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Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

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Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#31

Post by bcjordan »

bil7 wrote: post #6

I think what would really be great is a social media site that doesn't offer direct image or video hosting. A bit like how reddit used to be. You just have link aggregation, voting, and comments. That's it. Maybe in a nice, clean, minimal UI as well. This would lend itself to tech folk I think. If only it existed.

Actually it could lend itself to a great business model as well — hackers both start startups, and often are looking for jobs at startups. You could use it for lead generation for startup founders to join your accelerator (once that concept exists), and an added benefit to founders would be access to hiring from the pool of hackers on the site. Win/win.

Sounds like bit of a schlep though. Would need to draw an audience e.g. by producing a ton of your own content early on. Lots of legal processes involved with operating an accelerator. Probably not worth it.

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#32

Post by fakedang »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #16

Building a social network “product” is easy, entry level engineers build Reddit and Twitter clones during bootcamps. I think the right question is “How could we build a network and keep people coming back?” That’s the hardest thing to do, even with millions behind your back. Ask Google Buzz, Orkut, iTunes Ping, Vine, Google Plus…

Vine definitely had people coming back iirc. Don't take into account Twitter's boneheadedness.

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#33

Post by trabant00 »

I think nobody would use a social network that would be created by the most popular ideas that float on HN. Established social networks are popular not despite their "problems" but because of them:

  nobody wants to manage their own data
  people are on social networks to be entertained not to "keep up with old friends"
  they want to be where brands, advertising and celebs are
  they want the opposite of decentralization, they want where everything is in one place
  addictive algorithms are what people like by definition, they are not created but discovered
  click bait, outrage, etc, again are what people are looking for

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#34

Post by dennisnedry »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #16

Building a social network “product” is easy, entry level engineers build Reddit and Twitter clones during bootcamps. I think the right question is “How could we build a network and keep people coming back?” That’s the hardest thing to do, even with millions behind your back. Ask Google Buzz, Orkut, iTunes Ping, Vine, Google Plus…

Vine was killed by Twitter. A foolish move given how popular TikTok is now.

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#36

Post by soliton4 »

what is the point of creating yet another social network unless you have a key feature to make it distinct and valuable? if you just make a twitter / facebook clone for tech people all you are doing is dividing yourself from other people. that might be desireable for some people but i dont think its worth persueing in the long term.

i propose we create something that addresses existing problems and adds new features. a social network not based on yet another website, not based on yet another app with centralized ownership. blockchain is the new hype and promises new features and value. lets make a social network that exists entirely on a cryptoblock chain. i am not talking about creating yet another coin. this is entiely outside of the scope of monetary tokens. lets use the blockchain technology to host text and link posts in a distributed fashion. lets come up with a way to give an incentive to host a copy of the chain. and lets make it completely decentralized. then you have a social network worthy of hackers

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#37

Post by everdrive »

Unpopular opinion: any social network, no matter how it’s architected will become terrible past a certain size. Perhaps some architectures will have different “maximum tolerable sizes” than others, but all will become intolerable once there is a large enough user base.

More users, however, means more ad / tracking revenue, so these two ideas will always be at odds.

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#38

Post by seydor »

bil7 wrote: post #6

I think what would really be great is a social media site that doesn't offer direct image or video hosting. A bit like how reddit used to be. You just have link aggregation, voting, and comments. That's it. Maybe in a nice, clean, minimal UI as well. This would lend itself to tech folk I think. If only it existed.

But how can i friend you? This is not social

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#39

Post by cheschire »

bil7 wrote: post #6

I think what would really be great is a social media site that doesn't offer direct image or video hosting. A bit like how reddit used to be. You just have link aggregation, voting, and comments. That's it. Maybe in a nice, clean, minimal UI as well. This would lend itself to tech folk I think. If only it existed.

We have to be careful to not simply crowd-source the moderation either. Keeping a crowd-moderated social media site from devolving is a dang hard task.

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#40

Post by deanc »

everdrive wrote: post #37

Unpopular opinion: any social network, no matter how it’s architected will become terrible past a certain size. Perhaps some architectures will have different “maximum tolerable sizes” than others, but all will become intolerable once there is a large enough user base. More users, however, means more ad / tracking revenue, so these two ideas will always be at odds.

Agreed. Small, decentralised communities should be the way forward. We could call them forums ;-)
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