years and bad years and has gone dozens of different directions. The Boredat concept's first inception was in late January of 2006. This is about the time when Facebook was becoming popular at Ivy League schools primarily. BoredatButler.com was the first of the Boredats at Columbia University and was inspired by the simple fact that you can't really say what's on your mind on Facebook; everything is tied to your true identity and you can easily be persecuted/judged/etc for honest opinion. This is how Boredat was born. The first version was built in a few hours and launched that night with a couple dozen flyers in the library.

Image #1: v1.0 circa 2006 @ Columbia (released)
Earliest surviving screenshot of original BoredatButler.com.

The next day there were over 1,000 posts spewing random, anonymous thoughts. It was fun and novel for everyone at Columbia University.

Image #2: v1.1 circa 2006 @ Columbia (released)
BoredatButler with sidebar, released a few days after initial launch.

The Boredat concept grew like wildfire during its first year and the technology tried to keep up with is initial success. While version 1 was taking off at Columbia a more interactive UI was in the works.

Image #3: v1.2 circa 2006 @ Columbia (prototype)
New design concept with first "i agree" and "i disagree" buttons.

Ability to switch to other schools.

The first summer after its inception, the new design direction was decided and plans were made to relaunch the following fall.

Image #4:  v1.3 circa 2006 @ Columbia (prototype)
Design concept with newsworthy button.

Buttons with icon representations (rather than words).

One of the primary goals was to make a highly interactive UI.

Image #5: v1.4 circa 2006, 2009-2010 @ Dartmouth (released)

Longest running / Most successful UI

Versions at Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard and other Ivy Schools

The images depicted so far show the progression of version 1 until its final design at version 1.4. This version from 2006 was resurrected later towards the end of 2009, early 2010.

At this point, there was a Boredat for nearly every Ivy League school and some others (Stanford). It can be stated quite confidently that this was the height of Boredat's popularity (late 2006 / early 2007). The concept was still novel and still spreading quickly. Everyone was enjoying this new and fun platform.

Image #6: v1.4 circa 2006, Boredat.net (released)

The Boredat sites unified under the Boredat.network

Boredat was pretty well established. At the height of its career an article was written about it in the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2007/03/05/070305ta_talk_widdicombe). This seemed to be a significant turning point.

The next version was a redesign and had almost no functional purpose. It was simply meant to give Boredat a completely new look and to completely re-write the back-end from the ground up in an attempt to make the code more extensible. 

Image #7: v2.0 circa 2007 @ Columbia (released)

New design with "spaces".

It is unclear why a UI redesign was deemed necessary at the time. 

This version also introduced a new concept called "spaces" as an attempt to allow different types of conversations to occur in different places. 

Image #8: v2.0 circa 2007 @ Dartmouth (released)

New design, without "spaces".

It was generally felt that up until this point the brand was somewhat dissipated over multiple domains and that this was generally a bad thing. It was also generally accepted that a strong, primary brand would need to be established (officially "Boredat") to take the next steps seriously. Logo iterations occurred. You see the first logo iteration in Image #7 and #8: an attempt at a rubber-stamp-type look.

Image #9: v2.0 circa 2007, Logo #2 (released)

Logo #2 was slightly more popular (internally). The idea of mixing the letter "b" with the @ symbol seemed appropriate since "b@b", "b@g", "b@l" etc naming conventions caught on organically. Logo #2 replaced the rubber stamp for a little while. 

At this point an official Delaware C corp was formed as "Boredat, Inc." Venture capital money was infused into the corporation. Boredat now had bosses and deadlines. The next version was underway.

Image #10: v3.0 circa 2007 (prototype)

Mockup of "mainspace" with separated "content elements".

Introduction of new concepts: tagging, aliases, myboredat.

Sidebar: It is believed that 2 primary things put the nail in Boredat Inc's coffin: 1) Money when it wasn't necessary and 2) the inability or refusal to iterate and adjust to what users wanted.

At this point, there were more than 20 different people either working on or personally invested in trying to make Boredat bigger than it was meant to be. It was being pulled from many different directions.

Image #11: v3.0 circa 2007 (prototype)

Mockup of "mainspace" with hover states activated.

I think it is important to remember: all of these designs and specifications for version 3 were developed behind closed doors. Boredat essentially went into hibernation to try and build a final product with a grand launch. It had little to no respect for natural product iteration based on users' needs and feedback.

