This Monday is a tragic day for the Internet. While most Augustians are casually scrolling through their Instagram feeds lying on the beach, a part of their past is gone forever. Skyblogs, a place of socialization in the 2000s, will no longer be available online from today. On June 22, Skyrock radio – to which Skyblog belongs – announced the news… leaving many Internet users nostalgic for a time that seems very distant today. “To bring us into compliance with the legislation on personal data, to keep the platform and the skyblogs in their candid and eruptive presentation, we must freeze it and remove it from public access”, had justified the company. .
To understand the emotion, you have to go back to the year -5 before Britney Spears’ ball to zero (2002 for our friends at genZ). Long before the frenzy of social networks, Skyblog revolutionized the Internet and offered a whole new space where what researcher Oriane Deseilligny called “contemporary expressive individualism” would reign. Interviewed by our podcast “Minute Papillon! », this evokes a “revolution”. “Before there was what we call personal pages, which were entirely coded by Internet users. Blogs came later and provided a turnkey architecture”.
“A way to stay in touch”
No need to worry about having a technical background, the younger generation – mostly Skyrock listeners initially – quickly took hold of these blogs. For information and communication science researcher Olivier Ertzescheid, Skyblogs have fulfilled the expectations of this very young generation, otherwise known as “Generation Y” today. “The blog can use the codes of adolescent age: extimacy [un terme qui désigne une expression de l’intimité tournée vers l’extérieur, ce qu’on veut partager et montrer comme un journal intime qu’on a envie de faire lire]self-confidence, inclusion”.
“For teenagers, it was a way to stay in touch with their classmates after school and to post content independent of the school environment, creative or personal,” adds Oriane Deseilligny. Because yes, at the time the iPhone 2G had barely seen the light of day (the first was released in 2007) and the telephone plans were almost all limited.
Fan fiction and beautiful meeting
So very quickly, on Skyblog, the different forms of expression multiply, whether it’s a diary where you present your friends and your love troubles or blogs dedicated to an artist or an actor . A true fan of fanfiction, Alexandra* for example created three blogs between 2007 and 2008. Inspired by the universe of her favorite series, the one who wanted to become a younger writer created a whole universe around several actors: Lauren Graham (In Gilmore Girls), Mackenzie Rosman (in seven at home) and Blake Lively. “I wrote a little as I wanted to, two or three times a week. So inevitably seeing all her work leave the canvas in one day makes her a bit nostalgic. “Even if I found them recently and I said to myself that I didn’t write very well,” quips Alexandra.
Now in his thirties, “Mistone” (which must be a nickname) saw the early hours of Skyblog as a good alternative to MySpace. “We could write articles about artists or sounds that we liked. In addition, thanks to the chat, I discussed with people from all walks of life, I even met my best friend who has always been since 2012”. This is also what could best describe this place of socialization today. In addition to sharing his intimacy or his passions, Skyblog has over time become a fertile ground for meetings. “This is where I met my partner seventeen years ago, we’ve been together for sixteen years now. He had posted a comment under a photo where I was on it, we started talking about dating a year later, ”says Kelly, 33. “I met my husband in 2008 on the platform. We had two nearly identical blog names. Fifteen years later we are married and have three beautiful children, ”adds Clémence, 31 years old. For her part, Elsa* – a former student in sports studies – remembers having used Skyblog in very romantic circumstances: to criticize the competing handball club in the region. “Today, we would have duels on TikTok,” she laughs.
From Oblivion to Nostalgia
But now, it’s over, the different pages are no longer accessible since Monday. However, one question remains unanswered. How to explain this general nostalgia at the announcement of the disappearance of Skyblogs when the vast majority of users had already denied their page, or even deleted it out of shame? We can bet that everyone had already turned to other social networks like Instagram and Twitter to build a new form of narrative that was a little more superficial or politicized… leaving blogs abandoned. “Blogs have tried to compete, but it’s never easy. We must take into account the community dimension, they have been overtaken by their own brand image. For a generation, opening a Skyblog implied a stereotyped form,” analyzes researcher Olivier Ertzescheid.
As for the sudden nostalgia for blogs, the phenomenon can be explained quite simply, for Olivier Ertzescheid. “We tend to embellish this past, it’s a retroactive bias. In statistical reality, there were also problems on these platforms – harassment or violent remarks – but these problems were less present in the social field at the time”. A true memorial of the 2000s, the platforms will still be digitized and archived anonymously by the National Library of France (BNF) and the National Audiovisual Institute (INA). “It is an extremely rich sociological content. If we want to understand the evolution of digital media, it is important that we keep traces of it”, concludes the researcher. Consolation: your koms will remain archived for a while.
*Names have been changed