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We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

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Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#141

Post by Sir_Substance »

marmaduke wrote: post #72
Sir_Substance wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a bunch of email headers you could backwards shoe-horn into serving the purpose of allowing clients to recognize the difference between a life update and a traditional mail, or you could create a new one. You could then make it standard behavior to handle emails with that header via a social client if one is available, and otherwise discard/hide them.

my question is, how to keep a standard email from being completely overwhelmed by traffic of the social network, assuming it isn't aware of the headers? Or, you'd just have to tell users to set up a suitable filter? I think we already see some of these things to some extent like Github pull requests having a lot of usability via email.

People using socially non-aware clients would have to set up a filter. I would also include friendly "I see you don't have a socially aware email client, get one here" bodies with all messages. The data transfer becomes the marketing tool.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#143

Post by siquick »

ben_jones wrote: post #19
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #12

Every time I see a sentence that starts with "we need..." I automatically think "shut up and build it, or you're just complaining." If it's a real need, then building it is a good idea, and will probably make you money. But 99.9% of the time, it's just a turn of phrase way to bitch about the way the world and human kind actually works. Yeah, if we had another Facebook the world would be better. And if I had wheels I'…

I've actually spent quite a bit of time working on a design document for an open source version of the Facebook platform. I got a fair bit of the architecture and requirements down for what I believed would make the project successful. Then I came to the slow realization that the world had categorically no use for a Facebook alternative. The features of Facebook are largely meaningless. What matters is the absolute s…

You can sign up to Tinder with your mobile number now.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#144

Post by noarchy »

sr2 wrote: post #34
X86BSD wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've just started using mastodon.social as a replacement for FB and like it just fine. Give it a look.

Twitter should be a public utility like water. It shouldn't rely on surveillance capitalism to make money. There's another social network called Ello and it's essentially a registered charity. Twitter should be like that.

>Twitter should be a public utility like water. It shouldn't rely on surveillance capitalism to make money. There's another social network called Ello and it's essentially a registered charity. Twitter should be like that.

A charity? Sure, if you can make it work. But a public utility? That would link it to governments, which I think is the last thing we should be pushing. I think there is already enough concern over how Twitter interacts with governments, especially those looking to censor speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Twitter

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#145

Post by JustSomeNobody »

crdoconnor wrote: post #138
type0 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need a well designed pretty home server that's as easy to set up What do you do about all those people whose ISPs don't allow them to run public facing server on residential connection?

VPN, maybe.

How do you get the typical consumer on a VPN?

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#146

Post by fergazen »

I've developed a sort of 'core technology' that can be used to build out what can hopefully become another option in the social media arena. It's open source. It's supports a fully threaded 'tree' of content, rather than just a linear stream like Facebook and Twitter. You create SubNodes, rather than 'tweets' for example. Technology stack is Java, TypeScript, Google Polymer, Jackrabbit JCR, MongoDb, SpringBoot.

Demonstration site is: http://sbnode.com

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#147

Post by jbpetersen »

godelski wrote: post #47

It seems to me that a social network is one of those natural monopolies. It works so well because so many people use it. Remember the big reason many social network alternatives failed, no one else was on them. There are some things (very few in fact) that just work better as monopolies. But that just means you need to regulate it differently. And there's an interesting discussion, how best to regulate natural monopo…

Unapproved third-party APIs.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#148

Post by fergazen »

tdb7893 wrote: post #49
kem wrote: post #13

This touches on so many issues at once I don't even know where to start (private versus public, social medial popularity cycles, distributed versus centralized services...) I think it's not just an alternative to Facebook we need, it's a distributed paradigm, with a distributed network, with distributed services. The tension/problem as I see it is this: we need distributed networks, where people run their own service…

People here seem to always want their social media to be decentralized but I doubt that would happen unless you could convince the standard consumer that it's actually better, and I think that's a hard argument to make to them. When I talk to people about what their solution looks like it tends to sacrifice usability, which no consumer wants to sacrifice

Wikipedia was a technology that was at one point capable of becoming a competitor, but the found their niche and stayed there. I am working on an app (sbnode.com) that I hope WILL become a facebook + twitter killer some day. I want this software (not necessarily SubNode) to become "commodity software" just like Linux is as a OS. I would like to see a world where most instances of Linux are running SubNode and sharing the load of being the backbone of a new internet built directly on content repositories and JCR standards. It's a lofty goal, and my small part has been to at least create a working example of what such a system would be like.

I have a lot of capability now in SubNode, but it doesn't yet 'federate', beyond what the JCR can do insofar as storage distribution. However it does show what an internet 'could' be like if most everything was build out of 'SubNodes'... or at least in the area of Social Media, having this kind of open standard would revolutionize the internet, and make Facebook and Twitter look like Bell Telgraph: You know, the old, unneeded, proprietary, manipulative, 'sell your data to the highest bidder' type of social media that the world needs to get off of.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#149

Post by intopieces »

mseebach wrote: post #93
intopieces wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Need," in the "greater good for society" sense, is often disconnected from profitability. Shut up and build it? There have been several attempts at undercutting Facebook in the last decade and they failed. Their failure is not evidence of Facebook's divinity, of a mandate to rule all social networks. To assert as much is to claim that consumers are rational actors through and through, which is not true.

The road to hell is littered with "solutions" "for the greater good" foisted upon a population that did not actually want it. Facebook is popular by and large because the people that use Facebook like Facebook.

Your generalization lumps short term want/enjoyment with long term need.

Let's stop making diabetes medicine. If people actually wanted to not have diabetes, they'd stop eating candy.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#150

Post by nogbit »

codingdave wrote: post #70
blatherard wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one bit of anecdata in response. I've tried to disconnect from social media and get out in the real world. I took an improv class in NYC with about 15 other people, a range of ages & backgrounds. On the last day of the class, a number of the students were asking around for Facebook profiles to keep in touch. When asked, I replied that I didn't have a Facebook account anymore and it was...awkward, to say the le…

I have had similar experiences, more than once, but it wasn't awkward. Most of the time, people just say OK, and go on with their life. A couple times, we talked about it, and they commented that they wouldn't be able to get in touch with me again. We talked about whether being connected on Facebook vs. never talking again really would amount to much of a difference in the long run, and agreed that it really would no…

Well said, similar experiences myself. If someone is worth being a friend then I get their email or phone number. If it's at a professional level then LinkedIn is more than enough.

I think Facebook is sad, very sad, and the majority of people waste their lives away on it.

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