Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival • Hacker News Board

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#101

Post by threwawasy1228 » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

wtmt wrote: post #62

I checked it out by creating an account. It detected my country as India, and showed the price to jump the waitlist (currently at 60k) as $12.99 a month or $100 a year. Contrast this to (using current conversion rates from INR to USD): * Netflix here starts at $2.8 for the cheapest (mobile only, single screen) plan and has its highest plan (4K, four screens) at $11.2 a month. Netflix is considered so expensive that a…

I don't see why this should be expected of any company honestly. If I want to price for the country that I'm trying to sell to, why should I be forced to care about or focus on a market segment that doesn't matter much to me?

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#102

Post by tachyonbeam » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

wolco wrote: post #93

wtmt wrote: post #62

I checked it out by creating an account. It detected my country as India, and showed the price to jump the waitlist (currently at 60k) as $12.99 a month or $100 a year. Contrast this to (using current conversion rates from INR to USD): * Netflix here starts at $2.8 for the cheapest (mobile only, single screen) plan and has its highest plan (4K, four screens) at $11.2 a month. Netflix is considered so expensive that a…

This is why the ad model works better. Local advertisers can bid on his data to show 5 cent ads where someone in northamerica may be worth 5 dollars. Trying to price this as a monthly service removes the ability to offer different prices per region without getting into fairness or causing people to get around the rules by signing up in different regions but watching from another.

They just pointed out that Netflix has different prices per region. Many service providers do.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#103

Post by JohnFen » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #85

michaelmrose wrote: post #22

I would prefer a decentralized social network based on boxes you plug into your router with content shared in a way that fellow users bear the weight of shared content like torrents. You could rent the box or buy outright with money to develop paid for by a premium on the box or by the rent wherein even a modest rent would outstrip the cost of buying like a cable box.

Running a server from one's home violates the terms of service of many ISPs, unless you upgrade to their significantly more expensive business plan.

Yes, this is something that the user would have to check out. My ISP is Comcast (a regular consumer account, not business). My contract specifically says that I am allowed to run servers from my home, as long as they aren't intended to be used by the general public.

I've been running my own servers from home for a very, very long time and it has never been an issue.

Running a social media node would probably count as "intended for the general public", but I'd bet that Comcast wouldn't really notice or care unless the amount of traffic exceeds a certain level or they start getting abuse complaints.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#104

Post by paganel » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

GetOutOfBed wrote: post #41

danans wrote: post #31

Just my guess, but I bet that from this point on, few people (in the developed world) will race to sign up for a new social network. Why? Given the societal and personal costs (and benefits) that we've seen with previous social networks, a lot of lay people are re-evaluating the utility that such services provide them. In many cases, the answer is to keep your current social network, but increasingly disengage from i…

I agree that people aren't looking for new social networks, but I do wonder about your view of disengaging from Facebook. I keep reading about it on HN but I'm not seeing it myself. I wonder if it's a US-centric view.

Might be a US-centric view, I live in Europe and I’ve started seeing less and less engagement on FB for some time now. Granted, me and my friends are in our late-30s, early-40s so we’re pretty busy with life generally speaking, but even so public sharing of stuff is at least an order of magnitude lower compared to 2012-2013. Most of the conversation has moved into private groups that are hosted by FB or WhatsApp.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#105

Post by zozbot234 » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

wtmt wrote: post #62

I checked it out by creating an account. It detected my country as India, and showed the price to jump the waitlist (currently at 60k) as $12.99 a month or $100 a year. Contrast this to (using current conversion rates from INR to USD): * Netflix here starts at $2.8 for the cheapest (mobile only, single screen) plan and has its highest plan (4K, four screens) at $11.2 a month. Netflix is considered so expensive that a…

> showed the price to jump the waitlist ... as $12.99 a month or $100 a year.

Yeah, not a big fan of this. You could buy very nice cloud hosting for $12.99 a month, and run your own instance of a federated social network like Mastodon.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#106

Post by yggda » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

Like others I don't understand the pricing here. For comparison in 2017, FB made $84 per US user, and $27 per EU user. So you're already paying more than you 'pay' facebook.

> He doesn't expect the social network to be profitable

I'd expect it to be more profitable than facebook at this price

[1]https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120114/how-does-fac...

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#107

Post by bransonf » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

mkskm wrote: post #94

bransonf wrote: post #77

I've had a hunch lately that someone would try to create a paid social network, but I never thought the idea would work for the reasons that social media became so popular to begin with. Facebook is popular because it is free, it is easy, it is convenient. Old people, kids, a large proportion of the population has no understanding of how they get all this for free. And most of them don't care. They interact with ads…

According to the announcement on Twitter it is free, just donation-based: - https://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/1192160194693718017 - https://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/1192635476726947840

Sorry, my understanding is that there is a waiting list unless you're willing to pay. Even still, I don't ever think a donation-based social network will be able to outcompete a free (but totally selling your data) social network.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#108

Post by r00fus » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #47

pwinnski wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To call HN a social network is to redefine the term to apply to any website that allows comments. It's really not.

That's how the US Government defines it. If you want a US Visa you need to tell them your HK account.

Do you have a cite for this?

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#109

Post by wtmt » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

wolco wrote: post #93

wtmt wrote: post #62

I checked it out by creating an account. It detected my country as India, and showed the price to jump the waitlist (currently at 60k) as $12.99 a month or $100 a year. Contrast this to (using current conversion rates from INR to USD): * Netflix here starts at $2.8 for the cheapest (mobile only, single screen) plan and has its highest plan (4K, four screens) at $11.2 a month. Netflix is considered so expensive that a…

This is why the ad model works better. Local advertisers can bid on his data to show 5 cent ads where someone in northamerica may be worth 5 dollars. Trying to price this as a monthly service removes the ability to offer different prices per region without getting into fairness or causing people to get around the rules by signing up in different regions but watching from another.

I agree that regional or currency based pricing is not easy and comes with its own problems. But Wikipedia is one of those sites that's freely available and used by people around the world. I wouldn't have thought of the Wikipedia founder starting a venture that charges so much. The 2018-2019 fundraising report by Wikimedia Foundation [1] shows that all the countries in Asia combined contributed less than Australia and New Zealand put together. So he/they must have deep insight into how much money comes from where and the respective ability and willingness of people to donate from different places. They could've as well priced it proportionally with some adjustments on that data.

[1]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2018-19_Report

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#110

Post by chipotle_coyote » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

cryptozeus wrote: post #78

This is not for the people who are complaining about the high price. Did anyone question what price we paid for free product like fb/insta ? Clearly this product is in infancy and trying to attract early adopters. In future price may come down and ui/ux will get better but it’s clearly not for everyone looking to escape into social media as entertainment.

"If you're complaining about the price, this isn't for you" is kind of a truism, but I'm not sure it's a helpful truism in this case. At a moment where the phrase "subscription fatigue" is sweeping into popular discourse, $100 a year is a hell of a big ask for a nascent social network. App.Net couldn't convince people to pay $50 a year earlier this decade; today Micro.blog is building a cult following as a paid Twitter alternative, but it's very consciously not trying to take on Twitter scale-wise -- and it's actually a full blog hosting service for $60 a year (with a free tier if you're already hosting your own blog you want to integrate with it).