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Do you really think that people on HN would care about that?
For a nice history lesson, check out the archives for "Diaspora".
I run a popular account and watch my subscriber numbers. The turning point was when IG started shoving unrelated short-form videos into every second post in the feed. People left almost to silence and only some returned. If new users are growing now, it's very very slowly.
Anyway, I don't hold hope for your idea. You're describing a service which people are used to getting for free. As every social network has shown, monetizing never goes well. Eventually you'll get all the subscribers you're likely to get and capitalism doesn't like a plateau. One day you too will jam in short-form videos or whatever the flavour of the month is, because you have forgotten your mission and want to emulate someone else's success like TikTok. Then you'll be the social network people are saying is dead.
Maybe one day the EU or similar will fund a noninvasive useful social network with taxpayer money, which isn't beholden to shareholders or constant growth. That's the only way I see a social network working anymore.
"You'd be able to compartmentalize whatever content you choose to put out." I wish this were mandatory. On Twitter, when it still made sense to use it (no, it's not about Musk, it sucked by shadowbanning almost everybody who wouldn't pay well before Musk came), several people whom I should really follow for my work basically FORCED ME TO UNFOLLOW THEM, because: - their work-related tweets were ACTUALLY important for…
Sounds like you wanted LinkedIn, not Twitter.
Above all, what I report is just an example of a general problem anyway. If they were only on LinkedIn, and mixing one work-related post every 50 about what cocktail they had last Saturday, what would "wanting LinkedIn, not Twitter, change"?
I haven't used IG for several years in a row, but now find myself in a situation where people do "Instagram me" instead of "Googling me" to find out what I'm about, and I'm painfully aware that my profile isn't up to the dreamy-influencer standards it needs to be for that use case.
So... I do think for a large proportion of the population it is still the profile of record. Maybe tied with LinkedIn for professional users.
Yeah, it's definitely "dying". We need a social network for IRL. I remember Path, but that was more of a journal than a "social networking" app.
Anyway, it was a fun idea when I was a college student in the mid-2000s. I really can't imagine what a new social network would have to be like now to get me to sign up and share about myself.