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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

#181

Post by paulnpace »

derwiki wrote: post #160
chr15m wrote: post #98

Here's what I would do. 1. Make it QR code scanning instead of tapping so it can be a PWA. 2. Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good). 3. Save yourself a lot of money by building it on top of the Nostr protocol. Run a relay yourself if…

Nobody wants to install an app?

If it requires Play Store, I will only put it on my work phone.

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

#182

Post by RajT88 »

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…

For example, I know a gal who foolishly invited her whole friend list to her 26th birthday party.

Did that weird guy from 3rd grade show up? He sure did.

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

#183

Post by dnnddidiej »

bpt3 wrote: post #104
dnnddidiej wrote: post #32

Nice. Quick hypoyhetical. Meta offers $1bn in 5 years time when you have 2m users. Will you sell? If so this is a meta-or-dead social network. Making it federated etc. would make me trust it more.

If that's your standard, you basically can't interact with any entity other than megacorps, which you obviously disdain. What is the benefit of that perspective? It's just social media. If it goes away tomorrow, no real loss. Use it accordingly.

It is good to point out this alternative is 90% likely going to be a rugpull on "nice cosy 90s style social network" by systemic factors. Regardless of the intent of the owner.

I just realised federated helps re. censorship but not privacy/secrecy needs.

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

#184

Post by RajT88 »

Petersipoi wrote: post #69
giancarlostoro wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I completely agree. Circles were great. Unfortunately, they're one of the things that killed Google+. I remember reading an article from one of the creators of Google+ years and years ago. They talked about how asymmetric friending (Alice adding Bob to one of her circles didn't add Alice to any of Bob's circles) prevented the viral network effect that Facebook was able to achieve. It's a damn shame. I feel like Googl…

I never tried a Windows phone - but everyone I knew with one loved them. (Most of the owners worked for Microsoft...)

I loved Google+ - it was like Facebook without the dark patterns. So of course, nobody was on it (which I didn't dislike exactly).

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

#185

Post by paulnpace »

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…

> I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network.

It seems like a feature could deal with this specific case, such as marking a friend as deceased. Possibly, other friends doing the same thing puts the profile to be in deceased status until the user logs in and changes the status.

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

#186

Post by acdha »

viccis wrote: post #76
giancarlostoro wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What killed Google+ is the same thing that prevented Bluesky from ever being good. They had a brief window where everyone wanted to use it, and they kept it locked behind a hard to get invite system for months and months.

It was worse than that: they forced _everyone_ into it, whether or not you had any interest in using it.

They did this before having notification control or usable filtering[1] so what this meant was for most of year, you'd login to Gmail and see the upper right notification badge be !!!LOOK AT ME!!! red only to click on it and see it was telling you that some dude who no-showed on a Craigslist sale 10 years ago in a different city had been forced to “join” Google+. Even worse, it took like 6 months for their iOS developers to give you any control over push notifications so you got all of that as push notifications until you deleted the app.

They also annoyed key communities like Google Reader users: that wasn't their largest popular social network but it was one which people actually liked and it disproportionately skewed towards people like journalists, bloggers, etc. who recommended technology to other people. The conversion to Google+ was really clumsy and they did things like replacing the popular Reader commenting system with a Google+ “integration” which didn't work at all on mobile devices[2], which meant that a ton of influential people had a really negative experience and told everyone they knew about it.

1. The “circles” idea reportedly worked well when it was Google employees using it internally but it relied on the poster picking an audience for a post, which failed in the real world when the spammiest people think everyone is interested in their every word.

2. The dialog was sized for a desktop display so the post button was inaccessible off the screen.

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

#187

Post by indolering »

Aloha wrote: post #163
giancarlostoro wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and Microsoft giving up on Windows phones were both mistakes. You hit me right in the gut, are we long lost siblings? Lol

Windows Phone was so so good - it was THE phone I recommended to users who were on feature phones/non-smart phones because the UX was so simple and clean (and obvious) - with a side effect that if you HAD a smart phone before (Palm, Apple, Android, BlackBerry, the UX was contrary to what you were used to). Windows Phone died because MS didnt do enough to build the app ecosystem, and bailed out too soon. I also feel w…

I really wish I had messed with Windows Phone when it was a thing. They were the only ones not to just ship a clone of an existing interface ASAP. But it was closed source and offered no advantages for carriers or device makers compared to Android.

WebOS needed WASM and a lot more to be successful. I think WASM/WASI is to the point that the next major platform build out can use it.

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

#188

Post by angoragoats »

viccis wrote: post #179
echelon wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the same thing that prevented Bluesky from ever being good. That's not it at all. Bluesky is simply just too political. X is too political. Bluesky is too political. When you focus on content and sharing and having a good time, then the network takes off. I'm not saying politics isn't important. I'm saying it can't become the miasma that pervades the entire service and makes the entire point of the social network c…

Bluesky is political because their invite-only on-boarding process for months meant that only really tight knit subgroups and subcultures found their way in. By the time your average person who just wanted to stop seeing ads about Great Replacement Theory or whatever found their way into Bluesky, it was chock full of furry art, "fandom" posting from teenagers on the spectrum, and political rambling from people who ha…

How does having a really tightly controlled and/or lengthy invite period translate into the user base being of one particular political viewpoint? I'm not seeing the causal link. Even if I take at face value your claim that "only really tight knit subgroups and subcultures found their way in," I still don't see how these subgroups or subcultures would necessarily have the same political views.

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

#189

Post by c0rruptbytes »

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 understand the intent, but selena is still extremely popular, especially amongst women...maybe a bad example
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