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UX lessons from a poet who invented social media in the 18th century
How a German poet was ahead of his time turning his apartment into a social network in 1747, and the most crucial UX lessons we need to learn from this
TL;DR: Analyzing the fundamental user need that led a German poet in 1747 to transform his apartment into a social network — a visual representation of his social connections, and the UX lessons that can be gleaned from this fascinating historical case study.
The temple of friendship
In 1747, the young poet Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim was sitting in his study in the small German town of Halberstadt, surrounded by stacks of letters from his friends and associates, and had an epiphany. He realized that despite having corresponded with so many people, he had never actually met most of them in person. And this got him thinking: what if there was a way to visualize all the people he had formed relationships with through letter writing? And thus, the poet’s Temple of Friendship was born.
Gleim set out to collect painted portraits of all his friends and relatives, creating an extensive personal portrait gallery that soon filled all the walls of his apartment. He referred to this portrait gallery as his Tempel der Freundschaft (“Temple of Friendship”). He carefully thought about the arrangement of his portrait gallery: his own portrait was always at the center of the gallery, while other portraits were positioned around it, organized as a network in a visual way. In this vein, the Temple of Friendship could be seen as a precursor to modern social media.
Gleim’s Temple of Friendship was a form of curation. He carefully arranged the portraits in his gallery to ensure they accurately represented his circle of friends at any given point in time. We do the same on social media today when we choose what to share and how to present ourselves to others. Gleim’s tendency to rearrange the portraits based on the level of intimacy between himself and his friends, is also reflected in modern social media through features like “friendship circles” or “follower counts.”
