Let's not be disingenuous and throw around nonsensical claims like "when you signed up for an email account a decade before "social network" was even a thing"...
-You're parsing that sentence wrong; note the word "ago".
-"social network" is in quotes because while the social networks themselves have been around for awhile, they only became a buzzword and the kind of thing Google would try to clumsily emulate in recent years.
Gmail started April 2004.
Facebook started February 2004.
At which time Myspace was a year old.
Let's not be disingenuous and throw around nonsensical claims like "when you signed up for an email account a decade before "social network" was even a thing"...