I would doubt that we see one in the near future. The one that had the biggest potential, Instagram, was quickly bought out by Facebook. A competitor not only has to overcome the huge userbase, thereby convincing everyone and their mothers to switch, a competitor also has to resist the urge to cash in and risk not making it.
Ask HN: Do you think we'll see any Twitter/Facebook real-competitor?
51–60 of 70 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you think we'll see any Twitter/Facebook real-competitor?
#52I think you already see that younger generations don't prefer (or simply don't at all) using those social apps. Instead they use several social apps for specific things: snapchat for pics/text, whatsapp for text, vine for video, tinder/grinder for dating, instagram for social and pics, and more that I'm probably just not aware of because I'm 30. I think you're less likely to see a replacement and more likely to see t…
Whatsapp and Instagram were acquired by Facebook and Vine was acquired by Twitter. Tinder/Grindr are fads that are already fading. Snapchat, it's probably a matter of time before they get acquired or people get bored with it.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think we'll see any Twitter/Facebook real-competitor?
#53I don't think there will be a direct competitor, I think we're going to start seeing the decline of the social network.
People are realizing that the benefits of social media are curses in disguise. Instead of a stream of interesting dialog between friends, they have a raging river polluted with the rantings of every person they ever met or any company they ever liked. It's hard to have meaningful interactions with people when that girl you met one night at a friend's party, your crazy uncle, and Starbucks are all screaming in your face.
Just as people are getting sick of Social Networking, businesses are starting to realize that the promise of the Social Network as a way to connect with customers isn't happening.
Case in point, I was shopping online the other day for an office chair and was prompted to take a survey (I'm a sucker for surveys). The survey went something like this...
Will you be sharing anything on our site with social media? No. Have you ever shared anything on our site with social media? No. Have you ever shared anything on any of our competitor's sites with social media? No. Have you ever shared anything from an online store on social media? No. Do you find any value in social media buttons on online stores? No. When you are shopping online, do you utilize social media? No.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think we'll see any Twitter/Facebook real-competitor?
#54For 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…
If you're growing like crazy, it's not that hard to turn down offers. Indeed that's what Facebook itself did, so there's your model.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think we'll see any Twitter/Facebook real-competitor?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Facebook is heading for the same kind of "irrelevance" as Microsoft or IBM. Which is to say that they are irrelevant to a lot of people, particularly "early adopters", but they'll be around and profitable for a long time.
Microsoft completely dominating the PC software industry for nearly 30 years, reaping insane profits for that entire time. In some ways they still do dominate it, certainly in terms of productivity software and business email. Similarly, IBM was computers for 30 years. Comparing them to simply the most popular social website for the past 10 years is not really fair. The fact that Facebooks value approaches those othe…
You can't neglect the fact that while facebook's outward appearance is "social media site", which may indeed be on the decline, they do a lot of work behind the scenes just to manage such an incredible amount of data.
I could easily see facebook surviving long into the future in a similar way to IBM -- with a focus that is shifted from what made them big player, but still doing valuable work (and making money) in the tech "sphere".
Re: Ask HN: Do you think we'll see any Twitter/Facebook real-competitor?
#56For 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…
If you're growing like crazy, it's not that hard to turn down offers. Indeed that's what Facebook itself did, so there's your model.
Facebook turned down Yahoo's $1bn offer because Mark Zuckerberg realised that Yahoo didn't really understand social, and that they were making an offer because 'social is the hottest thing right now'. It's entirely understandable that a founder wouldn't want to sell their business to someone who wouldn't know what to do with it.
A Facebook competitor faced with an offer from Facebook would not have that problem. It's very likely that the competitor and Facebook would be very well aligned strategically. Selling would mean the competitor would get to where they want to go. Very few founders would say capable of saying no.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think we'll see any Twitter/Facebook real-competitor?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Facebook is heading for the same kind of "irrelevance" as Microsoft or IBM. Which is to say that they are irrelevant to a lot of people, particularly "early adopters", but they'll be around and profitable for a long time.
Microsoft completely dominating the PC software industry for nearly 30 years, reaping insane profits for that entire time. In some ways they still do dominate it, certainly in terms of productivity software and business email. Similarly, IBM was computers for 30 years. Comparing them to simply the most popular social website for the past 10 years is not really fair. The fact that Facebooks value approaches those othe…
is ibm big iron still not computers right now?>
Re: Ask HN: Do you think we'll see any Twitter/Facebook real-competitor?
#58When 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…
> 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 [...] could potentially spell the death of proprietary timelines. I've got the feeling you underestimate how important this central aggregation point actually is. Imho I'd even say it's the paramount reason Facebook/Twitter are still the top…
some form of distributed set of nodes based on a blockchain would be cool to see.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think we'll see any Twitter/Facebook real-competitor?
#59I think you already see that younger generations don't prefer (or simply don't at all) using those social apps. Instead they use several social apps for specific things: snapchat for pics/text, whatsapp for text, vine for video, tinder/grinder for dating, instagram for social and pics, and more that I'm probably just not aware of because I'm 30. I think you're less likely to see a replacement and more likely to see t…
I'm 22 and I've opted out of Facebook. Not because my parents are on it (they are), but because it's not fun. It used to be fun in high school (4-5 years ago) when you could have semi-private conversations with friends through wall posts, back before every status and picture was gamified by "likes", back before everything you ever posted was pinned like a dead moth on your timeline for everyone to see in perpetuity,…
SnapChat is a battery hog on my phone. I use WhatsApp with all my hometown friends as a way to group chat.
Re: Ask HN: Do you think we'll see any Twitter/Facebook real-competitor?
#60The next wave of social networks will most likely be decentralized. At the moment the concept is not yet clear, so no company to follow yet.
I mentioned in another comment the idea of a blockchain based system.