Image #12: v3.0 circa 2007 (prototype)

Mockup of News Page.

The design was beautiful but its use was completely theoretical and most importantly: unproven. Too much change too quickly can be devistating. The name was changed, the look and even the mission to some degree. However, version 3 was launched and promoted.

Image #13: v3.1 circa 2007 @ Columbia (released)

Replaced boredatbutler.com with boredatcolumbia.net.

Version 3 with listings (classifieds) feature.

Almost everyone stopped visiting Boredat. Funding was terminated. 

The next couple of years were spent mulling over what went wrong trying to figure out what should have been done differently. The product owner felt compelled to re-envision and redesign the concept over and over almost obsessively, looking at the original idea from as many different angles as possible.

The next few screenshots were never actually released and have never actually been seen in public until this blog post. 

Image #14: v4.0 circa 2008 (never released)

"If Boredat was like Digg.com"

Image #15: v5.0 circa 2008 (never released)
Attempting to envision a final product.

Includes Pandora-style advertising.

One thing was felt to be certain: different people used Boredat in different ways:

1. Posting thoughts - One-off posts, just to get things off your mind.
2. Chatting - Quick posts that, in themselves, were pretty useless.
   

Image #16: v5.1 circa 2008 (never released)

Boredat "chat" was always visible.

It was envisioned that there were three primary content contribution activities:

1. [ share something ] - Post a thought / link / video / photo.
2. [ say something ] - Chat with your school or globally.
3. [ post to listings ] - Post a classified add to your community.

Image #17: v5.2 circa 2008 (never released)

No advertising.

Image #18: v6.0 circa 2008 (unreleased)

Inspired by iGoogle and highly customizable

Without ever launching version 5, version 6 was an attempt to re-envision this product with inspiration from iGoogle. This version also included features like reviews (class reviews, books, teachers, etc) and polls. Also included aliases and tagging.

Image #19: v6.1 circa 2008 (never released)
Final UI specification for version 6.
Home page, showing recently popular (default). 

Though there are only two images of version 6 shown here there were nearly 20 iterations in between. 

Image #20: v6.1 circa 2008 (never released)

Final UI specification for version 6, "Chat Now" as default. 

The idea was that the site would have two main configurations, one around posting thoughts (Image #19) and the other around chatting (Image #20). All of the content would be visible and each configuration would reorder the layout of the page focusing on what the user's primary activity would be at that given time.

After all this work, version 6 was never built because it was simply too complicated for anyone taking a first glance. 

Image #21: v7.0 circa 2008 (released)

Boredat.net @ Columbia

Version 7 was launched after rebuilding the back-end from the ground up once again. This version was a simplified version of version 6 and actually made it out the door. It had much more activity than version 3 and was consider a small success. However, it wouldn't grow further than a small group of power users. 

Image #22: v7.1 circa 2008 

(never released)

Boredat.net @ Columbia

Version 7 was short-lived because the cost of running the service was extremely high (back-end was comet-style) and couldn't be afforded personally. It was ultimately taken down for these reasons.

All Boredat sites were offline completely by end of 2008. It wasn't until late October 2009 did Boredat resurface. The original "retro" Boredat version 1.4 was allowed to exist in its original form at low cost. The rest of 2009 proved that people still wanted some form of Boredat as activity began to build again. 

However, with increased activity, many of the pains of the original version 1.4 were felt again: it was difficult to control the damage un-moderated anonymity can cause. Complaints rolled in as well as threats of lawsuits. 

A new architecture was was written from scratch called the ThoughtPoster engine.

Image #23: v8.0 circa 2010 (released)
Login page for the first ThoughtPoster-powered Boredat.

The following images depict Boredat as it exists today.

Image #24: v9.0 circa 2010 (released)

BoredatBaker.com Main Page

Image #25: v9.0 circa 2010 (released)

BoredatBaker.com Zeitgeist Page

Image #26: v9.0 circa 2010 (released)

BoredatBaker.com Profile Page

Image #26: v9.0 circa 2010 (released)

BoredatBaker.com Location Page

This concludes the history of the Boredat product. 

My name is Jae Daemon. I wrote this history of Boredat from what I have gathered. Today, I am the technology architect of the current Boredat project. I fund, operate and maintain all Boredat properties. As of the date of this post, Boredat has around 1.35 million posts. You can email me at jaedaemon@gmail.com.