We should replace Facebook with personal websites • Hacker News Board

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#111

Post by debt » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #11

>most of what people like about Facebook—namely the urge to post about their lives online. Where does the author get that idea? The majority of Facebook's 2 billion users do not post to their profile feed. Instead, the FB account is mostly used as a way to passively receive content. Some of the content is from family and friends, and some is from media outlets (NYTimes, etc). Recommending "personal websites" is talki…

"Instead, the FB account is mostly used as a way to passively receive content."

It's funny when people paint such wide strokes for 2 billion people. I would assume people use Facebook for literally hundreds if not thousands(if you can imagine) of use cases.

Probably one of the most complex consumer products ever made from that perspective. I don't think it's useful to reduce Facebook to something as simple as "most people do X on Facebook".

For instance, Facebook in India has nearly 300 million users. They all use Facebook the same way as the 215 million in the United States?

The only people that know how Facebook is used by people is Facebook.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#112

Post by criddell » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 5:43 PM UTC

max76 wrote: post #83

ip26 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The magic usually missing from RSS is really good recommendation/discovery. I've got a list of feeds I follow, and that's all I'll ever get.

Maybe someone should create an RSS feed that curates other RSS feeds and forwards them to their recipients. I'm not sure how to monetize this, but it would add some discovery to rss.

> I'm not sure how to monetize this

Make it good enough to pay for.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#113

Post by josefresco » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #71

josefresco wrote: post #39

This conversation always devolves, or evolves into a discussion about RSS. I actually think there's an opportunity for the "website builders" namely WordPress, to create "consumer" app(s) that pull in feeds from WordPress powered blogs (with RSS) This consumer / consumption app would compete with Facebook/Twitter directly. WordPress powers a significant % of the web and combined with the market share of some of the o…

Wordpress has this. There’s a “Reader” tab in the official Wordpress app and a web page on Wordpress.com that does the same thing. They don’t promote it. But it’s there.

I figured, thanks for the information. I've used the app to "play" with my own sites but never explored the Reader tab.

I think obviously, they'd need a standalone or new app that puts the focus on this feature. Split the site management app out or re-engineer to compliment the user consumption app.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#114

Post by PavlovsCat » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

bwb wrote: post #36

This is so crazy, I love the idea but the world isn't going back to how it was in the late 1990s / early 2000s. I've been in web hosting for a long time and I love the idea of everyone creating their own little website. The truth is people don't have the skills or care enough to do something like that, FB, Quora, Twitter, all these services that are walled gardens work because they make it EASY to share/create and CO…

Who is talking about going back technologically, though?

    Before the sponsored updates. 
    Before the terms of service changed. 
    Before data stopped being private. 
    Before we sold our memories. 
    Before we forgot our rights. 
    Before everything that made media 
    Less social and more cynical, 
    There was one simple idea: 
    Our lives are our own. 
    What we share and who we share it with, 
    Our memories, our secrets, 
    Our lives are our own. 
    That idea is important 
    So we’re going back to before. 
    And in going back to before, 
    We’re going forward.

from https://tent.io/ which now displays this poem instead:

> Did Not Connect: Potential Security Issue

The idea is still valid IMO. I don't care about "the world", that's just a word; the internet worked fine when there wasn't even 100 million people using it, so a better web doesn't have to be used by everybody, either.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#115

Post by wasdfff » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #60

saucoide wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When i try to think of what my ideal social media would look like, it always ends up sounding similar to an RSS feed, with the ability to lookup and requiring the other user's approval to get the actual content, you could use different clients, some could give you recommendations for events,etc based on your subscriptions if you so choose, or just run your own locally. life would be so simple

The magic usually missing from RSS is really good recommendation/discovery. I've got a list of feeds I follow, and that's all I'll ever get.

Follow feeds that post from a variety of sources. I follow a HN rss, a couple multireddit RSS feeds, and even newsletters from nyt and la times will include stories from a variety of places.

“Discover” hardly ever means, “check out what’s interesting,” usually it’s “check out this targeted ad”

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#116

Post by dtougas » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

saucoide wrote: post #43

jasode wrote: post #11

>most of what people like about Facebook—namely the urge to post about their lives online. Where does the author get that idea? The majority of Facebook's 2 billion users do not post to their profile feed. Instead, the FB account is mostly used as a way to passively receive content. Some of the content is from family and friends, and some is from media outlets (NYTimes, etc). Recommending "personal websites" is talki…

When i try to think of what my ideal social media would look like, it always ends up sounding similar to an RSS feed, with the ability to lookup and requiring the other user's approval to get the actual content, you could use different clients, some could give you recommendations for events,etc based on your subscriptions if you so choose, or just run your own locally. life would be so simple

Didn't you just describe Twitter?

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#117

Post by superkuh » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

It's not that I disagree but he posted on vice.com instead of his personal website. You don't make change by influencing others. You make it be being the change yourself.

I've hosted my personal website from my home computers for 20 years now and it's only become easier and more feasible as home connections became better.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#118

Post by peterwwillis » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

___alt wrote: post #52

Facebook is a bit more than just personal pages. * It has built-in authentication and ACL, you get to choose who sees your stuff or not (not counting overarching privacy issues). * It has built-in syndication, which means that it's easy to follow everyone's updates. * It has discovery abilities that helps finding people you want to connect to. * It has group conversation. * It has event planning. Personal pages have…

Exactly. People want to be connected, to have a kind of collection of people at their fingertips. Check what someone's been doing, send them a message. They want to share their memories and experiences. And they want the addictive qualities of Facebook... the likes, the comments, the feeds.

All of that is a social network, which is not a personal webpage.

You could create federated pages with these features using the following:

- web pages with comments and pingbacks

- wysiwyg editors

- photo albums and photo editing tools

- blogging

- direct messaging (xmpp/jabber)

Then, you could create individual social network portals that you could authorize to syndicate your federated web site. They could also host your website themselves. And each could offer unique tools, such as tools for event planning, or to help musicians promote their music (MySpace, anyone?). But the idea would hinge on multiple of these popping up at the same time, owned by different start-ups, which could be tricky.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#119

Post by wasdfff » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #112

max76 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe someone should create an RSS feed that curates other RSS feeds and forwards them to their recipients. I'm not sure how to monetize this, but it would add some discovery to rss.

> I'm not sure how to monetize this Make it good enough to pay for.

For glorified opml export?

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#120

Post by wasdfff » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

snackematician wrote: post #78

saucoide wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When i try to think of what my ideal social media would look like, it always ends up sounding similar to an RSS feed, with the ability to lookup and requiring the other user's approval to get the actual content, you could use different clients, some could give you recommendations for events,etc based on your subscriptions if you so choose, or just run your own locally. life would be so simple

Maybe more of an email list than an RSS feed then? You can control who is a member of the list to receive content. It would be cool if social media could be done through email, sort of like Usenet.

You mean like newsletters? No need to reinvent the wheel.