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Ask HN: What would it take to create a Facebook alternative?

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Re: Ask HN: What would it take to create a Facebook alternative?

#11

Post by herbst »

beisner wrote: post #8

Facebook’s downfall as a service won’t be another social service that has the same features but is distributed/blockchain/FOSS/quantum/whatever. Facebook has an enormous amount of resources and talent that will allow them to keep their moat in the social networking space. No, its downfall will come from a paradigm shift in technology that renders the feed-style social network obsolete. This is how most behemoth compa…

I think we are already in the middle of a paradigm chance for everyday, social networking needs to more and more capable chat clients. Like Wechat, Telegram or even things like discord or slack.

Re: Ask HN: What would it take to create a Facebook alternative?

#12

Post by hardasspunk »

If there exist a site that works like facebook or maybe even better, the question is how will it earn without monetizing user's data?

Take all good parts of facebook and remove all the privacy, security, spamming issues, whatever remains is user and its data.

If now, the only step taken by facebook is to earn money by putting ads without tracking its users. Can you imagine how ineffective ads will be and how little revenue facebook will make? Also, if they monetized their services, facebook will have a hard time finding users buying their service!

So the real question is, if there is a social network as advanced as facebook that survive only by targeting random ads without tracking their data, HOW WILL IT SURVIVE?

Re: Ask HN: What would it take to create a Facebook alternative?

#13

Post by babygoat »

stealthcat wrote: post #9
corvallis wrote: post #2

I would suggest that the first and most important thing to have is a business plan that does not rely on any data gathering/advertising/tracking/privacy exploits. Without that, it’s going to inevitably turn into Facebook (or Google, linked in, etc).

How to make money then? It at least has to be sustainable.

It has to be an alternative to Facebook, first.

Re: Ask HN: What would it take to create a Facebook alternative?

#14

Post by roryisok »

corobo wrote: post #4

In my opinion what it would absolutely require is a 2-syllable, easy to remember, brandable, minimally SEO contested, .com domain I realise that's not all it would take but so far I haven't seen any social network[1] without that succeed. It's some severe survivorship bias but I think it's probably a ground floor requirement The real answer is that the person or people that have the secret sauce don't know they have…

How many "full fat" social networks are there though, really? In the English speaking world it's pretty much just Facebook. I don't think I'd even count twitter as a place where you have "all your friends", because most of the people that follow me are total strangers

Re: Ask HN: What would it take to create a Facebook alternative?

#15

Post by skinnymuch »

corobo wrote: post #4

In my opinion what it would absolutely require is a 2-syllable, easy to remember, brandable, minimally SEO contested, .com domain I realise that's not all it would take but so far I haven't seen any social network[1] without that succeed. It's some severe survivorship bias but I think it's probably a ground floor requirement The real answer is that the person or people that have the secret sauce don't know they have…

What are you thinking of besides FB? MySpace you can count. Sure Friendster came first but its popularity was pretty small compared to now. Is there any other example if you’re excluding Instagram?

Re: Ask HN: What would it take to create a Facebook alternative?

#16

Post by corobo »

skinnymuch wrote: post #15
corobo wrote: post #4

In my opinion what it would absolutely require is a 2-syllable, easy to remember, brandable, minimally SEO contested, .com domain I realise that's not all it would take but so far I haven't seen any social network[1] without that succeed. It's some severe survivorship bias but I think it's probably a ground floor requirement The real answer is that the person or people that have the secret sauce don't know they have…

What are you thinking of besides FB? MySpace you can count. Sure Friendster came first but its popularity was pretty small compared to now. Is there any other example if you’re excluding Instagram?

myspace, friendster, twitter, bebo, orkut were the ones that came to mind

Not all great successes but more success than most

Re: Ask HN: What would it take to create a Facebook alternative?

#17

Post by buvanshak »

Would this be possible to do this on top of regular email. I mean, it would be a glorified email list manager.

What is the core "thing" a social network provides that email is missing in emails?

Another thing that just occurred to me is that, Facebook really took off because of the creepy/stalking aspect of it. Because people shared stuff with people, that they wouldn't have shared other wise, exploiting their innate drive to show off...

To answer my own question, an email list will never let that happen.

And something like that ll never take off because of that. Or may be in the light of recent events, if those ends up reaching into the physce of the society deep enough, something like that just might...

Re: Ask HN: What would it take to create a Facebook alternative?

#18

Post by muzani »

buvanshak wrote: post #17

Would this be possible to do this on top of regular email. I mean, it would be a glorified email list manager. What is the core "thing" a social network provides that email is missing in emails? Another thing that just occurred to me is that, Facebook really took off because of the creepy/stalking aspect of it. Because people shared stuff with people, that they wouldn't have shared other wise, exploiting their innate…

Email falls apart with just regular work communication. I'd say forums were a lot better at it.

Re: Ask HN: What would it take to create a Facebook alternative?

#19

Post by muzani »

Back in the day, we used a mix of IRC+forums for community. There was nothing wrong with this back then and I imagine something similar is done by medium sized communities like EVE Online groups. Services like Slack make onboarding a lot easier than IRC too.

Re: Ask HN: What would it take to create a Facebook alternative?

#20

Post by buvanshak »

muzani wrote: post #18
buvanshak wrote: post #17

Would this be possible to do this on top of regular email. I mean, it would be a glorified email list manager. What is the core "thing" a social network provides that email is missing in emails? Another thing that just occurred to me is that, Facebook really took off because of the creepy/stalking aspect of it. Because people shared stuff with people, that they wouldn't have shared other wise, exploiting their innate…

Email falls apart with just regular work communication. I'd say forums were a lot better at it.

Didn't get you. What do you mean by "Email falls apart"?
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