
Create a better social product to replace Facebook challenge - baili
https://www.openbookchallenge.com/
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mlosapio
Diaspora 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...](https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/12/diaspora-open-facebook-project/)

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juststeve
Diaspora has a local Ruby install, maybe that could be an interim solution?
seems to still have some activity / pull requests..
[https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora](https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora)

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ThrustVectoring
Building 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.

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galdosdi
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.

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toomuchtodo
What if it piggybacked off of Signal instead?

After the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, I’ve told all of my Facebook Messenger
contacts that I’ll only chat on Signal from now on. With Signal providing
identity management (and backed by a foundation with $50 million in the bank),
that might reduce the bootstrapping necessary.

Start with profiles, then groups, then events, and grow from there.

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iamdave
I'm curious to see what the next 'social networking site' is going to be, but
I'm also wondering how much our expectations of 'social networking' have
changed since Facebook entered the room and took over the conversation. (Took
over, not changed)

My chief complaint, personally about these sites is that I'll use it, just let
me use it the way _I_ want to in relative peace. That means: unless I
subscribed to a specific type of update, I don't want to hear about it. No "In
case you missed", no "Your other friends liked x, why don't you go indicate
the same by interacting with UX feature 42", no "Hey friend 88 is on the
platform, go look at what they're doing and signal your emotional reaction to
it".

Never thought I'd ever say this: I want to see the baby pictures again. What
are your families up to? _How are you doing?_ Haha that video you shared is
great, gave me a good laugh during my work break, here's a quick private
message, let's catch up over a cold one this weekend. I miss our humorous
conversations. THAT'S the kind of interaction I miss, when I was the one
initiating it.

Some say this stuff is driving us further apart and I couldn't disagree more.
It keeps us involved while respecting the fact that we want to have
independent lives we live on our terms. It lets my friends four states a way
know I'm not affected by the bombings here in Austin while also giving me
another resource to pop in more 1-to-1 and see if I can crash on their couch
when I come to town.

I like that. It allows groups of friends to breathe when the pressure isn't to
share everything but actually....create....NETWORKS.

Get it social networking sites? I want to use these features, but I want to
use them on _my_ terms, for crying out loud.

So to anyone who wants to take up this challenge...I'm not telling you how to
run your site, but if you heed the above I may sign up.

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pyjammas
Most people I know have switched to WhatsApp exactly for the reasons you
mention. I'm not a very social person, yet I'm already in multiple chat
groups: 'family', 'siblings', 'social groups', 'activity groups'. It's the
same for almost everyone I know.

Feature-wise, I'd much prefer everyone switch to Telegram, but I wouldn't be
surprised if these features come to WhatsApp soon. Main reason I think they
haven't is that Facebook might still try to make their main product 'work', or
perhaps some kind of anti-trust issues?

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justboxing
Diaspora, Pulse and a half a dozen other sites and apps tried, and failed
spectacularly.

The replacement to Facebook, when it comes along, will look nothing like
Facebook.

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pesmhey
How could we get the government involved? There's public broadcasting, NPR,
PRI, etc.... Is 'social media' so different rather than just being the next
communications' platform?

It's a serious question too, what would it look like to create a
public/government arm of social media?

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iamdave
_what would it look like to create a public /government arm of social media?_

Ever been to the talk page of a Wikipedia article?

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johnwalker
Maybe we shouldn't replace cancer with cancer, and should simply get rid of
it.

Edit: I honestly don't think it's hard. Delete your facebook, stop using it
and don't replace it with something else. People lived without being used by
social media services for a very long time.

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nkkollaw
One 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.

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rglover
You can't invent away human nature. Given time, if the goal is to replace
Facebook verbatim we can expect to see a similar result.

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iliaznk
> Join the mailing list to receive regular updates and sign-up for the
> discussion group on... Facebook!

Is it a kind of a parody?

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gt_
Scuttlebutt for the win!

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mercer
While I quite like Scuttlebutt, it suffers from the issue that you need to
manually add a 'pub' before you can actually use it.

I suppose it's also a pretty big issue that one can't have multi-device
accounts yet (which is being worked on, as I understand it).

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the_cat_kittles
this was app.net’s goal right?

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drivingmenuts
I t thought their target was Twitter, not Facebook.

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the_cat_kittles
oh yea i think you are right.

