
Ask HN: What will social networking look like in 2020 (bigger whatsapp, insta)? - create_novelty
(insta = instagram) Recent scandals of social media platforms seem to affect a lot of users. But folks at Hacker News are more aware about the consequences of lack of privacy than others, so HackerNews opinions could be extremely skewed wrt aggregate world view. Interesting to know your opinions. Thanks!
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fratlas
What I am hoping for, based on what I would like to exist:

Something more genuine; think older fb (writing on people's walls), snapchat.
Facebook/Insta in 2018 is basically a social linkedin - used to showcase
yourself as a person. Most people check Insta as a filter for dates.

I think the new generation of social media should focus on smaller groups of
friends (5-30), but it should be possible to publish to wider groups. Sounds
like google+ circles, but I think snapchat was closer. Short, real snippets
from peoples lives.

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create_novelty
Ya, you are right older versions of existing social networks were actually
good, until ads came along. Curious to know why do you think Google+ failed?

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fratlas
Well I don't think they did anything new/novel. Snapchat succeeded because the
concept of _just_ sending dumb photos/videos to close friends didn't exist.

Adding friends to circles was also too much work for the user I think. On top
of all that, it just wasn't very "cool" or fun

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CM30
There's a good chance it'll be something novel we can't even imagine right
now. Remember, as static as the social media world seems, every few years
seems to bring at least one major service that comes out of nowhere. See
Instagram, Snapchat, and arguably messaging apps like WhatsApp, Slack and
Discord.

That saud, I'd guessing that any successful social media app then would be:

1\. Mostly private, because the over arching fears of survelliance and spying
and a lack of privacy do seem to be getting to people, as does the media's
tendency to take random jokes/comments and blow them out of proportion.

I think that's why Discord has caught on so much with young people now.
Because stuff like Reddit being public meant their communities ended up coming
under fire for every little controversy, and they constantly had
teachers/employers/media folk looking there for things that could get them in
trouble/cause drama. So invite only and private is likely a big part of any
future platform's setup.

2\. Probably more image/video based than text based. We're seeing a move away
from text in general nowadays with stuff like YouTube and Twitch being
mainstream, and the likes of Instagram/Snapchat/Pinterest just make that even
clearer.

But it's hard to tell really. Could honestly be anything.

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s4cvv
I think social graph segmentation will prevail in coming years. Traditional
platforms create a superset of all your social circles (friends, work
acquaintances, family, peers), which--in my experience--makes it awkward to be
yourself.

Furthermore, pooling social circles as such tends to fuel a social competition
that distracts you with vanity metrics (e.g. likes/followers) and sucks the
fun out of connecting with others.

I'm building a product called Saturday[0] to solve this problem. It's a video
app that's built for groups. You can create private groups and any member can
add videos they capture with the built-in camera.

[0]: [https://thesaturdayapp.com](https://thesaturdayapp.com)

