Create a better social product to replace Facebook challenge
openbookchallenge.com
Create a better social product to replace Facebook challenge
1–10 of 25 posts
Re: Create a better social product to replace Facebook challenge
#2Scuttlebutt for the win!
Re: Create a better social product to replace Facebook challenge
#3Building a better product isn't the issue, it's convincing people to use it. The entire value proposition of using Facebook is that a lot of people use Facebook.
You kill Facebook by ceasing your use of Facebook, if you can without too horrible consequences.
Re: Create a better social product to replace Facebook challenge
#4Building a better product isn't the issue, it's convincing people to use it. The entire value proposition of using Facebook is that a lot of people use Facebook. You kill Facebook by ceasing your use of Facebook, if you can without too horrible consequences.
> Building a better product isn't the issue, it's convincing people to use it.
Calacanis should just fund one of the 100+ alternatives that already exist, but don't yet have a critical mass of users. Funding someone to write new software for something that not only could, but should be bootstrapped is unlikely to produce anything viable.
Re: Create a better social product to replace Facebook challenge
#5You can't invent away human nature. Given time, if the goal is to replace Facebook verbatim we can expect to see a similar result.
Re: Create a better social product to replace Facebook challenge
#6this was app.net’s goal right?
Re: Create a better social product to replace Facebook challenge
#7One problem other than convincing people to use it is convincing people to pay for it.
If we don't like Facebook's business model of using user data to make money we'd have to charge people to use it, and not a lot of people would be willing to do that.
Of course, one could argue that it's possible to make money with user data without being evil, but no one seems to have managed to do that so far. I bet if this project became as successful as Facebook it would be hard not to end up in the same exact spot.
Re: Create a better social product to replace Facebook challenge
#8Diaspora raised a slew of money back in 2010 but flopped.... it’s almost as though we knew this would happen....
https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/12/diaspora-open-facebook-pro...
Re: Create a better social product to replace Facebook challenge
#9Building a better product isn't the issue, it's convincing people to use it. The entire value proposition of using Facebook is that a lot of people use Facebook. You kill Facebook by ceasing your use of Facebook, if you can without too horrible consequences.
> Building a better product isn't the issue, it's convincing people to use it. Calacanis should just fund one of the 100+ alternatives that already exist, but don't yet have a critical mass of users. Funding someone to write new software for something that not only could, but should be bootstrapped is unlikely to produce anything viable.
Or fund lobbying of (probably EU) politicians to write a law forcing Facebook to interoperate with the 100+ alternatives that already exist, using OAuth / OpenID Connect and W3C social networking standards.
Once people can have all the benefit of Facebook (i.e. mutual visibility with Facebook users) without having their data stored on Facebook's servers, or their experience controlled by Facebook's UI, then Facebook will quickly diminish in relevance.
Re: Create a better social product to replace Facebook challenge
#10Building a better product isn't the issue, it's convincing people to use it. The entire value proposition of using Facebook is that a lot of people use Facebook. You kill Facebook by ceasing your use of Facebook, if you can without too horrible consequences.
To solve this chicken and egg problem, you could build a social network that interoperates with Facebook -- use a combination of public (and undocumented browser to server) APIs to proxy communications back and forth. Then anyone who wants to use Competitorbook can still talk to people on Facebook through it, allowing competing social networks to naturally grow without network effect problems.
This would threaten FB and immediately lead to an API blocking arms race, to be followed by a legal challenge. If you're well funded and win the legal challenge (which hey, IANAL at all, but the comparison between FB today and Bell in its time is not crazy) you win.