Stop trying to make social networks succeed • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#131

Post by cmrdporcupine » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 6:29 PM UTC

djbusby wrote: post #38

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 spread…

It's funny because having lived through that, we all thought the implosion of .com companies that worked this way, during the .com crash, was a repudiation of this strategy. But it came back within 10 years, and stronger.

I also remember clearly that at the beginning of things with Facebook there was a strong sense from the press of "how the hell will this thing ever make money?" and big questions like that around the IPO. Hell, there was that going on for Google around their IPO, too.

There was a brief period from about 2001 to 2007 or 2008 or so when there was perhaps more responsibility to try to start on a more even revenue-earning foundation with sounder business plans. But that all blew up in the 2010s.

It's possible this was all tied into the massive cuts in interest rates, and QE etc after 2008 that made debt really cheap.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#132

Post by pixl97 » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 6:29 PM UTC

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'…

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other...

>Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media

...

>Prodigy was upset that people were, by and large, using the free communication service they tossed on there just to have more content and not their weird Random Garbage You Don’t Need Storefront. And in many ways, that complaint has only gotten louder over the decades. Stop talking to each other and start buying things. Stop providing content for free and start paying us for the privilege. Stop shining sunlight on horrors and start advocating for more of them. Stop making communities and start weaponizing misinformation to benefit your betters.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#133

Post by Loughla » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 6:29 PM UTC

pnielsen2 wrote: post #109

xeromal wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mind boggling how many people enjoy that though. You're right. Clash of Clans et all really changed the gaming dynamic. Just as an example, Halo Infinite came out and it had warts, but also had a good fundamentals for gameplay. Good speed and weapons. Every single comment was about armor cores and skins. I just didn't get it.

This exact thing made me stop wanting to use reddit

I would like to add completion mechanics and badges to this list of things as well. Reddit is obsessed with 100% completion. It stops being a game and starts being work at some point.

I don't know when it happened, but at some point in the past it stopped being about playing games for fun, and turned into playing these things for something else - status maybe? I don't know how to describe what I'm thinking.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#134

Post by pimeys » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

epiccoleman wrote: post #90

xeromal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I winced hard at the $70 price tag on Tears of the Kingdom - but damned if I didn't get more than my money's worth. One of the things that makes that game so fun is that the whole thing is just there in front of you and you are largely allowed to approach the game however you want. One of the best games ever in terms of respecting the player's intelligence and creativity - just gives you a set of tools and says "fuck…

Nintendo is sometimes very good at what they do. Another example is the Pikmin series. Miyamoto's favorite. It's never been a real seller, but they do another version every ten years and it gets better every time. One day we'll look at these games and realize how much they invented.

I was first a bit torn about Tears of the Kingdom, it was hard to get back to the world of Breath of the Wild. Then I found this cave, and then it was 2am, and four hours disappeared somewhere. Now I can't let it out of my hands...

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#135

Post by pixl97 » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 6:35 PM UTC

rcarr wrote: post #74

I really want someone to make BoringBook - it's free until a billion people have signed up and then after that it costs $1 a year. It gives you a page you can post to and customise like myspace, an encrypted messaging client, local group pages and business pages. There are no ads, other than whatever businesses post on their pages. There are three feeds: your immediate network (which is the default), your local netwo…

Eh, first the infrastructure to run a billion (real) people is going to cost you an epic fuckton. So, to actually pay for that you're going to either ask for VC money or show ads.

But then it turns out that money you got from the above will be far and beyond more than you'll ever earn by having people pay for the service. Your VCs and ad networks will want more engagement so you'll start down the dark path of increasing that all while showering yourself in money and not giving a single shit about the average person.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#136

Post by danjoredd » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 6:37 PM UTC

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #31

robertlagrant wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think it does. I remember that some of my more common search results changed to include children's content after I went on a lazytown binge out of nostalgia

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#137

Post by pixl97 » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 6:39 PM UTC

jfax wrote: post #106

amadeuspagel wrote: post #35

Stop trying. Stop trying to make anything better. Stop trying to create any kind of social space. Just read my blog. Subscribe to my newsletter. That's all you need.

Better than what?

#5 Hey stop talking and start buying things. Internet not supposed to make only some money. Internet supposed to make all money. It’s the rules.

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other...

Better than #4 of the garbagetown list of social media trajectory.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#138

Post by fullshark » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 6:46 PM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #128

krooj wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you get around this type of crap is by diving deep, and when you think you've gotten deep enough, go further. Academia, for all it's faults, is a fantastic way around the bullshit you get with industry hype, by mere virtue of open peer scrutiny. You want to understand whether the current "AI" hype will last? Research and understand the theory and academics behind it - therein lies your truth, and if it doesn'…

Once you've identified the grift you can rest easy knowing that eventually it will collapse and the grifters will be left with nothing but society-warping amounts of money.

And you get to grind away until death but rest easy knowing that you're virtuous based on your own internalized definition of virtuous.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#139

Post by carlosjobim » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 6:52 PM UTC

ShroudedNight wrote: post #112

carlosjobim wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost per user to maintain these kinds of platforms is extremely low. That's why advertising supported models work. So that means if you charged for a platform, you wouldn't need to charge each user very much on a monthly or yearly basis. Such a platform could still be one that require no technical skills or knowledge from the users, who just want to publish their stuff. Many people (especially tech people) have a…

> Many people (especially tech people) have an almost psychotic adversity against any kind of paid online services. > who'd refuse to pay $10 per year I've not actually seen many services that charge $10 per year. Most instead charge $5 per month / $50 per year. The few services I know of that do charge in the range of what you specify are near universally regarded as really good value.

Yes, $10 per year was just a number, but maybe not too far from the truth. I've seen estimates of $5 to $30 to $300 per user and year for sites like Instagram.

Something for $10 per year is usually a promotion, and maybe a good place to get started. Since the social media giants have been giving it for free for a decade...

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#140

Post by paxys » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 6:54 PM UTC

Not everyone is looking for a small self-hosted space for their friends and family and local community. Heck why do I even need an online social network for that when I can just go out and talk to them? The vast majority of users on networks like Twitter are looking to connect with a wider world. And "success" in those terms simply means having a critical mass to make such a network sustainable and interesting (and maybe profitable). Zuck himself has stated multiple times since yesterday that his idea of success for Threads is 1 billion users. That is a lot fewer than 8 billion, but it is success nonetheless.