Piczo: The Internet’s Influential But Forgotten Social Network - VICE

For those of you who, overmuch to my dismay, volition person nary thought what I’m talking about, Piczo was a website builder and societal networking tract that launched successful 2005, astir the aforesaid highest years arsenic Myspace. Users could make their ain web pages and adhd photos, “blinkies” (flashing graphics), text, guestbooks, euphony and different contented utilizing plain substance and HTML. Imagine Tumblr earlier Tumblr, but gaudier and much glittery. 

Despite being founded successful San Francisco, Piczo recovered its astir devoted audiences among teen and preteen girls successful the UK and Canada. By 2006, according to stats astatine the time, it had go the largest teen tract successful the UK. It was these girls who created the trademark kitsch aesthetic associated with Piczo and the 2000s net much generally. Think: garish colour schemes, rotating Playboy bunny logos and sparkly phrases written successful alternating caps (“aLl AbOuT mE”). Among the garishness was cautiously arranged photos of friends, wrong jokes, hot gossip and the occasional connection from visitors – each accessible via customisable URLs.

“I named my archetypal tract thing like, cutiebootiechris.piczo.com,” says Christie, 27, from South London. “I retrieve getting successful occupation with 1 of my friends’ mums due to the fact that she saw it connected her daughter’s net past and thought it was a porn site.” 

On Piczo, Christabel uploaded the archetypal photos of herself to ever beryllium connected the internet. “My archetypal reflector selfie connected a integer camera would person been taken for Piczo and it was astir the clip that the emo aesthetic was getting popular, truthful my pics were precise fringey. The taxable [of the site] was achromatic and blistery pinkish with glittery bubble substance and a batch of cute but evil imagery – that glittery bunny holding a knife was decidedly connected my leafage astatine 1 point.” 

There was a assemblage constituent to Piczo, too, with a fistful of featured pages connected the homepage. This ramped up the contention to person the champion page, with the extremity of getting 1 of these coveted spots. “I’d spell done each of these featured sites and instrumentality inspiration for my own,” says Alekzandriia, 28, from Ontario. 

“In exploring different people’s pages, I recovered myself learning astir HTML and however I could usage it to customise my tract adjacent more. I didn’t cognize however to marque thing from scratch, but I would instrumentality different people’s widgets oregon layouts and past tweak them to marque them my own.”

“The merchandise of Gossip Girl coincided perfectly with our ain adolescence and inspired america to make our ain mentation [on Piczo], fuelled by the kinds of silly rumours that thrive successful mediate school,” says Alekzandriia. “There was tons of play astatine my school, truthful determination was nary shortage of contented to share.” Alekzandriia’s relationship radical shared a Piczo login, truthful they could each update it. Though, she adds, they rapidly unopen it down erstwhile idiosyncratic extracurricular of their interior ellipse recovered retired astir it. “We didn’t privation to get successful trouble!”

Conning ne'er initially intended to marque a website for this assemblage of teenage girls. His archetypal ceremonial task – a photo-sharing tract called Funtigo launched successful 2002 – was targeted towards “tech-savvy adults who wanted to archer a communicative with their photos” via “their ain customised website.” But erstwhile the dot-com bubble burst successful the aboriginal 2000s, Funtigo was launched arsenic a paid work with a escaped trial, with small success. Just 2 percent of the site’s users opted for a paid subscription. 

Conning started getting hundreds of emails from teenage girls begging him to marque Funtigo escaped again. Instead, helium decided to make a separate, ad-supported tract called Piczo. Not wanting to “cannibalise the Funtigo audience”, Piczo would beryllium targeted towards these teens – the astir avid users of Funtigo’s escaped service. “The time we launched, I replied to each 1 of them saying, ‘If you privation to support your Funtigo site, click this fastener to person it to Piczo’,” Conning explains. “From those 100 emails, 1,800 users had soon signed up. Over the adjacent 2 years, this became 10 cardinal unsocial monthly visitors, each without immoderate ceremonial marketing.”

Instead of gathering concealed websites, young girls started to upload selfies to MySpace, trading ‘pc4pc’ (‘picture comments for representation comments’) and tasting the benignant of instant gratification – via likes – that would go the breadstuff and food of mainstream societal media platforms. In a further stroke to Piczo – and, later, Myspace – Facebook surged successful popularity successful 2007 (though Piczo did remain much popular than Zuckerberg’s offering until the pursuing year).

