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Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival'

bbc.co.uk

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

#201

Post by grahamburger »

psweber wrote: post #62
jermaustin1 wrote: post #14

I can't see this as a Facebook rival. From my understanding, this is a social news site with fact checking. I use Facebook to post pictures of my vacations for my family, and get updates on my nieces and nephews since I moved from Houston, TX to NYC 5 years ago. Until someone replaces that aspect in a way that works while still enabling my family to do their memes and quizzes, and all that crap I avoid, there will be…

I fantasize about a product like that sometimes. A private, pay social site geared towards families. Your family pays a yearly subscription. Photo/video sharing. Event planning. Family news timeline. Everything purely linear. No manipulation to maximize engagement. No ads. Just real information about your family that you care about. One side of my family has about 30 people that are all willing to travel to meet some…

I'm probably doing to do this by hosting a private Mastodon instance in our basement. We already have a private Matrix instance for all of our family chats.

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

#202

Post by MiroF »

bamboozled wrote: post #188

I’ve learned to live a happy life without social media (mostly), I’d never go back to anything that resembled Facebook. I moved on and I’m happy for it. I enjoy some Instagram and Snap, that’s it. I’m bored with them too though.

Almost everyone young has switched from FB to IG. I don't think you can claim that is a life "without social media."

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

#203

Post by josinalvo »

nanomonkey wrote: post #22
jandrese wrote: post #2

Is that headline damning with faint praise? Mere "thousands" doesn't seem like enough to get critical mass on a social network. For comparison Google+ had something on the order of 300 million users and failed to get traction.

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.

Just watched the video about scuttlebutt.

To confirm: a copy of my messages and images is permanently stored in my friend´s and my friend´s of friend´s diaries (up until the point where they delete them, I presume)

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

#204

Post by fizilicious »

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.

A bit tangent, but as a non-native English speaker, I always get frustrated that single W is pronounced "double you" and single Y is "why". In my non-native English tongue I would pronounced the name as something like "Weh-Teh Social"

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

#205

Post by JasonFruit »

mehhh wrote: post #199
ReverseCold wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The usefulness of a general "social network" is how many people it has. If I can't find almost everyone I know on it, and they are on a different platform (Facebook) it's easier for me to just use the other platform. People feel like they need it to keep in touch with others they don't see often (or even just others in general). I personally don't have any major social media accounts, just small ones like HN - but I…

Are general social networks actually useful though? In mature markets, you have a huge chunk of people that have logged off Facebook permanently. What matters is the people I want to interact with, and in Seattle they are on Mastodon. Not everyone needs to be on it, and frankly if close to everyone were on it you'd potentially drive away a good subset of users. That being said, by design I can retain my feed of frien…

A lot more common than logging off permanently is logging off except. I've logged off Facebook, except there are some Groups I'd be sad to lose touch with. For some people, they're off Facebook, except there are people they only contact through Messenger. Some are off Facebook except they like to see what Grandma says. As long as there's an 'except', Facebook still has that user.

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

#206

Post by underwater »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #170

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, Linked…

But is that because the world has actually changed, of because they are young? Teens have always been counterculture and rejected the status quo. The real question is whether Facebook will be compelling to them when they grow up.

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

#207

Post by mark_l_watson »

I have been using WT.social yesterday and today and I generally like it. I just read a linked article about a meeting on a train, quite good. My user name is mark-watson2

I used GNU Social for a long while but when the host of my instance shut it down I didn’t create an account on another server instance. I liked the decentralized nature of GNU Social, but I think WT.social has more chance of getting traction.

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

#208

Post by BlueTemplar »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #146
TomMasz wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you but Facebook, for better or worse, is the social networking site everyone you know is on. It has a tremendous advantage over any upstart for that reason. Lots of geeky folks flocked to Google+ in its early days but that wasn't enough to replace Facebook. Even when they gave everyone who had a Google account of some kind a G+ profile it still wasn't enough. I will definitely check this out but it'll be back…

Google+ always had a weird broken interface and they just never finished it. I was one of the geeks that flocked to it, and had plenty of friends there. It didn't fail because of network effects, it failed because they stopped working on it before it was finished. It was really strange and I always assumed at the time that Facebook and Google had come to some agreement behind the scenes.

And Google broke their social network that was actually working (Google Reader), hoping that the now "homeless" users would flock to Google+.

I don't know why they thought that this kind of bullshit would work on "techies" (the core audience of Google Reader) - that just made them wake up and realize that Google's "Don't be Evil" motto was a sham...

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

#209

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

type0 wrote: post #65
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>From my understanding, this is a social news site with fact checking. That makes sense, I don't think a social network and privacy advocating (WikiPedia donating, HN type) go hand in hand. I like the premise of WT.Social. Facebook is where it is because it cracked 'real identity' when others were encouraging dog/cat names for profiles.

> when others were encouraging dog/cat names for profiles. My dog had a facebook profile, so the Zuck doesn't allow it anymore? Keep in mind that was a very social dog.

Apparently yes, as per FB profile rules only yourself can create a FB profile but your dog can have FB page though.

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

#210

Post by OJFord »

JasonFruit wrote: post #205
mehhh wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are general social networks actually useful though? In mature markets, you have a huge chunk of people that have logged off Facebook permanently. What matters is the people I want to interact with, and in Seattle they are on Mastodon. Not everyone needs to be on it, and frankly if close to everyone were on it you'd potentially drive away a good subset of users. That being said, by design I can retain my feed of frien…

A lot more common than logging off permanently is logging off except. I've logged off Facebook, except there are some Groups I'd be sad to lose touch with. For some people, they're off Facebook, except there are people they only contact through Messenger. Some are off Facebook except they like to see what Grandma says. As long as there's an 'except', Facebook still has that user.

That's something for Facebook (the company) to fear rather than hold dear, I think.

I too was 'logged off except' a wealth of university-related groups. Then I was 'logged off during' writing up my dissertation, and finally just 'logged off'.

(And now I'm still contributing to user count, while continually thinking I should just log in to delete my account, as I've heard a couple of times from people that thought I was 'on Facebook' or 'what happened to your profile' and maybe more people that think I'm just ignoring them than I'm aware of.)

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