

Ask HN: Facebook alternative, are users willing to try something different? - thatusertwo

Same as above.
======
mindcrime
A few thoughts... all of this is totally unscientific, unverified, subjective,
biased, and may be a combination of wishful thinking, drug-fueled fantasies,
fever induced delirium, etc. It's almost certainly contradictory, not self-
consistent, and comes with no warranty or guarantee. IANAL, YMMV, HTH, WTFBBQ.

1\. Facebook _can_ be knocked off their perch. Facebook almost certainly
_will_ be knocked off their perch, probably sooner than later.

2\. The "net crowd" is very much a trend-following herd... if something
catches the attention of the right set of early adopters and the avalanche
starts, it'll carry through to its inevitable conclusion.

3\. You won't beat Facebook by building a better Facebook. Nobody cares about
something that's just like Facebook but a little better or has a couple of new
features. One __killer __new feature, maybe. But what?

4\. Facebook is not _cool_ anymore. Facebook is a utility, like the phone
company or the people who provide your electricity.

5\. The way to beat Facebook is to build something that is new and unique, but
subsumes (most) of what Facebook does. Think telephones replacing the
telegraph. A telephone isn't a telegraph, it's a whole new tool, but it
obviates the need for the telegraph.

6\. Remember what Henry Ford said "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted,
they'd have asked for a faster horse."

7\. Go back and find and read Om's article about how "social networking is
just a feature." That vision is partly coming true, but Facebook is fighting
to extend their tendrils into every other site, rather than letting other
sites implement their own social networking features and (possibly) combining
them using open standards to build a federated social network.

8\. Relative to (7) above, see:
<http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/> and also research what
Appleseed, Diaspora, etc. are doing. There may still be a chance to gain some
traction for this federation stuff. That would open up some interesting
possibilities down the road and could disintermediate Facebook.

9\. I'm going to guess that whatever replaces Facebook will have a basis in
the mobile app world, first and foremost, not the traditional web world. The
smartphone carrying, app using early adopters will latch onto something cool
that comes along...

10\. Your mom, your grandma, your uncle, your boss, your ex-wife, your ex-
girlfriend/boyfriend, etc. are all on Facebook. Your neighbors dorky 8 year
old kid is on Facebook. The nerdy guy in Chemistry class who's always
undressing you with his eyes, is on Facebook. Facebook is generic and
boring... it has utility because of network effects, and because everybody is
on it... but it sucks and is lame and isn't _cool_ because, well, _everyone_
is on it.

11\. It's cool to hate on Gladwell, but read _The Tipping Point_ if you
haven't already. Then chase down some of the stuff by Watts, Barabasi, etc. on
network science. Maybe even read _Diffusion of Innovations_ by Everett Rogers.
There's a growing body of science that speaks to how things happen in
networks... there may be something interesting that falls out of thinking
about "preferential attachment" and power law distributions and scale-free
networks.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_attachment>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_network>

12\. Also, go read this old Jamie Zawinski piece:
<http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html> Keep this bit in mind:

 _That got me a look like I had just sprouted a third head, but bear with me,
because I think that it's not only crude but insightful. "How will this
software get my users laid" should be on the minds of anyone writing social
software (and these days, almost all software is social software)._

IF I had to bet money on any of this being relevant, I'd say (4), (10) and
(12) would be the most likely to be so. Facebook just isn't _cool_ anymore. At
least not cool for specific niches, like, say, "teenagers" (what teen wants to
be on a social-network with his mom and dad, or his geeky little sister, etc?)
or college-students ("eeeew, high-school kids!" "eeeeeew, OLD people"), etc.

~~~
thatusertwo
thanks for that feed back, its a lot to consider but its helpful.

~~~
mindcrime
I spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff at one time; when I was sorta-
kinda playing with the idea of trying to do something that had some potential
as a "facebook killer." But that was never my _real_ aim anyway, and I wound
up refocusing a lot of my energy in other directions now. But I still find the
idea of thinking about "what will replace Facebook" interesting. If you ever
want to bat some ideas around, feel free to shoot me an email.

------
spitfire
All of facebooks users are willing to try something different. Just like all
of geocities users, all of yahoo searches users, all of myspaces, friendsters
and orkuts users were. Simply put internet companies don't have a durable
competitive advantage.

They have an advantage for a little while, then someone bests them. But no one
has figured out how to build a rolls-royce, goyard or even coca-cola internet
service yet.

------
badkins
Sorry, but people won't move away from Facebook for something else until all
of their friends do.

~~~
thatusertwo
Does that 5 friends rule still stand up? If 5 friends are using a service
people will be willing to try.... at least that was an adage of the past.

~~~
badkins
I doubt 5 is enough to switch away from a social network. I think you would
need at least 25% of a persons friends before that person would consider
following.

------
pasbesoin
I've been considering moving some interactivity over to Buzz -- a few
interesting people I know are fairly active on it, and the (their, at least)
conversations seem more interesting and detailed. However, I have no clue at
this point whether Buzz is going to "make it", or whether I should Wave it
good bye.

(I was pretty pissed with the way Google launched Buzz, but they seem to have
at least somewhat learned that lesson, and I don't want to see them disappear
from the space altogether.)

I guess I should just fire it up, and save locally any threads I find
particularly useful.