Faced with stiff competition, Conning and his squad decided to accommodate Piczo successful a misguided effort to stay relevant. “In 2007 to 2008, we truly tried to alteration Piczo into thing much resembling societal media, alternatively than the archetypal photograph website builder that had societal vigor astatine its core,” helium explains. In 2009, Conning sold Piczo to Stardoll – yes, the radical down the dress-up games – who aboriginal told the laminitis that he’d “really screwed up”. “They felt that the archetypal Piczo was fantastic, but our effort to morph it into societal media had ruined it.” After its acquisition, Stardoll tried to combat Piczo’s declining postulation by turning it into a blogging site, without overmuch success. 

By November 2012 – 2 years aft Instagram launched and hammered the last nail successful Piczo’s coffin – Stardoll relented to nonaccomplishment and Piczo shuttered for good. “The biggest disappointment for maine is that Piczo didn’t extremity up being a palmy concern aft I worked truthful hard connected it and we had gained truthful overmuch momentum,” admits Conning. “I privation each those Piczo sites were inactive up truthful we could spell and look astatine them.”

“Piczo helped to place the untapped request for societal sharing that ubiquitous integer cameras and the net person enabled,” helium says. “[On Facebook and Instagram, users] don’t effort to laic retired and decorate their photos successful an creator arrangement, but the societal vigor that Piczo embodied has carried connected successful a large way.”

Piczo’s bequest besides lives connected via its users. For some, their aboriginal experiences of coding (of sorts) connected Piczo has adjacent helped carve retired their careers. During the pandemic, Alekzandriia – who studied biology astatine assemblage – started to reconsider her occupation arsenic a laboratory technician.

“On reflecting astir the things I bask the most, I realised I was astatine my happiest erstwhile I was creating Piczo websites,” she says. “So, earlier this year, I decided that I would modulation to a vocation successful tech, and I’ve been moving connected teaching myself the skills I need. There’s a batch to larn – a batch has changed since I was 13! But I erstwhile again find myself staying up precocious into the nighttime to make websites, and I couldn’t beryllium happier.”

“Piczo showed maine the powerfulness of the net to beryllium this creative, breathtaking spot wherever you could explicit yourself immoderate mode you wanted,” reflects Cristina, 24, from Toronto. “But my leafage was seldom viewed by anyone else, truthful it was genuinely a escaped spot [to bash this].” 

That said, for galore millennials, Piczo is simply a reminder of what the net utilized to beryllium like. But it's not similar that anymore. “The MySpace and Piczo procreation consciousness disenchanted with the controversies coming retired of today’s ‘it’ platforms,” says Ysabel Gerrard, a integer media and nine lecturer astatine the University of Sheffield and the co-author of a recent analysis of nostalgic MySpace discourse. 

“Older societal networking sites belonged to a purer clip erstwhile their founders didn’t marque headlines for, say, shaping governmental elections and dismantling democracy. While older companies had their just stock of problems, radical look to consciousness that they weren’t arsenic ethically unsound.”

Cristina says that the vulnerability of today’s net has “definitely slowed down [her] posting.” She says she's “now hyper alert of the longevity of posts connected the internet, arsenic good arsenic the infinite assemblage that could beryllium viewing your posts. I’m ever longing for a abstraction similar Piczo connected the internet, wherever I tin acquisition that afloat originative state erstwhile again.”

Although we whitethorn ne'er beryllium capable to instrumentality to this (possibly rose-tinted) epoch of innocence, Piczo's ethos of aimless, backstage online creativity hasn’t been totally erased from today's net – adjacent if censorship and the request for monetisation has made it harder. “There are inactive radical – mostly connected the indie web – who make astonishing things connected their ain idiosyncratic sites and connected platforms similar Neocities [a revitalisation of the 90s website builder GeoCities], which purpose to foster the originative tone that made sites similar Piczo truthful precious,” says Alekzandriia.

That said, possibly Piczo simply couldn't beryllium today. But it was fun, for a while. Alekzandriia sums it up succinctly: “There’s a saying that comes to caput to picture however I consciousness astir Piczo and the net successful wide astatine the time: ‘I privation determination was a mode to cognize that you’re successful the bully aged days earlier you’ve really near them’.”

@britdawson