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We should replace Facebook with personal websites

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Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#121

Post by dkrich »

I still remember changing from MySpace to Facebook and the reasons had nothing to do with exclusivity. What happened was that my friends and I were using MySpace and one of us tried Facebook and convinced us all to try it. We stayed because there were several aspects that now sound simple but made the user experience night and day.

First, MySpace was incredibly clunky. When you posted an update the entire page refreshed. Facebook had a much sleeker interface that used Ajax so posting updates was much more seamless.

Second, I think the mid 2000s were a unique time where consumers were very willing, almost wanting to try different sites and technologies. I remember these being the days Tumblr took off as well. Now people seem to like simplicity and speed, and are content focused. At that time it was all new so people like customizing pages and having custom songs play when the pages loaded.

Finally, Facebook had integration with third party apps that made using the site more fun and gave people a built in feature to share. I remember living social not as a deal site but a Facebook app where you ranked your five top things from a bunch of categories, such as top five movies, books, etc. Users loved it.

These factors are easy to forget now where they don’t seem that big a deal but at that time these were huge differentiating factors that made Facebook more popular and I think Facebook’s early product teams probably don’t get enough credit for some of these decisions.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#122

Post by wasdfff »

ip26 wrote: post #97
ryandrake wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recommendations + Discovery = Filter Bubble. These mis-features are exactly what we should be moving away from!

No discovery = isolation bubble

You can follow hn and other aggregators like reddit via rss. I have it set up for hn where I only get posts that have hit 100 points, otherwise it’s a firehose.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#124

Post by jiveturkey »

bilbo0s wrote: post #81
jasode wrote: post #11

>most of what people like about Facebook—namely the urge to post about their lives online. Where does the author get that idea? The majority of Facebook's 2 billion users do not post to their profile feed. Instead, the FB account is mostly used as a way to passively receive content. Some of the content is from family and friends, and some is from media outlets (NYTimes, etc). Recommending "personal websites" is talki…

> the FB account is mostly used as a way to passively receive content... And HN user "jsgo" wrote... > If it is more difficult than Facebook, it can't hope for being anything more than a niche... These are the sorts of common sense observations missing from so many "let's replace Facebook/Twitter/Whatever" debates. If we're serious about replacing FB/Snapchat/Twitter/Whatever then we need to consider realistic altern…

That said, if someone can strike now, it is possible to displace FB. Or at least put up enough competition to sadly/ironically get bought out by them.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#125

Post by trumped »

jasode wrote: post #11

>most of what people like about Facebook—namely the urge to post about their lives online. Where does the author get that idea? The majority of Facebook's 2 billion users do not post to their profile feed. Instead, the FB account is mostly used as a way to passively receive content. Some of the content is from family and friends, and some is from media outlets (NYTimes, etc). Recommending "personal websites" is talki…

> because that technology is missing a "real names" reverse directory lookup database.

search engines solve that somewhat ... but you could have a directory that points to the correct address (a bit like a web directory or a phone book)... maybe the government could even host that...

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#126

Post by newscracker »

___alt wrote: post #52

Facebook is a bit more than just personal pages. * It has built-in authentication and ACL, you get to choose who sees your stuff or not (not counting overarching privacy issues). * It has built-in syndication, which means that it's easy to follow everyone's updates. * It has discovery abilities that helps finding people you want to connect to. * It has group conversation. * It has event planning. Personal pages have…

> Facebook is a bit more than just personal pages.

I'm going to argue on the following points based on observations.

> - It has built-in authentication and ACL, you get to choose who sees your stuff or not (not counting overarching privacy issues).

Almost nobody knows well about how to control who see what, and even when they do, hardly anyone changes it often. Almost everyone leaves it at something that may not be appropriate for all the content they're sharing. Facebook, after its many privacy blunders, reminds people about the audience setting sometimes, but I don't see people changing it. Also, "lists" as a concept to control who sees what was stillborn. Less than a fraction of a percentage in my circles would even be aware of it (this despite me trying to educate people about privacy).

> - It has built-in syndication, which means that it's easy to follow everyone's updates.

Here again, it's easy to follow updates that Facebook deems the best to keep the person coming back to show more ads and make more money. Almost nobody knows how to choose to see someone's posts always and how to avoid someone's posts short of unfriending them. The default is users not knowing that they can control it, which means practically they don't control what they see and what they don't see.

> - It has discovery abilities that helps finding people you want to connect to.

The same argument in the previous point applies here too. Facebook focuses on making people come back often. So the discovery feature may be useful in some cases, but usually it tends to create an overload of people, groups and pages to connect with. Search on Facebook is dismal, and the main "discovery" mechanism is Facebook's suggestions (which is incentivized for ads).

To summarize, Facebook's features work to maximize holding people's attention on its platform and showing ads. How well this matches with one's individual choices varies a lot. Facebook isn't really doing anything phenomenal in surfacing relevant content to people.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#127

Post by kristianc »

So, what the author is saying is that we should make something just like Facebook, only:

- Harder to find

- Harder to update

- More expensive to run

- Prone to falling over / being hacked

- Non-standardized

- Doesn't provide instant feedback

The reason why we post on Facebook is because it is much (as in an order of magnitude) better and much more convenient than having your own website. Most people do not have their own "platform".

The reason why most people gave up blogging is because they discovered that shouting into the void (and then having to repost that material onto social networks so five people would read it) wasn't that fun or rewarding.

These decentralized fantasies based on personal grievances with Facebook fail when they run into the real world and how most people actually behave.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#128

Post by factorialboy »

jasode wrote: post #11

>most of what people like about Facebook—namely the urge to post about their lives online. Where does the author get that idea? The majority of Facebook's 2 billion users do not post to their profile feed. Instead, the FB account is mostly used as a way to passively receive content. Some of the content is from family and friends, and some is from media outlets (NYTimes, etc). Recommending "personal websites" is talki…

Agree. And those who do post about their lives (on FB, Insta, Twitter etc.) Do it for the dopamine fix one gets when others react and respond to their posts.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#129

Post by solatic »

jasode wrote: post #11

>most of what people like about Facebook—namely the urge to post about their lives online. Where does the author get that idea? The majority of Facebook's 2 billion users do not post to their profile feed. Instead, the FB account is mostly used as a way to passively receive content. Some of the content is from family and friends, and some is from media outlets (NYTimes, etc). Recommending "personal websites" is talki…

> that doesn't mean RSS readers can replace Facebook because that technology is missing a "real names" reverse directory lookup database

But that's the point, isn't it? Personal websites isn't what will "solve the customer's problem", persé, but it is what will allow Facebook to no longer be irreplaceable, which is the real reason why people stay on the platform. The question isn't whether personal websites can replace Facebook, but whether personal websites will allow room for a real Facebook competitor (which improves the passive consumption experience) to grow.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#130

Post by hinkley »

ip26 wrote: post #60
saucoide wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When i try to think of what my ideal social media would look like, it always ends up sounding similar to an RSS feed, with the ability to lookup and requiring the other user's approval to get the actual content, you could use different clients, some could give you recommendations for events,etc based on your subscriptions if you so choose, or just run your own locally. life would be so simple

The magic usually missing from RSS is really good recommendation/discovery. I've got a list of feeds I follow, and that's all I'll ever get.

The way I grew my feed was to look around any time an article in my feed linked to another site.

The thing is though we want to talk about the stories and ask questions. I mean, that’s why we’re all here, right? Comment forums on a million sites don’t work.

In the early days of the web someone had the idea that you should be able to run your own group commentary without the site aurhor’s permission. You’d register for the service and your browser would tell you or show you that there’s a conversation going about this page.

I still feel like we need this.

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