No, they didn't. Facebook was just a less trashy, more exclusive version of myspace when it came out. Geocities, livejournal, blogger etc. were earlier iterations on the same concept - personal websites for non-techies. The only thing new about Facebook was their relative success in signing up a broader userbase, which was probably just a right-place, right-time thing of being around when computers and high-speed internet were becoming cheap and ubiquitous rather than anything different about what they were doing.

It's hilarious to see people desperately put the blame on the connectivity platform when deep down they themselves know, it's the users. Just as always, the platform itself is indifferent; it is the people spewing poison.