This piece reads like an elaborate retelling of the Tower of Babel
Stop trying to make social networks succeed
61–70 of 226 posts
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has really made me pessimistic about tech and products in general. There's the free and great stage, then the market is captured, then enshittification, then death. I don't get excited about new products or new tech because I know the cycle. Hype then bust. New thing comes out and I'm just meh about it, because it'll bust soon enough so it's not worth getting invested in it. Or new version will come out next year…
> It has really made me pessimistic about tech and products in general. There's the free and great stage, then the market is captured, then enshittification, then death. Mark Zuckerberg an hour ago: "Our approach will be the same as all our other products: make the product work well first, then see if we can get it on a clear path to 1 billion people, and only then think about monetization at that point." https://www…
lol it's so explicit
at this point he's the world's leading expert on the enshittification cycle
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#63I 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…
While this is true and I think most VCs are idiots, there is a natural phenomenon of the internet which allows for exponential growth and which means that startup = growth is a very real thing. What VCs and a lot of startups try and do is fake the actual utility of a product through forced marketing and Glamour.
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#64I 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…
> There is a fixation with growing and doing it rapidly that I believe is harmful. I don't know when this switch flipped.
Gradually? I happened around 1995 and it’s only ever slowed down for recessions.
It’s not a trend of companies it’s a trend of funding sources and strategies. If you take fifty million in funding, those guys want it back. And they want it back 10x. So when your favorite little company takes a funding round that is five times more money than they’ve ever seen total, let alone at once, your favorite little company is about to change into something ugly.
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#65I 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…
It has really made me pessimistic about tech and products in general. There's the free and great stage, then the market is captured, then enshittification, then death. I don't get excited about new products or new tech because I know the cycle. Hype then bust. New thing comes out and I'm just meh about it, because it'll bust soon enough so it's not worth getting invested in it. Or new version will come out next year…
The big wrinkle is they're mainly free while they're burning VC money on user acquisition trying to 'win' some niche they can exploit to justify a crazy evaluation. The free money fueling that early golden age directly requires the eventual enshittification in the current model because the VC doesn't want a stable profitable enterprise they're all swinging for the unicorn fences.
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#66I 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…
This is a huge tangent, but I've started harboring similar feelings for video games. Go read comments for the latest game and 90% of the comments will be about item drops, skins, loot drops, whatever. It's absolutely mind boggling because all those things IMO suck the fun out of the game which it to kill something, kill someone, or explore some world.
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#67I 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…
> I suspect that injecting cash and attempting to achieve an unnatural growth is probably not good for both the quality of the product and the long term stability of it.
The people getting rich with these methods don't care about quality or stability.
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#68I 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 don't think the problem is user retention so much as upkeep. That the web is an extremely adversarial environment. Popular forums are high value targets as they both tend to be central in the PageRank graph (so link spam has historically paid off very well as black hat SEO); while also sitting on large user databases with associated emails. So there are non-stop intrusion attempts and ceaseless bot spam. Operating…
tl;dr: Anecdotally, the attention span of the person is now three seconds. If you can't grab that three seconds; next.
> Operating a forum is a lot of thankless maintenance.
If you are to run any sort of site, you just kind of got to expect it. Who here thanks HN for their service?
Their favorite IRC server SysOP, Discord server owner?
Forum's were slow on delivering content.
The world is now driven by media and that was a PITA to host. If the webmaster didn't allow image uploads and even when so, you couldn't normally link elsewhere; were forced to register an account. Wait for a verification email, wait for an administrator to approve your account and then gain 10 posts. Text is time consuming to read and too write, like this comment.
They were more a leisure activity rather than what the internet has become now. Adaptability never happened and with the failure of evolving with real-time with the next generation who were starting out with internet enabled phones and gadgets caused their downfall.
They may of suited the generation, however they were not a fit for the upcoming younger generations. And if you can't target and gain their attention; expect to go extinct.
Code bases were too lumpy and such a mess; to make any modifications, to adapt it to anything else took a fair chunk of time and skill.
Proboards, Zetaboards, Invasion tried. Services where you could spawn an instantaneous forum for you and communities. It had momentum and than fell apart as did the death of AngelFire, GeoCities.
My two-cents.
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#69It’s true that there are a couple different models of a social networking application - Facebook, Twitter, Wechat, and Telegram all of meaningfully distinctions. But basically, there’s a lot more similarity than difference, and probably no good reason for more than a handful of these things to exist. The idea of a custom network for your community is silly - your community probably doesn’t have any unique needs.
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#70I agree with most of what was said except one tiny piece, I don't think we should give up on a universal social network. We have some of the pieces, but the puzzle still isn't solved and I like seeing people challenge that. The rest is definitely true though, all social networks are doomed for the same result: disappear into the void or become riddled with ads and so many additional services that the core network mov…
> I agree with most of what was said except one tiny piece, I don't think we should give up on a universal social network. That wasn't one tiny piece. The central thesis of the article was against the idea of a universal social network. Literally: "stop dreaming of a universal network."
A tiny piece can be integral. But I would disagree with the idea that it's the central thesis. The rest can operate without it just fine. I would even go as far as to quote you on your interpretation about the article being stop dreaming of a universal network: "Incredibly reductionist interpretation of the article."