
The Next Facebook — Musings About Text Boxes - _pius
https://medium.com/musings-about-text-boxes/8157c364d26a
======
dvt
I think that the primary element -- note that this is nontrivial -- for the
next "big" social start-up will be dealing with the creepiness factor, as you
mention.

I grew up with the internet and played video games (semi-)professionally. This
means that I met a metric ton of people from the internet in real life so, in
many ways, became used to the idea. But check this out; not long ago, I saw a
girl in class and she subsequently showed up on my "you may know..." list in
FB. I added her (I add just about whomever) and it took her a while to accept.
I didn't really care, and we actually ended up being really good real life
friends, too!

Only later did I find out that she asked a couple of people who I was and she
thought that it was (and I quote) "kind of creepy" that I added her. I'm a
pretty good looking guy with a good job that goes to a great school. So why
the fuck is adding someone on FB (that I happen to see in class!) creepy?

Is it any more creepy than me just walking up to someone and saying "hey,
girl, put down that cellphone and have a conversation with me." Obviously not.
There is something, however, that keeps us from engaging online in non-
anonymous contexts due to this perceived (and I would argue Western/American)
creepyness factor.

Like I said above, I'm sure someone much smarter than I will eventually figure
out how to solve this very difficult problem. The solution will probably
entail geolocation, semi-anonymity, and perhaps ephemeral (that is, non-
persistent) IRC-like chatrooms.

~~~
rubinelli
See, the key is mediation. You meet people in a Counter-Strike match, you know
what the parameters are. Either they are in your team, or they are trying to
shoot your avatar. If someone from your job adds you in Linkedin, it isn't
creepy; they are just trying to get some recommendations and move on to
another job. :)

Facebook has zero context. Why is that guy trying to be my friend? I don't
know. How do I approach him? What are we supposed to talk about? It's all
incredibly awkward. If Facebook did the equivalent of putting a chessboard
between us, everything would flow much easier.

~~~
Systemic33
> If Facebook did the equivalent of putting a chessboard between us

Spot on!

Facebook's addition of games to the platform was obviously a way to address
this issue, but a failed one, because the 3rd parties have to earn money
themselves, and can't just benefit from the additional data that users may
generate/reaveal when playing, that can be used for improving the
advertisement platform.

I.e. if Facebook as you said, made a chess game or perhaps a social game, then
it could involve friends of friends, and thus make a user expand his or hers
friendship circle. Meanwhile, this new data about what connected them, etc,
etc, could be very valueable to the ad platform because it would show what
made the user give in to the uknown. My 0.2 $ (1.16 kr. DKK)

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yanghan
Interesting. The problem you addressed about interacting with new people in a
comfortable way is a problem we're trying to tackle at Uni+
<http://uniplus.me>

Right now we automatically match users similar to Facebook Graph, but we do it
specifically on things people care about - people nearby who share your
interests, hometown, classes, industry, etc. Our app is also university-only
at the moment to filter out the creeps. We've also recently experimented with
a location-based group chat feature in order to promote local interaction.

I wouldn't categorize this issue in the same domain as Facebook though.
Facebook is about two things -- sharing and friends. There's a mental divide
between the friends and strangers, so users would never use it to meet new
people. There's already platform to share things between strangers (reddit),
but a platform to "interact" with strangers (which is what facebook used to
do, but with friends) still has yet to emerge.

~~~
dvt
This is an awesome idea :) I was _literally_ talking to my sister about maybe
doing something extremely similar as we were grabbing an early dinner last
night in Westwood in Los Angeles (we both attend UCLA).

Fantastic idea, and good luck to you sir!

~~~
yanghan
Thank you, that's great to hear! We've just launched and started to see
promising results. Hope to make it more mainstream some day!

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VandyILL
This reminded me of an idea I mentioned to a friend a couple months ago. The
thought creeped him out a bit, but he didn't think it went to far.

Basically, I told him I expected something like 4square to come along that
tells you not specifically who (strangers) is at certain locations, but give a
profile of the overall group that has checked into the location. The easiest
example could be just showing what bars in an area are currently filled with
liberals, and which ones currently filled with republicans. Maybe even a
sliding color scale that shows just how political they are or how heavily the
population of the bar swing ones way. However, I would imagine it to include a
much wider list of attributes to include things like what type of movies and
music I like etc. and point out what locations are filled with like minded
individuals right now. Or even based on moods. Or even things like what I want
out of the night (show what percentage of the population at a certain bar is
looking to make new friends so you don't end up at a bar full of people who
want to be left alone). There was more to it than this, but I haven't thought
about it for awhile.

