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Facebook is for grandparents: What we need in a next-gen social network

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Re: Facebook is for grandparents: What we need in a next-gen social network

#31

Post by voltagex_ »

cft wrote: post #13

The social networks are like TV shows. They have a limited run. This is because it's entertainment, rather than tech. Hollywood knows how this works, and they do not incorporate or IPO each individual TV show: instead they incorporate studios, that produce many different shows. Facebook is forced into this model too by reality, thus they bought Instagram, and tried to buy Snapchat. Those shows will also have a limite…

Does this mean I'm going to have to rescue my data every time a software/network is "retired"?

Re: Facebook is for grandparents: What we need in a next-gen social network

#32

Post by adventured »

ericmsimons wrote: post #18
cft wrote: post #13

The social networks are like TV shows. They have a limited run. This is because it's entertainment, rather than tech. Hollywood knows how this works, and they do not incorporate or IPO each individual TV show: instead they incorporate studios, that produce many different shows. Facebook is forced into this model too by reality, thus they bought Instagram, and tried to buy Snapchat. Those shows will also have a limite…

That's an interesting analogy. However, I don't think that Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, etc are as easy to replicate as a TV show. Empirically, social products are exceptionally difficult to 'manufacture' and are usually the result of side projects and early stage startups.

Big hit TV shows are extraordinarily rare. Most fail; most fail quickly.

You can just about list on one hand every decade, the number of shows that last more than five years and bring in big ratings (audience / users). Shows like Friends, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Roseanne, Mash, etc.

Hit TV shows are extraordinarily difficult to 'manufacture.' Out of thousands proposed and scripted by writers, one or two per year are hits if you're lucky. Out of those, a few survive five or seven years.

And that's all true even with the huge built-in audiences that companies such as NBC, ABC, CBS have that show up every night waiting to watch content. There aren't 100,000 other apps to compete with, just a few major deliverers of TV shows / networks; and the failure rate is still that high.

Re: Facebook is for grandparents: What we need in a next-gen social network

#33

Post by andrewflnr »

cft wrote: post #13

The social networks are like TV shows. They have a limited run. This is because it's entertainment, rather than tech. Hollywood knows how this works, and they do not incorporate or IPO each individual TV show: instead they incorporate studios, that produce many different shows. Facebook is forced into this model too by reality, thus they bought Instagram, and tried to buy Snapchat. Those shows will also have a limite…

How do you think of Reddit in that framework? Reddit itself is explicitly a tool for creating, basically, community sites. How closely does it fit with your vision of a tool for crafting social networks? When do you predict it will fail?

Re: Facebook is for grandparents: What we need in a next-gen social network

#34

Post by bsamuels »

andrewflnr wrote: post #33
cft wrote: post #13

The social networks are like TV shows. They have a limited run. This is because it's entertainment, rather than tech. Hollywood knows how this works, and they do not incorporate or IPO each individual TV show: instead they incorporate studios, that produce many different shows. Facebook is forced into this model too by reality, thus they bought Instagram, and tried to buy Snapchat. Those shows will also have a limite…

How do you think of Reddit in that framework? Reddit itself is explicitly a tool for creating, basically, community sites. How closely does it fit with your vision of a tool for crafting social networks? When do you predict it will fail?

Facebook revolves around making people interesting and providing people-based content to consume.

Reddit revolves around people finding interesting content and providing it to others to be consumed with some commentary on the side.

I'm not sure how they're comparable. Sure, reddit has a community aspect, but it's really just a side dish compared to the content (links).

Re: Facebook is for grandparents: What we need in a next-gen social network

#36

Post by Guest2931 »

cft wrote: post #29
jamesaguilar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you're implying entertainment : limited run :: tech : not limited run. But that can't be right, because plenty of bits of tech have had limited runs, and there are bits of entertainment that are centuries old and still going. So could you clarify what you meant in your first paragraph? I think that it would be more correct to say the social networks that have failed have not had the kind of classical de…

some tech has short run; and some entertainment has long runs (like ER TV show), but these are exceptions to the rule. Your search engine, Google has enjoyed a 14 year run, and is going strong. Windows OS has enjoyed a nearly 30 years run so far. Kardashians on the other hand, enjoyed only a couple of years of popularity. This is what I mean.

Facebook has to evolve from being entertainment, to being technology. For example, look at Steam. It's a platform for distributing games. It's not going away any time soon. They work to improve the platform. They're going to open the platform up, so everyone can publish games. They're not simply a website that tries to sell you games.

Facebook needs to do the same if they want to survive. They need to stop being a social networking site, and be a social networking platform, that others build from. Facebook the site, should be one site of many using that platform. I should be able to develop a social networking site built from the Facebook platform, to compete with the Facebook site. Then when my site gets old, or the Facebook site gets old, new sites emerge, and build off the data from the existing platform. This way, it lives on. However, this will never happen, and Facebook will die.

Re: Facebook is for grandparents: What we need in a next-gen social network

#38

Post by unclebucknasty »

mattquiros wrote: post #16

Anyone else feel that no one knows this "next-generation social network" better than, well, the next generation? I'm talking about today's young teens and little kids. Facebook took off during our time because we were the cool demographic back then. It was everything we wanted and needed that MySpace and Friendster failed to give. I think it's difficult for us to comprehend what the next-gen social network will be be…

I agree with this. I'm not sure that the next-big-thing is even imaginable yet. I don't think it will be just a product or service like Facebook. I think it will involve a complete paradigm shift, and perhaps some tech that we haven't yet envisioned.

This article makes some interesting points and, perhaps, the next generation will incorporate some of these ideas. But, it feels like a modest iteration over the current state of affairs. And, much like the current landscape (FB, Vine, Instagram, SnapChat, etc), the article feels fragmented. It consists of a lot of related ideas, but there's no real cohesion or unifying theme.

Re: Facebook is for grandparents: What we need in a next-gen social network

#39

Post by unclebucknasty »

byoung2 wrote: post #26

The new social network should share profits with users who create the content. In fact, it shall only take a small commission, and offer the option to convert the commission to a fixed monthly sum in exchange for the technology services it provides. An interesting idea, but won't that encourage spam?

Yeah, variations of this have been tried repeatedly and failed. Refer.ly is one of the most recent that comes to mind.

The whole point of social networks is to be social with people you enjoy. As soon as you provide financial incentive, then things get skewed.

Maybe there's a model or variation under which this could work. But, simply allowing people to monetize interactions, the stuff they share, etc. will pervert the incentive and devalue the platform.

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