Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stop trying to make social networks succeed

ploum.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 226 posts

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#31

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

robertlagrant wrote: post #4
derbOac wrote: post #2

I agree that the fates of social networks can develop and evolve intrinsically over time, and that there's maybe too much effort placed on advocating for their use with an immediate horizon as the goal. However, it's pretty clear that network effects matter in social networks and other forms of IT. In some sense this is precisely why some people feel burned at the moment, in part. In that regard, I don't really blame…

> we've lacked an open social network platform that solves the problem of putting content distribution directly in the hands of content producers I don't know about "open", but YouTube does this pretty well IMO. Search results aren't based on your profile, and it all seems pretty un-"managed", in a Twitter Files sense. I know it does do demonetization if people complain, but while it's not perfect, it's not unreasona…

YouTube prioritizes "authoritative sources" when searching for certain topics, which means channels of legacy media outlets.

Are we sure that your profile doesn't affect search results? I'd expect the opposite, considering it's Google and one of the things they're known for is changing search results based on your profile.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#32

Post by costanzaDynasty »

Social media is over if you think trading Musk for Zuckerberg is progress.

On a side note though, Meta just changed their whole narrative in one day after being dragged for the last year over the Metaverse. If I were an investor I'd be very bullish on Meta. What was considered a colossal failure in over hiring helped result in a chance to add a new growing platform.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#33

Post by dahwolf »

Unsure what the point of this article is. I've never seen any person or even VC company make the claim that they're on to the one and only 100% coverage network. I'm quite sure everybody is aware that social networks come and go and that at any point in time there will be multiple of them.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#34

Post by pier25 »

izzydata wrote: post #16
dgb23 wrote: post #10

> There’s no metric of success for non-commercial ones. They simply exist as long as at least two users are using them to communicate. This is something I didn't really understand when I was younger. In every online community that has had some amount of hype surrounding it, there are prominent figures either hyping it up further or spreading doom and gloom when the metrics don't match their expectations. What I didn'…

Even a lot of regular people these days are caught up in the addiction of getting the maximum amount of engagement out of everything they post online. They don't want to talk to people. They want thousands of strangers to praise them. So the bigger the network the more likely they can accomplish this. I'd wager for some individuals something might not even be worth doing if they can't be seen by thousands of stranger…

The human brain wasn't made for this.

Seeing the effects of social interactions with millions of people (albeit virtual) does something weird to the brain.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#36

Post by pier25 »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #9

I am from a generation which grew up with phpBB forums of various kinds, and I loved the format. I still struggle with understanding why we can't remain within decentralised forums. Was it such a hassle to check like four URLs a day to see what was happening in the threads you participated in? Are centralised feeds such a core necessity to us?

I think it's more that forums weren't really made for boosting engagement. It's like email, just a tool to do something not to keep people addicted. GenZ look at forums and they go eeewww.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#37

Post by feintruled »

colesantiago wrote: post #29
lapcat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not. "Try to achieve small and local successes instead of pursuing an imaginary universal one."

We know in this world that isn't possible anymore unless you're, you know, actually their friends. Again, today's social networks want to grow in users, so it is not up to the author to say that we should stop making social networks succeed.

For me, he's saying you don't need to TRY to make them succeed - they will succeed or not on their own merits, and for their own niches.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#38

Post by djbusby »

mattbuilds wrote: post #19

I think the VC world's obsession with growth has tainted how we (me included) view things, especially stuff like social media. There is a fixation with growing and doing it rapidly that I believe is harmful. I don't know when this switch flipped, but I've felt it gradually building up over time. Things can just be what they are, grow naturally and then die naturally. I suspect that injecting cash and attempting to ac…

For me, I think the big mind-shift was the dot.com explosion/implosion.

VC driven growth at all costs ("GaaC"), monetize later. That's when I first saw it.

Prior to that what I remember was mostly building a small business.

On one you grow and grow fast, needing multiple rounds, to exit.

The other was build a business with one or two rounds, then have a product that generates profit.

The GaaC method also means spreading the company into all kinds of things - maybe away from the core - which I think causes loss in the original value prop.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#39

Post by CaptArmchair »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #28
dgb23 wrote: post #10

> There’s no metric of success for non-commercial ones. They simply exist as long as at least two users are using them to communicate. This is something I didn't really understand when I was younger. In every online community that has had some amount of hype surrounding it, there are prominent figures either hyping it up further or spreading doom and gloom when the metrics don't match their expectations. What I didn'…

I'm of two minds on certain kinds of complaints. A lot of content creators talk about getting throttled or having their reach restricted. While I do think content creators should be treated fairly by platforms to make the game fair... This doesn't really affect me and it often feels like that's all certain content creators will fixate upon, rather than making quality content. I think it's sometimes a strategy of dece…

> A lot of

Isn't that the issue? How is "a lot", and is that number representative for everyone who publishes text, video, pictures,... on the Internet or, more limited, the Web, or, even more limited, a handful of online platforms?

> making quality content

I'd argue that quality is in the eye of the beholder. Online, both trash and treasure co-exist. Moreover, one man's trash is another's treasure as quality is, always, subjective value attribution.

The big challenge has always been discovery. The so-called "big" social networks got big because the introduction of a "wall" or a "feed" changed how we, denizens of the internet, interact with the Web: from "pull" to "push". The vast majority of internet users don't collect and curate links: they just consume a feed that pushes updates from their "network". Or "subreddits", or "channels".

Incidentally, how's consuming feeds of pushed content all that different from flipping television channels? Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent does echo eerily in this digital future.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#40

Post by dahwolf »

costanzaDynasty wrote: post #32

Social media is over if you think trading Musk for Zuckerberg is progress. On a side note though, Meta just changed their whole narrative in one day after being dragged for the last year over the Metaverse. If I were an investor I'd be very bullish on Meta. What was considered a colossal failure in over hiring helped result in a chance to add a new growing platform.

There's definitely a growing social media fatigue, a feeling of saturation or boredom. That feeling will only accelerate as social media further fractures. The increasingly attractive option is not to switch, instead to quit.

The type of social media figures that are broadcasters will face a particularly challenging situation. I recently heard a Chrome Devrel person complain about it. They used to just post announcements on Twitter and take some feedback there as well. Now they have to go and try to reach this audience across Twitter, Reddit, Mastodon, Discord, Bluesky, Threads...a growing list. And there's no network effect where you get a mass following for free, you have to painstakingly build it up on each network independently.

Post reply on HN