I was building a social media network about 6 years ago. I failed to get enough users since the native apps were just web views that had a lack of notifications. @CitrusFruit How did you get so much attraction to slowsocial?
Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers
311–320 of 391 posts
Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers
#312OP, you should charge users a small amount ($24-50 a year), after a trial period. Keep it simple, free of ads and keep the timeline algorithm free. I’m sure there are many who would love something like this and be willing to pay enough to cover costs and maybe generate a full time income for you. Good luck!!
> OP, you should charge users a small amount ($24-50 a year)
This is a great way to ensure that the website fails by never hitting critical mass.
Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers
#313Constrained social networks don't work, look at Google+. You don't need a social network to stay in touch with your friends and family as messaging apps and e-mail fulfil that purpose completely. Algorithms are not the only reason why all social networks drift towards celebrity/influencer/news following -- they are channels for consuming media, the "social" is in the name only.
The first tranch of social networks (Friendster, Friends Reunited, MySpace, etc) were very much based on people keeping up to date with their friends. They worked quite well for users , but were hard to monetize succeasfully. There was value there, but not much in the way of ideas about how to extract it besides sticking a skyscraper ad down the side. I don't see any reason not to try that model again. Maybe it'll wo…
Facebook started out that way too and seemed...okay? But certainly you can make more money by appealing to influencers and whatnot.
Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers
#314Having .us implies it’s only for Americans
Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first tranch of social networks (Friendster, Friends Reunited, MySpace, etc) were very much based on people keeping up to date with their friends. They worked quite well for users , but were hard to monetize succeasfully. There was value there, but not much in the way of ideas about how to extract it besides sticking a skyscraper ad down the side. I don't see any reason not to try that model again. Maybe it'll wo…
I’ve found long running chats like WhatsApp, telegram or signal fulfill that role.
Posting in a chat demands immediate attention from the participants. It feels "pushy"; I don't want to disturb my friends with my random ramblings.
It's also not really possible to compose a single, long, properly formatted story, interspersed with images, in chat. Every separate post will be a call for attention, if they have not muted you yet.
Ignored push messages can easily turn into forgotten messages. There is no "mark as unread".
Chat does not provide you with an experience of reading carefully crafted posts, on a moment you choose to spend reading only about what your connections have been up to.
Knowing what is happening in the lives of friends and family living in other countries is the only thing I really miss since I stopped using post style social media. Sure, we can chat, and sometimes we do. But usually we don't. You're just not going to chat about random little things in your life with people you don't see with some regularity.
Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers
#316Constrained social networks don't work, look at Google+. You don't need a social network to stay in touch with your friends and family as messaging apps and e-mail fulfil that purpose completely. Algorithms are not the only reason why all social networks drift towards celebrity/influencer/news following -- they are channels for consuming media, the "social" is in the name only.
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Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers
#317Oooooh! So it's like email, but worse? Worse because: It doesn't scale to infinity like email does. Someone else centralises the data and you have to trust them to keep it safe. Email doesn't have this problem because I can take my emails elsewhere and/or change my address, something I've done plenty of times. You don't know what they're doing with the data and you don't now who can access it. The same applies with e…
> Someone else centralises the data and you have to trust them to keep it safe. Email doesn't have this problem because I can take my emails elsewhere and/or change my address, something I've done plenty of times.
I'm not going to defend any social network, and I think that in essence you are right; but using email is a terrible idea.
Is just that people don't understand email any more
When I've been added to a email chain (last time at the end of the 2010s), it was an awful experience: you can't get out, people including addresses in "To" so they get added to all recipients address book (they keep a copy of each email, security depends on each user of the chain!), windows users get infected with viruses and you start getting those as well, nobody will remove anything from the emails so you get huge emails with top-posts without context on what they are replying to, ... it was a mess!
I have no reasons to think things have improved.
So perhaps a better email is needed, and I wonder if it may look like a social network.
Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers
#318Oooooh! So it's like email, but worse? Worse because: It doesn't scale to infinity like email does. Someone else centralises the data and you have to trust them to keep it safe. Email doesn't have this problem because I can take my emails elsewhere and/or change my address, something I've done plenty of times. You don't know what they're doing with the data and you don't now who can access it. The same applies with e…
> It doesn't scale to infinity like email does.
The article clearly states you can turn your posts into e-mails
> Someone else centralises the data and you have to trust them to keep it safe. That goes for any public medium. At least these guys have a clearly stated mission not to harvest, package and sell your data. Also, see above for your email remark.
> You don't know what they're doing with the data and you don't now who can access it. See both replies above
> It's a whole new system for elderly Again, it can be turned into emails
> It's another website that needs another login for my mum to remember, except she'll just use the same password again (and again), until one day it's breached. See above + unrelated issue
> Why not (better) email? Because rebuilding email and convincing everyone to use that is a lot harder than trying to launch a new, experimental social media platform.
Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
Email is push, this is pull. For stuff below the threshold of breaking news ("grandma has passed"), it would feel awfully presumptuous to email people.
It is a sad world when marketers boldly blast emails to us but we feel presumptuous to send emails to each other.
What marketers do is between them and their conscience. If I want to write about the dozen breakfast dishes from around the world I made during Corona, I do not want to have to wonder if this is worth asking for peoples attention. In a pull model, that point is moot.
Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers
#320Hey everyone, OP here. I, like many others tend to waffle between loving and hating social media, so this is my take on what I think a better solution looks like. This is something I've been working on for the past couple of months and a concept that I think will be though provoking, if nothing else, to the HN community. If you want to read more on my thoughts and the story behind this, you can check out my blog post…
Looks like this may work for older generations where the pace of life is different and things are less spontaneous. I’m looking forward to see where it will go.