Ask HN: Do you think we'll see any Twitter/Facebook real-competitor?

When AOL first entered the market, you could only send E-Mail to other AOL users. Eventually, faced with the potential of users leaving their platform for more interoperable (if less full-featured) alternatives, AOL relented and made their email system a proper, standards-based utility.

Now, granted that scenario is not a great example as email existed as a standard long before AOL came into existence, but I do think that as the number of users on Facebook/Twitter reach their inevitable peak, those companies, too, will be faced with the need to open the gates on their walled garden.

It's interesting that, thus far, both companies have delayed such a situation from arising by buying-out the other platforms people have been moving too (Instagram, Vine, etc.) and incorporating them ever-more-tightly with the parent platform. At some point, though, I think (hope?) this strategy will prove untenable and open interoperability will once again rule the web.

Call it crazy speculation, but I could foresee a resurgence of RSS/Atom eventually doing to Facebook/Twitter what SMTP/POP/IMAP did to AOL. If you think about it, the only thing that RSS/Atom was ever missing from becoming what Facebook/Twitter are today is a central aggregation point in the cloud. A smart startup that pulls a user's Facebook/Twitter feeds and mixes in any other RSS/Atom, as well as allowing users to post back to Facebook/Twitter/Atom could potentially spell the death of proprietary timelines.

Not before we get a chip inside. Then it will connect us to "the matrix".

"Replace" is a loaded term in the sense that it implies these are categories dominated by one player. I think the reality of these kinds of services is that they overlap each other to various degrees rather than replace. People can use facebook, twitter, linkedin, HN, etc. etc. simultaneously.

So if you mean will other services in that general fuzzy category become popular, the answer is 100% yes. It's happening all the time. Whatsapp, snapshot, whatnot. These pop up all the time and many get traction.

If you mean will Twitter & Facebook loose popularity, that's harder to answer. But, I think it's reasonably likely. They're basically mediums for online culture and online cult evolves fast. It also depends on your horizon. If the question is "will a large portion of humans check Facebook daily in 100 years?" that seems pretty unlikely.

There won't be a direct replacement, rather some other network will grow while one of them gets 'legacy' status (and will be eventually shut down)

FB (the company) is hedging their bets by acquiring Instagram and Whatsapp and not relying only on Facebook (the platform)

For a company to replace Facebook (or even scale to a point where they're a legitimate competitor) they would have to turn down offers from Facebook/MSFT/Apple/etc to buy them. If Facebook buys then they just stop being a competitor and become part of Facebook. If anyone else buys then they're unlikely to want to go up against Facebook consider Facebook's marketing power. That alone makes it highly unlikely.

There is one the notable exception though - a startup that got enough traction to worry Facebook and then sold to Google might actually come out on top. Google actively wants to compete with Facebook. The problem for such a startup would be Google's track record in social, so they'd need to resist Google's desire to assimilate them too much. That would (probably) be quite hard.