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We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

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Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#101

Post by zeta0134 »

marmaduke wrote: post #53
skewart wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We already have a model for this: email. Come to think of it, you could build a Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter clone on top of email pretty easily. All it would take is a slightly reimagined client. Just whitelist addresses of people you "follow" and display their emails in a separate, more visually rich feed (e.g. automatically downloading and displaying images). Make the UI/UX of "posting" an email to your feed…

How would you keep rich messages from polluting the traditional inbox? I mean, I'd want to keep my existing address and use it as regular email, too

I think Facebook and Twitter work presicely because they take the free form content mode of an email (often a rich text document) and severely restrict it to a handful of more readily digestable options.

On any of the platform, there's only so many ways you can format a post. Facebook for example lets you do plain text, dress it up a bit, or attach some piece of content with optional text (a photo, video, or site embed), and then presents your post in a standard way after that.

It seems restricting when I put it all down on paper, but that restriction is downright liberating when you want to get something out quick. Choice can be overwhelming, and for better or worse, the lack of freedom in Facebook's post editor makes it much easier for folks around the globe to pick up and use. Email won't ever have that, and that's okay! Different tools for different jobs.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#102

Post by anigbrowl »

Bahamut wrote: post #40
ben_jones wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually spent quite a bit of time working on a design document for an open source version of the Facebook platform. I got a fair bit of the architecture and requirements down for what I believed would make the project successful. Then I came to the slow realization that the world had categorically no use for a Facebook alternative. The features of Facebook are largely meaningless. What matters is the absolute s…

I think there is space for an alternative - keep in mind that that doesn't mean that they have to be hugely popular. For example, some online communities I am a part of subsist mainly in chat rooms, or forums. Those communities are so tightly knit in many ways. While a lot of us are also friends on FB, our ties in these communities are still very strong.

I'm in some such communities too, but efforts to get anything going on other sites outside fb come to nothing because you just end up with more social media to keep track of for no real benefit - you can't do anything sufficiently interesting that you can't already do on FB, and you've lost all the network effects for content discovery, rapid dissemination of news or sufficiently entertaining content etc.

OK you gain privacy but that's really a negative freedom. I assume everything I do online is visible to spies and corporations anyway unless I go to the bother of running Tor (and probably even then), so moving some of my social activity off FB isn't much more effective than virtually waving a fist in Mark Zuckerberg's direction.

Let's be realistic here, small specialist forums are simply not going to overcome large-scale network effects absent massive functional advantages.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#103

Post by anigbrowl »

adventured wrote: post #61
godelski wrote: post #47

It seems to me that a social network is one of those natural monopolies. It works so well because so many people use it. Remember the big reason many social network alternatives failed, no one else was on them. There are some things (very few in fact) that just work better as monopolies. But that just means you need to regulate it differently. And there's an interesting discussion, how best to regulate natural monopo…

The big reason many other networks failed, is because no one else was on them? Prove that as the cause, as opposed to them sucking as the reason. MySpace & Friendster were already very substantial when Facebook came along and destroyed them, because they were horrible services. The better question is, why would you need or want to regulate it as a natural monopoly? Specifically: to accomplish what? Let me give you so…

Network effects are well documented, demanding that people prove they're the only causal factor here is rude and unhelpful.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#105

Post by anigbrowl »

evdev wrote: post #68

From my perspective, problems with facebook: 1) Anti-privacy, megalomaniacal nature of network. 2) Social cost of having removed the normal ways we moderate each other's behavior. E.g. when someone is a narcissistic bore, you talk to them less and less at the barbecues and eventually events start happening they're not invited to. Facebook takes the people most willing to ignore social boundaries and customs and puts…

I don't get your 2) because I have no problem ignoring people I don't like. But I agree that bad behavior is rewarded and that this is a problem on social networking in general (jackassery on YT, Twitter trolls, things like Infowars)

I'd add to your list the imposition of censorship with no feedback mechanism - Facebook's 'community standards' are wholly arbitrary, and I find it extremely disturbing that you can share almost any kind of violent content there with no problem, but anything too sexual risks a date with the banhammer. It's perpetuating standards of social control and sexism that actively hurt people.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#107

Post by anigbrowl »

Eerie wrote: post #90
danellis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is keeping in touch with friends in one place online wasting time?

Facebook is not about keeping in touch with friends, it is about selling your views to advertisers by maximizing the time you spend on the site. To keep in touch with friends you should use a fucking mail list.

So anyone who doesn't do things your way is wrong, OK. Thanks for clearing that up.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#108

Post by marmaduke »

zeta0134 wrote: post #101
marmaduke wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you keep rich messages from polluting the traditional inbox? I mean, I'd want to keep my existing address and use it as regular email, too

I think Facebook and Twitter work presicely because they take the free form content mode of an email (often a rich text document) and severely restrict it to a handful of more readily digestable options. On any of the platform, there's only so many ways you can format a post. Facebook for example lets you do plain text, dress it up a bit, or attach some piece of content with optional text (a photo, video, or site emb…

I don't agree that the minimalist approach is favorable to growing the platforms.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#109

Post by anigbrowl »

ouid wrote: post #86

There's lots of alternatives to Facebook. Facebook is for people who don't care about alternatives.

No it isn't. I've had accounts on numerous alternative social networks and none of them are much good as general platforms because there aren't enough other people using them, or using them often enough.

Stop pretending network effects don't exist or that your social media usage habits must be true for everyone else.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#110

Post by marmaduke »

skewart wrote: post #98
marmaduke wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my question is, how to keep a standard email from being completely overwhelmed by traffic of the social network, assuming it isn't aware of the headers? Or, you'd just have to tell users to set up a suitable filter? I think we already see some of these things to some extent like Github pull requests having a lot of usability via email.

I'm assuming that people participating in this network are all using a new kind of email client designed to work with these feeds. On the receiver or "follower" side of things the client would filter emails coming from addresses you follow into a separate social feed box. All your other emails (e.g. from other random people, or the notification that the shoes you just bought online have been shipped) would be display…

Agreed that the existing infrastructure is sufficient.

My main question is how to support both direct and indirect (via a "social" client (as if email wasn't social)) usage in a sustainable fashion. Otherwise I don't see it gaining traction.

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