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Is this the end of social networking?

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Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#3

Post by saidinesh5 »

I think the "social" part of social networks just moved to group chats. All my friends share updates of their family events, kids' stuff etc.. over Whatsapp and Telegram. Strangers gather over topics that interest them and want to talk about it seem to have moved to discord, slack etc.

The whole "broadcast yourself to the world" part of social networks just moved to Tiktok, Twitter, Instagram etc.. I think.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#5

Post by causi »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #3

I think the "social" part of social networks just moved to group chats. All my friends share updates of their family events, kids' stuff etc.. over Whatsapp and Telegram. Strangers gather over topics that interest them and want to talk about it seem to have moved to discord, slack etc. The whole "broadcast yourself to the world" part of social networks just moved to Tiktok, Twitter, Instagram etc.. I think.

A development I'm quite thankful for. It's nice being able to participate to the degree expected of me by the people I actually know without being a terminally-online internet personality.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#6

Post by Arrath »

jschveibinz wrote: post #2

Maybe just the end of social networking as we currently know it. There must still be plenty of room and potential value in more focused social interaction that is more highly aligned with user interests other than viral videos.

I thought those were pretty well serviced one or two decades ago by niche hobbyist forums and the like, more recently by specific subreddits.

Personally I lament the demise of forums and BBs.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#9

Post by forgotmypw17 »

I think it is only the beginning of a new age of maturity and de-dinosauring of social networks. Just like the dinosaurs, today's most used social networks kept growing larger and larger until they were too big to sustain themselves. And just like the dinosaurs, they will go extinct and be replaced by smaller, more nimble and competitive social networks, with accessible maintainers, consensual relationships with their users, and features and dynamics we are only beginning to dream of today. I find it very exciting to think about and work on.

Just imagine a social network that combines all of the good things invented in the past 25 years: the customizability of MySpace, the visible social graph of Facebook, the easy sharing of Twitter, the speed of propagation of Friendster, the transparency of Web of Trust, the security and user empowerment of PKI, the distributed and decentralized model of Usenet, the lack of spam of a private tracker, the long-term discussion threads of a forum, the solidity of BitTorrent, the ease of access of AOL, and the compatibility and accessibility of Any Browser Web...

Wouldn't you want something like that for yourself and your communities?

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#10

Post by seydor »

This is not the first or second time that humanity has tried 'social networking'. We used to call it "the mob" and long before the time of jesus it was considered that people shouting at each other is no way to run a society. People are dazzled by the shiny touchscreens of their phones, but shouting behind a glossy screen is still shouting, and a mob is still a mob. I don't think 'social networking' will go anywhere, it will be abandoned and foulmouthed as 'loud crazy old people', in favor of curated content, possibly algorithmic if that works. The future of media looks a lot like the media of the past, consolidated , more professional and polished.
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