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I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

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Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#131

Post by daniel_iversen »

Hi, congrats on the launch!

Firstly, it doesn’t seem to work for me and my wife - we hold the phones together but clicking start does nothing (and we’ve accepted Bluetooth etc).

Secondly, I wonder if you’ll have a massive chicken and egg issue with the physical feature. I get it’s the main feature but could you overcome it somehow initially while still maintaining your long term “gimmick”? Like could you allow people to connect with the first X friends (5? 10? 20? Whatever that can get virality and flywheel going) or connect with as many as you want virtually for the first X months etc. You could even have the contacts fade away slowly if they don’t get verified in person etc. You might want to model out different strategies (and be extremely conservative) otherwise you’ll be relying on lottery-level luck. Good luck anyway though :)

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#132

Post by grishka »

readitalready wrote: post #33

I really wish more social networks would have a "fading connections" limit. So many social networks suffer from stale connections and networks, and these connections should expire after a year. Otherwise, it will permanently define a social network's content and editorial direction without algorithmic control. For example, Selena Gomez will always have 400million followers on Instagram, but she's socially irrelevant…

As someone who's been working on social networking and adjacent services for over 15 years, hard disagree.

An ideal social network should not have any agency of its own, period. If your feed is too crowded because you follow too many people, then so be it. It's your problem, you did this to yourself. Only you know how to fix it for yourself, if you do even want it fixed in the first place.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#133

Post by locusofself »

onemoresoop wrote: post #102
ejoso wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hate it if the system removed nodes from my network without my influence. Perhaps a rules engine with user defined criteria would be useful. Ultimately, users define their network in current-day social media and the relevance of any celebrity or other person within it. 400M people still find Selena Gomez relevant to themselves - she’s simply not relevant to you. I asked Gemini very simply “is Selena Gomez rel…

Could potentially show you withering connections you havent interacted with, almost an auto recycle bin with the option to dig on there and bring it back later on but dissapear from your main radius of attention if withered.

Instagram has something like this where it shows you "least interacted with". It seems broken to me though, as it showed me people who I do interact with.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#134

Post by jamesfinlayson »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #46
readitalready wrote: post #33

I really wish more social networks would have a "fading connections" limit. So many social networks suffer from stale connections and networks, and these connections should expire after a year. Otherwise, it will permanently define a social network's content and editorial direction without algorithmic control. For example, Selena Gomez will always have 400million followers on Instagram, but she's socially irrelevant…

I feel like that was what made Google Plus better and yet because it was Google shoving everything into Google Plus itself to force numbers… it failed. Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen. You can basically group friends under specific labels, so if you want to only share some posts / photos with family, only family will see it, wanna share posts with former and current coworkers? Hav…

Apparently Facebook does/did support posting to certain groups? Maybe the UI isn't great as I never knew it was possible but a workmate told it was.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#135

Post by type0 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #91
razingeden wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xitter was kind of doing the same thing: I can’t see anything my mom posts, but I definitely have to see everything Elon’s mom does.

> Xitter Is this an alternate front-end (Nitter) or shorthand for X/Twitter?

I usually call it Xshitter

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#136

Post by homeonthemtn »

Do we actually need social networks?

These, to me, feel like artifacts of a bygone era, now replaced by the boiled down version - group chats with friends. Telegram has every feature you need in a platform and you get the joy of "circles" as one poster mentioned, by simply having different group chats.

Plus it's not exposed to the public.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#138

Post by mjamesaustin »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #78
mjamesaustin wrote: post #13

This looks exactly like what I've been looking for. I love the idea of using phone proximity as the only way to add friends. I think it will be very important for the onboarding process to be effortless, so you should focus on that. Until you reach some kind of saturation, most people will be downloading the app because a friend wants to add them. Having a way to generate a QR download code on my phone when I "add" a…

I just signed up and it’s super fast. Download the app, put in your name, allow Bluetooth. No email, no password, nothing.

What I was describing is a way to quickly onboard a friend who I want to friend, because chances are zero of my friends will have this app yet.

If the connect with friend interface also had a QR code for app download and could trigger a connection between our accounts upon download, that would remove enough friction that I could start recommending this to my friends on the fly.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#139

Post by Barrin92 »

grishka wrote: post #132
readitalready wrote: post #33

I really wish more social networks would have a "fading connections" limit. So many social networks suffer from stale connections and networks, and these connections should expire after a year. Otherwise, it will permanently define a social network's content and editorial direction without algorithmic control. For example, Selena Gomez will always have 400million followers on Instagram, but she's socially irrelevant…

As someone who's been working on social networking and adjacent services for over 15 years, hard disagree. An ideal social network should not have any agency of its own, period. If your feed is too crowded because you follow too many people, then so be it. It's your problem, you did this to yourself. Only you know how to fix it for yourself, if you do even want it fixed in the first place.

real world social networks have agency if you define ephemerality as agency. It's an accident of digital platforms that nothing is ever forgotten, not a feature inherent to normal human relations. In the real world you drop phone numbers, you forget events, unused relationships atrophy. And that's not a bug, forgetting is a feature. For anyone who isn't convinced of this, Black Mirror did an admirable job in its first season putting the pathologies of social technologies on display that record everything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_You

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#140

Post by skybrian »

vector_spaces wrote: post #126

The 'tapping phones' gimmick strikes me as something that sounds cute but will become an annoying chore that one should be able to opt out of. Particularly given various unintended side effects -- I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network. And either way, it's not the core feature that will draw users to the site If you want to differen…

Perhaps "remember when you met with your friends?"

But taking a photo (possibly a group photo) is a more natural way to do that. Maybe it should integrate with photo-taking somehow?

It would be annoying if you met up, forgot to do the ritual in person, and had no way to fix it.

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