A second thing this reminded me of was the idea of an icebreaker app. You go
to a bar, coffee shop etc., check in, and then the app asks you an icebreaker
style question. You then type in your answer. After you give your answer, you
get a list of every answer by everyone else at the bar (but not their
identity). You then get to pick one of those answers as your favorite, and the
author's identity (or maybe just picture, leaving you to still ask for the
name) is revealed. Basically it reverses the introduction process. Rather than
thinking of something clever to say and going around picking people to say it
to, someone picks the clever comment and gets to approach that person.

Finally, what this article made me think of that hasn't occurred to me in the
past is the value of these networks to connect me to people in IRC chats /
forums etc. The basic thought is to create chats accessible only to people 2,
3 degrees of separation away from you etc. (or with x amount of common
interests, or whatever FB thinks would be a good match). You then have an
option to start a chat, and then anonymously chat with strangers that are
reasonably close to your real life contacts. This means if you hit it off with
a random person on the internet just based off random interests you share then
you have an actual ability to reach out and get an introduction in a safe way.

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georgeoliver
I don't use FB, but from what I understand can't people who don't know each
other interact on a page they both follow, like an organization or a band? And
once they've 'met' in that forum, an add or message won't seem so creepy?

If that's the case, why is FB inherently unsuitable for the kind of
interaction he's talking about here?

~~~
ValentineC
Facebook's actively trying to discourage the sending of friend requests to
people a person doesn't know now [1].

I had the feature suspended before, and it even prevented me from sending
messages to chat groups where at least one party was not my friend. (I believe
one criterion for getting the feature suspended was the number of people who
said that they haven't met you before in real life.)

[1]
[https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=4008463...](https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=4008463549048)

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MicahWedemeyer
Including SnapChat in here is interesting. I would consider it a perfect
example of the novel interface and interaction being discussed, but it's also
a perfect example of the potential for flash-in-the-pan.

SnapChat is exciting now, but will it still be interesting in a year? Or will
there be a new novel interaction that everyone flocks to? Somehow Instagram
and Pinterest have stayed relevant, but I think the article glosses over how
hard it is to create something novel...and then not be discarded after the
novelty wears off.

------
wellboy
Connecting like-minded people, the problem startups have been trying to solve
for the last few years, but still haven't succeeded to.

~~~
vowelless
I think reddit has done a good job at it. Many of the focused, smaller
subreddits are great arenas to discuss and grow in particular fields.
/r/fitness and /r/keto are crucial to my improving physical fitness. And
unlike dedicated forums, I can use a single username for participating in
various topics I am interested in; like programming, math, cooking, dating,
[local city], etc.

~~~
bduerst
Reddit also has a tipping point though.

For every subreddit, once that community has reached about 150k users it
starts to succumb to the "Reddit" effect - effectively becoming dowsed in
memes, puns, gif reactions, etc.

I think it has to do with the fact that people are pandering for self
affirmation through upvotes, which can lead to a decreased signal:noise ratio.
Reddit recently made vote scores hidden for the first 24 hours, probably in an
effort to stop some of this pandering.

~~~
rubinelli
But the interesting part is, once a subreddit grows too large, a splinter
group will emerge and form another subreddit.

(And I think hiding the scores is a per-subreddit moderator option. They are
adding more and more of those to let moderators customize their communities.)

------
goldfeld
I think the house party analogy is very apt, almost too much. I love house
parties precisely for the 'crashing into a new environment' feeling, where you
get to meet friends of friends of friends in a relaxed and non-creepy way.
Indeed bringing this experience on to the web and making it as cool as
Facebook (and the opposite of online dating) would be a killer, sign me up
first in line.

The key here is culture, and for now the best way to find people with a
culture similar to yours is through friends of friends, which is exactly why
house parties are so cool. If a service gets smart enough to find people
completely removed from my social circles who do feel like they (should)
belong to my social circles, that would be a wonderful use of collective
intelligence, machine learning and whatnot. That we could finally have
something like this amidst this wave up of big data seems plausible.

~~~
alenox
I think this is why facebook won't be the company to capitalize on this
possible niche. People's facebook friends, and the things they share on
facebook are all very personal. You share way too much for people to just talk
to and friend anyone on facebook.

When you go to a house party, all you bring is yourself, and your social
skills. You don't show people your baby pictures, grandma's birthday presents,
or your relationship status. Other than name and face, you can be fairly
anonymous. There is also the aspect of a host introducing you to others, or
forcing some kind of mingling of different circles of friends.

That all seems like it would translate well into a social platform. Mutual
friends, forcing some kinds of interactions between their acquaintances, where
there is at least some anonymity, but not total anonymity.

~~~
goldfeld
I have been thinking for a while that what I get the most out of Facebook are
events. But it's a poorly featured platform. Now take events (and local and
mobile) and create a platform for checking what's hot right now. But don't
focus on clubs and big parties. Focus on the the weird events, the house
parties, all that stuff that's off the beaten path. Create a slot
functionality so people can allow half-strangers (friends of friends of
friends) to sign up for a slot, then the hosts can check before accepting or
something. Also allow blind-accept events. The accepted/blind-accepted people
are then given the address. I don't know, something like that. I think it
could quite work out. People do love random, fun people when I bring them over
to a house party (well sometimes it sucks actually, but those times also make
for good stories). Foreginers especially.

