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We should replace Facebook with personal websites

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Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#281

Post by kregasaurusrex »

ulfw wrote: post #67
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…

This is basically what myspace used to be. People decided the well organised, in seperate data-pieces and better presented Facebook way was the preference. How little did they know that well organised data can lead to where we are now...

The article mentions how Myspace wasn't able to monetize its users as well as data-driven Facebook does. I wonder if 2006's Myspace could have survived if given more mature toolchains for users' pages to not look as though they were made by a teenager. Or Facebook made an early decision that having less customization is better for growing a userbase such that people will use a service with posts in a format they can be more familiar with across all pages.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#282

Post by kowdermeister »

josephcohen wrote: post #214
kowdermeister wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are great, but what's the solution for those who don't even know what HTML is? They are the vast majority of FB users. I don't think anyone who taken web development a bit seriously have any problem to publish something online independently.

Going to throw our hat in the ring here. We built Universe ( http://apple.co/Universe ) for precisely this reason: to enable everyone to build their place on the internet, without touching code, all from a phone. You can see some of the sites created with it here: http://showcase.onuniverse.com Here's more about us: http://fastcompany.com/90174165/the-future-of-web-design-doe...

Wow, this is great, I'll give it a try. I love the artistic touch too.

You basically made a CMS and web designer app for the web on mobile, which is 90% with the users, this is a wonderful concept.

Is this the new Tumblr? :)

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#283

Post by zanny »

krapp wrote: post #203
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wha? I leave my PCs on for years at a time. Except for natural disasters (storms, cut power lines) they operate 24X365. A personal website is pretty straightforward. I think its pretty straightforward to host things yourself.

Is the bandwidth on a typical home ISP connection really viable for serving a website, and don't most ISPs forbid customers running servers on their accounts?

You would only (in this example) need enough bandwidth to satisfy the traffic of your immediate friends and family you interact with online.

Your IM client is already doing that.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#284

Post by daveheq »

That's not a social network. That's not even Google+, which is just a bunch of personal microblogs. If you somehow came up with some way to have personal websites be an app that let people post on each other's walls and message and like and reply to posts... then you've just got a different Facebook that would need some sort of conformance authority.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#286

Post by disqard »

jjuel wrote: post #93
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…

This x1000 We would need some sort of aggregator. Currently, you could call Facebook an aggregator of personal websites. Of course all of the personal websites are also hosted there, but it technically is an aggregator of those webpages. Let's not forget most of the people that I am friends with on Facebook would never be able to create their own personal website without a lot of help which is what makes something li…

Yes, a sort of "Global Yellow Pages". I personally still have it for event invitations from a handful of friends.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#289

Post by kerng »

roystonvassey wrote: post #278
darkarmani wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSS is really just the content/transport method. For a decentralized FB, you would move the intelligence into your local client and it would like more like a web-of-trust network. 1. You connect to friends and you either manually assign or "grow" a bunch of weights to your amount of trust in them and your interest in various topics they might post. 2. You and your friends make posts and assign "topic" metadata to the…

Google almost had this nailed with Reader before they canned it. Unbelievably stupid move while drowning millions in Plus and You and whatnot.

Google Reader was the only Google product I used regularly.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#290

Post by QML »

pmlnr wrote: post #273
QML wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you just have a website like Medium that acts as an aggregator (of RSS feeds) instead of a platform? The issue I have to whether stick with RSS feeds, which seem like it's dying, or to use ActivityPub, which doesn't seem to be developed that heavily.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software)

I think in addition to this an aggregator, you also need a website that helps create an RSS feed for each user while simultaneously abstracting that notion away. Thanks for the pointer though :)
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