

Ask HN: next big site in the social network niche? - webgambit

With all the privacy concerns, bugs, etc. that have plagued Facebook lately, I'm thinking it's time to move on to a different social network site. Was wondering what the HN community thought would be the next big site in this area. Is there a Facebook killer out there?
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jaddison
While there will no doubt be a few attempts to shake up the social networking
clique with new entrants, Facebook has a pretty good grip on it at the moment.
The recent privacy concerns being discussed here on HN might make people
consider switching to elsewhere, but will they actually do it?

The thing with moving to another social network and leaving the old one behind
is that you won't find it to be too social without your existing network of
friends/family moving over as well. It's a bit of a Catch-22 situation,
really.

Of course, it's possible to use your existing networks to invite people to a
new network, but in reality, unless people see value in the new vs the old,
they will at best politely decline. In Facebook's case, you'll need people's
concerns with privacy to outweigh the inconvenience of switching and building
a new network.

I've been invited to about 5-10 new 'networks' from people on Facebook or
LinkedIn over the last couple of years. I haven't moved partly because some of
them look kind of dodgy to be honest but most because I'd simply have to start
over again. That's the 'lock-in' that online social/business network tools
have.

People need to be convinced that the inconvenience of switching outweighs the
existing concerns.

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webgambit
It's true that getting your sphere of influence to adopt a new social network
is a pain. But that said, years ago I started off on Friendster, then moved to
MySpace, and now I'm at Facebook. I would expect that Facebook's fame will
cool just like the others did. Surely Facebook isn't as untouchable as Google
is in the search market. Is it?

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newobj
I think Facebook is a lot more defensible than Google. I think you seriously
underestimate how inertial the relationships it now harbors are. Someone just
has to build a better, cheaper, Google, and it will slowly start to leak
market share. It's a lot harder for Facebook to spring a leak, because I'm not
interested in jumping onto something where only 10% of my friends are going to
follow me.

Facebook is the first thing, the ONLY thing, that's gotten hundreds of people
I know (I mean, really _know_ ) to all be in the same "place" at once.

I abandoned Friendster and MySpace long before Facebook showed up. Neither of
them ever truly reached the critical mass that Facebook did IMHO. If you
remember what Friendster and MySpace were like in earlier days, you kind of
just friended people and sat there. The engagement on Facebook is MUCH higher.

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eliot_sykes
How about just social without the network? Where being anonymous is part of
the attraction and so privacy is at less of a risk - think omegle and
chatroulette.

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bgnm2000
My guess is no. Like there isn't really a google killer out there (for
search), I wouldn't expect there to be a facebook killer out there any time
soon.

