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Waze Founder Noam Bardin is starting up a Twitter alternative

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Re: Waze Founder Noam Bardin is starting up a Twitter alternative

#51

Post by pjc50 »

boplicity wrote: post #45
jasode wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’m fed up with “platforms”. Growing a garden on someone else’s land is dumb [...] To top it off, there’s very little upside to you as a user. The "upside" for users who post/write is reaching larger audiences . Similar reasons for mass audience "broadcast" platforms like Twitter, Youtube, TikTok. Small islands of decentralized communities (USENET newsgroups, dial-up BBS, vBulletin/phpBB forum websites, this HN webs…

> Small islands of decentralized communities (USENET newsgroups, dial-up BBS, vBulletin/phpBB forum websites, this HN website, and recent Mastodon interest, etc) do not accomplish the same thing. Not true; you can build and own your own "island" and grow the population of your "island" to be quite large. This can and does happen quite regularly. It's the only sensible thing to do, really, if you want to build a susta…

"quite large" is very different from "everyone", and that's what has been so great (and terrible) about Twitter: it feels like everyone.

Re: Waze Founder Noam Bardin is starting up a Twitter alternative

#52

Post by cloutchaser »

altacc wrote: post #27
0x445442 wrote: post #19

I find it hilarious that the Silicon Valley Apparatik thinks that NOW an alternate is needed. Gab, GTTR, Parler, Frank Speech, Truth Social have all existed for some time. And with the exception of Gab, the others have almost identical TOS agreements to Twitter.

It's not the ToS that people don't like about those services. What makes social media sticky is the culture. If people like the culture of a social media platform then they stay. Very few people like the culture of Gab, Parler, Truth, etc...

Last time I checked Gab was 10m+ users.

Gettr gets 7m visits per month according to similarweb.

"Very few people" is a bit of an understatement...

Re: Waze Founder Noam Bardin is starting up a Twitter alternative

#53

Post by jqpabc123 »

mopsi wrote: post #38
jqpabc123 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small decentralized communities which users can freely and easily create and manage is the way to go! Yes --- except for a few nagging little problems. Like stability. Which is directly related to costs/fees to keep a "community" running.

I've run an online community since 2001 and I've yet to meet the boogeymen of self-hosting. A small site and forum with ~100 users doesn't cost a shit to run ($5 per month, the cost of a coke and a sandwich where I live), updates itself automatically via CPanel, and it isn't much of an issue if it goes down for an hour or two every other year. That's an acceptable cost for not having to submit to anyone's whims about…

That's an acceptable cost for not having to submit to anyone's whims about allowed content

Only 100 users and anything goes --- yes, I can see how that might be acceptable. I can also see how most people might have little to no interest in participating.

Re: Waze Founder Noam Bardin is starting up a Twitter alternative

#54

Post by mtkhaos »

ceres wrote: post #18

I’m fed up with “platforms”. Growing a garden on someone else’s land is dumb and I think more people are starting to get it. Why feed someone’s enterprise for free who will then turn it into a powerful walled garden, make billions in profit while eventually dictating what you can and can’t do on said platform. To top it off, there’s very little upside to you as a user. Your own data is used against you. At this point…

I prefer a functional inside out approach. Getting funding for it and start up soon, but you will own everything.

Re: Waze Founder Noam Bardin is starting up a Twitter alternative

#55

Post by Entinel »

> Growing a garden on someone else’s land is dumb and I think more people are starting to get it.

Growing a garden on someone else's land means I don't need to worry about the upkeep. To continue your metaphor, leasing farm land is literally a thing people do. I genuinely do not believe the large majority of people want to worry about hosting, community management, etc etc. The people that do are in the extreme minority.

>To top it off, there’s very little upside to you as a user.

You are using Hacker News right now because there is an audience and community. That is the upside to the user.

Re: Waze Founder Noam Bardin is starting up a Twitter alternative

#56

Post by macspoofing »

KerrAvon wrote: post #49
bedhead wrote: post #26

[flagged]

[flagged]

To be fair - OP isn't wrong. There has been a lot of "pearl-clutching" about nothing-burger issues since 2016. This era has throwbacks to the 80s moral-majority/church-lady culture, with a sprinkling of "The Satanic Panic" and "McCarthyism".

Re: Waze Founder Noam Bardin is starting up a Twitter alternative

#57

Post by jeffbee »

mirzap wrote: post #22

How people don't get it - you can't succeed as an alternative to something. You need to build your own thing, find your product market fit with unique proposition. In 5y nobody will know about any of twitter alternatives that are launching these days. IMO even twitter didn't find its product market fit, that's why Musk is breaking it. The more people talk about twitter (in any way) and more people go with "alternativ…

There are many counter precedents. The most prominent in my mind is Zoom: exactly like all the others with only slight differences, zero-to-100% market share in 3 years.

Re: Waze Founder Noam Bardin is starting up a Twitter alternative

#58

Post by ceres »

ransom1538 wrote: post #30
ceres wrote: post #18

I’m fed up with “platforms”. Growing a garden on someone else’s land is dumb and I think more people are starting to get it. Why feed someone’s enterprise for free who will then turn it into a powerful walled garden, make billions in profit while eventually dictating what you can and can’t do on said platform. To top it off, there’s very little upside to you as a user. Your own data is used against you. At this point…

"Why feed someone’s enterprise for free who will then turn it into a powerful walled garden," Saying this on HN is irony crystalized.

HN is not a powerful walled garden.

It’s a site mostly used to share links and comments. Places like it abound on the internet.

In case of any shenanigans, they’re liable to lose users to an alternative faster than you can say digg.

Even though it’s owners are powerful people in tech, I’m willing to bet it’s not generating billions for them.

And with anonymous accounts, their incentive to harvest data and use it for ad targeting is little.

Re: Waze Founder Noam Bardin is starting up a Twitter alternative

#59

Post by horsawlarway »

pjc50 wrote: post #51
boplicity wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Small islands of decentralized communities (USENET newsgroups, dial-up BBS, vBulletin/phpBB forum websites, this HN website, and recent Mastodon interest, etc) do not accomplish the same thing. Not true; you can build and own your own "island" and grow the population of your "island" to be quite large. This can and does happen quite regularly. It's the only sensible thing to do, really, if you want to build a susta…

"quite large" is very different from "everyone", and that's what has been so great (and terrible) about Twitter: it feels like everyone.

It might feel that way, but I promise you it's definitely not "everyone".

Hell, it's only about 45 million in the US (assuming you believe Twitter's own numbers - which I definitely do not).

So at best, you're getting 1 in ~8 folks in the US. More realistically, I'd assume your audience is more likely 1 in ~20 in the US - assuming you manage to get literally everyone to follow you.

Is that larger than you're going to get on your own site? Probably.

Is that everyone? fuck no. It's basically no one. You're reaching the worst 5% of the country - those who have nothing better to do than browse twitter, or those who are using twitter to promote themselves.

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