> Other than name and face

Well some of my most amusing and memorable house parties were ones where I
barely knew anyone (besides a friend who brought me over) and pretended that I
was given a girl's name (being a guy.) Never gets old.

~~~
tmzt
The Airbnb model, injecting personal reputation into a transaction. (In this
case a non-monetary one.)

------
Raphael
Google+ is already the next thing described in the article, a place to hang
out with cool strangers.

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EGreg
Yes! The mobile address book is the new friend list, and the different social
"networks" are mostly apps. Some are platforms, such as Google or Facebook, on
which other apps can be built. But you no longer no need to be tied to a
platform exclusively.

That said, you still need to build a LOT of stuff for every social app, so it
would be nice if there were open source frameworks like Wordpress for blogs.

I make a lot of these points here:
[http://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/a-new-kind-of-
platfor...](http://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/a-new-kind-of-platform/)

------
tarkeshwar
One way to deal with creepiness of friend requests is to not have them
"mutual". Friendship in real life is one-sided relation and so could be on a
meet-new-people platform.

This is one of the insights that we have used at Chatimity (www.chatimity.com)
- for building a place for making new friends online. It is like old style
chat rooms but much more civilized due to a good amount of behind the scenes
measures being put in place. We have had fair bit of adoption and continue to
flesh this out more.

------
ivan_ah
Interesting comments and observations as usual.

A guess regarding what the next social phenomena will be all about:

    
    
       value proposition: interacting with cool people that you don’t know

~~~
tokenadult
_value proposition: interacting with cool people that you don’t know_

Yahoo Groups hosted email lists have allowed me to interact with cool people
whom I've never met in person for years. I value them highly for that. But
that has never allowed Yahoo to monetize Yahoo Groups very well.

~~~
pnathan
That was sort of part of the _point_ of Livejournal.

~~~
thenomad
Was and is. It's still a very active community site, and there are people
(like me) who feel that it's never really been replaced by anything similar.

~~~
pnathan
Yeah! I've had a great affinity for LJ, and these days my private blog is on a
fork, Dreamwidth.org.

Hands down, I've never seen a better longform & community site design.

------
hmexx
_"For those of you who grew up on Forums, you know that it’s so, so much more.
It is inevitable that the masses will eventually feel the same way too.

We’re just waiting for someone to step up and host the house party."_

The above was the rationale for building this: <http://www.getmetaweb.com>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2uH_ZbAMgA>

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nilkn
Since it doesn't appear to be open to the public yet, I don't know much about
it, but there's a startup which seems to be trying to attack the problem from
this angle (i.e., removing the "creepiness" factor of connecting with
strangers on the basis of, well, lots of evident similarities but no prior
real life contact).

<http://ark.com/>

~~~
ripperdoc
It seems to be focusing on reconnecting with old acquaintances. I think that
will be hard - that is all about the network effect, to make sure that the
people you know are already on the network - e.g. the case of Facebook. Coming
as a new player with that as the main feature seems difficult. Better to go
for the angle of finding people based on topics or shared contexts (e.g.
similar location).

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nodesjays
Great point about only meeting new people when it's deemed 'socially
acceptable.' Sort of how online dating is the norm now and is far less taboo
than it once was (though many preface it with the idea that their friends
recommended it so they'll try it.. even though they're skeptical).

------
jonchang
There have been attempts in this space before and they haven't worked out real
well. AirTime is one such example (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airtime.com>)

------
ebf
TechCrunch Disrupt Winner Shaker tried to do something similar. Never took
off, however. <https://www.atshaker.com/>

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piokoch
"Today, your social graph lives in a brown box, called Contacts, on your
iPhone’s home screen"

Is my plumber a member of my social graph. Am I in the social graph of my
clients. I doubt.

~~~
prawn
They did say your social graph _lives in_ , rather than your social graph
_is_. Ultimately you can add and subtract from your followed/following lists
in an app.

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voyou
So, the next Facebook is Tumblr? You may be a bit late on that one.

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nawitus
>Today, your social graph lives in a brown box, called Contacts, on your
iPhone’s home screen — allowing you to effortlessly connect with your friends
on new social networks, in only a tap or two.

Eh, way to generalize from 18% smartphone market share.

~~~
awj
So ... are you saying that Android phones don't have a contact application,
that you can't get to social networks through the contact application, or that
you're bizarrely sensitive on the iPhone-vs-the-rest-of-the-market situation?

~~~
prawn
Seems they're being pedantic about icon colour?

