Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival' • Hacker News Board

Re: Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival'

#161

Post by iamnothere » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:33 PM UTC

filmgirlcw wrote: post #97

emptybottle wrote: post #70

To all the people poking fun at "thousands"... You have to start somewhere, and I'm sure you'd be tickled pink to see thousands of new users signing up for your app...

If I was the co-founder of one of the top websites in the world that had to pivot from my shitty news organization into what looks like a shitty version of Diaspora, I’m not so sure I’d be thrilled with “thousands.” You need network effects for social network rivals to take off. That isn’t to say there won’t be a Facebook successor (there almost certainly will be one — the big challenge for Facebook is if it has a pi…

> Mastadon, and any other number of attempts at this have failed (calling Mastadon a failure is unfair, but its not Twitter and won’t ever be), so will this.

Who says that success should be measured by Twitter? It may be that no other social network approaches Twitter and Facebook in size given their dominance, but that doesn't mean that there can be no other social networks.

In my opinion, one-size-fits-all social was a mistake to begin with. Smaller niche spaces (like HN) are much more interesting.

To think of it another way: did your favorite local bistro "fail" as a restaurant because it didn't become as large as McDonald's? Which one would you rather eat at?

Re: Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival'

#162

Post by z3t4 » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #49

What a horrible name. How do I even pronounce it? "Double-u-tee social"? Doesn't quite roll off the tongue, especially for non-native English speakers.

White Trash Social. Although that wouldnt be politically correct.

Re: Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival'

#163

Post by iamnothere » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #26

nanomonkey wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience on Scuttlebutt and other decentralized/alternative social medias, thousands will try something out just to kick the tires; it's staying, contributing and utilizing the tool for things it wasn't intended for that really matters.

And convincing people to use a service named “scuttle butt”.

Oh. Name bikeshedding again. Funny, people had the same criticisms about Twitter, yet it doesn't seem to be a problem now. And what the hell is a Google? (No, not a googol, which is the correct spelling.)

Re: Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival'

#164

Post by anewguy9000 » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:40 PM UTC

can i just say that the "news" on the wikipedia homepage should be renamed "disasters and deaths". what is with their weird bent for what makes it to the homepage?

Re: Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival'

#165

Post by detaro » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #26

nanomonkey wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience on Scuttlebutt and other decentralized/alternative social medias, thousands will try something out just to kick the tires; it's staying, contributing and utilizing the tool for things it wasn't intended for that really matters.

And convincing people to use a service named “scuttle butt”.

A word for chatting is somehow unsuitable as a name because you have to say the horrible 4-letter word "butt"?

Re: Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival'

#166

Post by ummonk » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

falcor84 wrote: post #131

While 160,000 is a very small number compared to Facebook's user base, it's two orders of magnitude more than what the "thousands"in the title made me imagine. A more generous title would have used something like "a sixth of a million".

Yeah. Thousands is nothing. Hundreds of thousands on the other hand is a strong start (though it will remain to be seen how many of those 160k users remain on there).

Re: Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival'

#167

Post by behringer » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

supjeff wrote: post #114

CrankyBear wrote: post #103

Jimmy Wales or Mark Zuckerman... this is not exactly a situation where's one clearly more trust worthy than the other.

Aside from the fact that wales' software is supposed to be free and open source and thus will not require its users to trust the founder as much as they are forced to with fb, how is Wales not more trustworthy than Zuck? One guy has a string of abuses and apologies spanning almost two decades as the founder, CEO and majority shareholder of a company that helped the Russian gov't steal the 2016 election and helped bri…

Not only that, but he managed to navigate his army of editors to weed out fake/pseudo scientific entries. He's the fake news anti-hero.

Re: Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival'

#168

Post by Tenoke » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

workthrowaway wrote: post #32

rbritton wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, Google+ failed for me because I got stuck in an authentication loop for a business page. It wanted to verify the business, but the link to do so always errored out, which made it impossible to ever change the page content beyond what I initially put in. I stopped using both sides of it at that point, and it wouldn’t surprise me if others ran into similar rough edges. In true Google style, there was absol…

google+ did not fail for me. and many others i know. i enjoyed being part of communities around specific topics. spamming was the only problem i saw. and i just couldn't comprehend that the same company that defeated spams in email couldn't do the same on their social network. someone made a comment earlier about twitter killed vine and now tiktok is being a better vine. maybe someday we will see a social network whe…

>maybe someday we will see a social network where the emphasis is on communities and not the self. that's what google+ did better than anything that was out there.

That seems to be filled by irc channels (less now), subreddits and more recently discords.

Re: Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival'

#169

Post by hnuser77 » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

dimensi0nal wrote: post #159

Kye wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. Mastodon started at thousands. People wrote articles insisting it would never go anywhere. It's still growing with thousands of instances for every sort of community three years after the dismissive op-eds started, and it didn't have the benefit of a major profile promoting it.

The largest Mastodon instance is full of content that isn't exactly allowed on traditional social media (i.e. lolicon). I don't think WT:Social will have the same competitive advantage.

Technically speaking, the largest Mastodon instance is full of content that isn't exactly allowed on traditional social media (i.e. far-right extremism). See https://fediverse.network/

Re: Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival'

#170

Post by hcarvalhoalves » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 10:41 PM UTC

Good, but I think the "Facebook" model is dead by now.

I've listened to a podcast recently about how the younger generation (00's onwards) don't even use social networks the way they're designed anymore. They keep multiple accounts/personas, they post ephemeral content, delete content, etc. It's a lot more about self-expression (Snapchat, TikTok) than having an online presence of your real-life self (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc). In a sense, they're undermining the monopolising network effects by creating many disconnected sub-graphs. It's been eye opening.