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Is this the end of social networking?

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Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#81
post #32

> [TikTok]'s addiction-based advertising machine is probably close to the theoretical maximum of how many advertisements one can pour down somebody’s throat. Well put. It's interesting that we pivoted in my adult lifetime from: 1. Myspace's emphasis on sharing things on your own webpage, essentially a hosted blog 2. Facebook's evolution from "hosted blog" to "friend update aggregator" to "chat client" to "friend upda…

IMHO Social Media is a toxic mutation of the capabilities offered by the Internet and is the opposite of federated, open communication. I don't consider blogs, forums, or IRC to be "Social Media". When you add the idea of followers and audience and attention seeking (both from participants and the platform) that's when you get "Social Media". We live in the Infinite September. Scale is not conducive to valuable or fu…

I recently friend requested a bunch of people I went to high school with who all thought I was a weird loser and I am very excited that I am doing much better than all of them. It’s made me like my social media feed a lot more seeing the school bully who loved ICP post about how “he’s ready to find the right girl and settle down (at 35)

So I guess I use social media for the exact reason you don’t like social media. Nobody’s supposed to like that stuff, but I mean, why else would you care what everyone else is doing other than to compare status?

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#83

I think the "social" part of social networks just moved to group chats. All my friends share updates of their family events, kids' stuff etc.. over Whatsapp and Telegram. Strangers gather over topics that interest them and want to talk about it seem to have moved to discord, slack etc. The whole "broadcast yourself to the world" part of social networks just moved to Tiktok, Twitter, Instagram etc.. I think.

Group chats are the last place that is chronologically ordered, advert free and semi private.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. Everyone else is trying to make a tiktok clone and bolt it on to a maze of existing, and in some cases very similar, social media offerings. TikTok works because it's video only from the ground up.

then why didn't vine or snapchat or whatever other video first platform from yesteryear catch on as big too? clearly there's more to it than "it's simply video first"

vine did! twitter mothballed it.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#85

TikTok is winning because it is video first. The more immersive the media, the more profitable the ads. Facebook is having trouble pivoting it's products to video. Facebook is betting big that the next more-immersive medium after video will be VR. That's basically the whole story. Notice I didn't use the word "algorithm" or "social"? These takes are tired and naive, TikTok isn't addictive in any operationally useful…

My wife deleted TikTok after a few weeks because she just couldn’t handle how addictive it was. All she wanted to do was watch TikTok. Then she started getting Shorts on YouTube now she wants to completely stop watching YouTube even if the old creators she enjoyed are still making philosophy videos and stuff, it’s just not worth it to stick around when the goal has become quite clearly to keep you hooked.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#87

> [TikTok]'s addiction-based advertising machine is probably close to the theoretical maximum of how many advertisements one can pour down somebody’s throat. Well put. It's interesting that we pivoted in my adult lifetime from: 1. Myspace's emphasis on sharing things on your own webpage, essentially a hosted blog 2. Facebook's evolution from "hosted blog" to "friend update aggregator" to "chat client" to "friend upda…

I suspect that that what really ate up personal social networking was very simple: private group messaging finally got good enough.

15 years ago, we’d lost touch with old friends and acquaintances because there are a ton of people in our lives that mean something to us but that don’t warrant much 1-to-1 contact through phone calls or messaging.

Myspace and early Facebook reinvigorated those relationships with relaxed, casual networked update blasts, but then iMessage, What’s App, were able to make the same connections more private, more personally shaped, and more collaborative.

So social networks drifted towards public feeds and commercialized feeds, which is what TikTok — as a well-funded latecomer — had the luxury of aiming for directly.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#88
post #56
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% disagree with your idea that you, or anyone for that matter, is just here to disagree with other people’s ideas. Nobody disagrees with stuff just for the sake of disagreement. Who would do such a thing? Don’t bother answering that question though because you’d be wrong.

You're not wrong. But, you're not right either.

Neither of you aren't not wrong.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#89
post #31
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might just be that that’s not needed anymore. The social networks of the past were useful as a way to keep in touch with people. MySpace, early Facebook, and the countless others from back then. Now everyone’s online 24/7, and accessible on multiple services all at the same time, all the time. You don’t need social networks to keep in touch with anyone anymore, their original raison d'être is gone. What’s…

> People want their bubbles. We’re all here on HN for that exact purpose. 100% disagree. I'm here to find ideas I disagree with and tell people how they're wrong. I'm not looking for an agreeable experience here. I'm also here to learn about new tech.

A bubble can be less about topics and more about how we communicate - if I ask about sources on HN I'll get links and pdfs in return. If I do that on reddit, I'll get insults.

HN has broad tolerance for a lot of ideas - and a lot of subgroups exist here that don't exist on other platforms. No matter what you believe, someone on HN holds a counter view and can probably give you a good debate about it.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#90
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might just be that that’s not needed anymore. The social networks of the past were useful as a way to keep in touch with people. MySpace, early Facebook, and the countless others from back then. Now everyone’s online 24/7, and accessible on multiple services all at the same time, all the time. You don’t need social networks to keep in touch with anyone anymore, their original raison d'être is gone. What’s…

> You don’t need social networks to keep in touch with anyone anymore, their original raison d'être is gone. In what sense? The underlying social motivation/interest is still present. And it's not like fundamental communications capabilities have actually changed. Chat's been around since the 90s and SMS is the new email. And social network applications grew and thrived in those situations because pull-and-scan-socia…

Chat has not been around since the 90s, not in the form that is used today.
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