

Social seems broken in almost all services. Can it be fixed? - jeena
https://jeena.net/social-broken

======
jemka
The only problem is people expecting niche experiences with large general
service platforms.

Want to have engaging and enriching discussions about a topic? There's
probably a website for that exact topic. It has a forum or IRC chat room and
probably a mailing list. It might have a twitter/facebook account, but those
aren't the channels you use if you're really involved.

Want to find those places that have engaging enriching discussions about
topics? Stop looking at Facebook, Twitter, et al. That's not where it's
happening. And my money is on it never happening. That's not what they're for.

~~~
jeena
It is just not true that there is some other forum or IRC or mailing list for
the topics one wants to discuss. One example is local politics, Facebook is
the only platform where you can find people willing to discuss topics like
that, there will never be a forum or IRC channel to discuss the planned
railway tunnel in Varberg, my home city. And it is obvious why, most of the
non-internet affine people are already on Facebook but will never install a
IRC client.

~~~
mkr-hn
There's a retail development here in Barrow County (Georgia) where the
Facebook page for it has been the center of discussion and the main source of
feedback for the developers: [https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gateway-at-
University-Parkway...](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gateway-at-University-
Parkway/140741965978772)

And who can blame them? Most of the 70k residents are already on Facebook.
Anything else would have to be built from the ground up.

------
alan_cx
Just a thought or observation, which I have not properly thought through at
all...

I don't use social media at all. I have dabbled in the past, but I just gave
up relatively quickly. Do I miss out? No. There is useful stuff there,
absolutely, but what I have found is that traditional media works as a sort of
filter. So, I'm a F1 fan. Lots of F1 people twitter. But, anything important
and useful appears in the usual traditional places. So, I have no need what so
ever to follow any one on twitter. If something important comes up, it will
appear on, say, the BBC's F1 sub-site.

So, these days, I would suggest that twitter, facebook, etc, are like a raw
feed, with traditional journalists filtering the information for me. So far, I
have not ever missed out.

Is that what's happening in general, or is that just me?

Another thing I have discovered recently is that live news is misleading knee
jerk stuff, that in the end doesn't really help _most_ people. The latest
example I can think of is the attack in London. So much info was flying about,
but most of it was inaccurate and contradictory. My missus was glued to 24hr
rolling news and twitter, and frankly talking nonsense, with it changing all
the time. In the end, I told her to turn it all of and watch the 10 o'clock
new later on, by which time a more coherent picture would have emerged. Which
is pretty much what I do now. Do we really need our new instantly? Or is it
better quality a few hours later?

I would, of course, accept that this sort of raw live information is very
useful to those involved in one way or another. But most of us aren't.

~~~
npsimons
_So far, I have not ever missed out._

So you think. And I would agree that Facebook, Twitter, et. al. have failed
miserably in serving their purported customers (their real customers are
probably more than happy, but I won't get into that). But I think the whole
reason those things were appealing in the first place was that traditional
media had failed even worse.

At least with social media you have more control. Control over who you
associate with and what you pay attention to. What can you do with TV or a
newspaper? Turn them off or throw them away; at best you can scan through them
while trying to avoid content (including ads) not relevant to you.

There are other alternatives though; take HN for example. It's not unfiltered,
but it definitely gives you more (and most likely more relevant to your
interests) stories. Aggregators such as HN, ./, et. al have been _far_
superior to anything I've ever experienced from TV or newsprint. Much more
relevant, much more in depth, much more accurate (not a high bar to beat), and
most importantly, filtered to _my_ interests (who gives two sh _ts about the
Hiltons or the Kardashians?). They're not perfect, but they are definitely a
step in the right direction. I've discovered so many things via HN, ./ and
other aggregators that I_ never* would have discovered via traditional media
(or probably FB or Twitter for that matter).

------
ywang0414
I've been facing this exact same problem for a while now. I've always wanted a
network where I'm not confined by just the "friends" I know or the people I
follow. I want content, conversation, not fame driven profiles. This isn't a
spam or commercial for my own service. But my friend and I just released our
own service to address these issues. We created raveler to focus on "tags",
aka categories of content. You follow tags and receive the contents related to
that. On top of this, we made sure that everyone (people who follow or not
follow the tag) can contribute to the conversation by simply reply. Kinda like
HN I guess. Take a look and I'd love to improve the service based on your
feedback.
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/raveler/id641285606?ls=1&...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/raveler/id641285606?ls=1&mt=8)

------
kn0thing
I'm curious - why no discussion of reddits?

~~~
nosse
Reddit is broken.

You have places that are kinda nice. They are few and far between and short
lived.

Either you have less than 500 subscribers and nothing happens ever. Or you
have 20000+ subscribers and the herd mentality takes over. I think there is a
cut somewhere between 10 000 - 20 000. It seems that the thoughtful flee after
that, and only the loud and narrow minded are left behind.

Part of the problem is that if there is a subreddit that you find interesting
and someone posts something about once a week it's probably buried by the
bigger subs in your feed. Subs that are mediocre at best. You can unsubscribe
from bigger ones, but you cannot make all of the subs you follow to have just
single post on your front page every day. I admit the "res" functionality
solves this to some degree.

There used to be periodic complaints how reddit is going worse. That died of
as anyone who cared deleted their accounts and headed somewhere else.

Reddit does one thing very good and that is the red letter.

~~~
samstave
I mod an /r/ with 140,000 subs - and it's been a tough thing to keep the
community happy and in agreement, neither of which I feel our community
currently is.

The difficult thing is that everyone has a different opinion of what makes the
community and how it should act.

We need to keep a high-level framework of rules and enforce those rules, but
for the most part let the community members hash it out.

I try to take a more hands off approach to modding simply because with our
user base you're damned if you do, damned if you don't - and I don't want to
censor any content per se...

------
eksith
"Social" evolves. Part of that is the society it attracts and part the society
infused in increments by the creators of the walled garden.

But here's the real kicker: "Social" is just a badly made forum with an
attachment feature. It's just that instead of the focus being on replying to
threads, it's now new thread creation with a provision to vote, bookmark and
subscribe to others' bookmarks. The more users you have in this forum, the
more it gets used (the snowball effect; or rather the opposite of the "Empty
Restaurant" problem mentioned by Spolsky).

------
gbog
Ahem, emails are not broken yet, from last I tried

~~~
bradwestness
From a discoverability standpoint they are. There's not really any way to find
like-minded people you don't already know and strike up a conversation with
e-mail, because everything is private. Which is kind of the definition of
"social".

~~~
bengillies
Pretty sure that nowhere in the definition of social does it enforce the need
to meet or otherwise speak to people that you didn't previously know. Please
don't confuse "social" as a general term with "social discovery".

For many people, having something that's pretty easy to use and lets them
communicate with people that they already know is a really great thing.

Email really isn't designed as a social discovery tool. There are many other
technologies (some of them built on top of email like mailing lists) that
_are_ designed for those purposes, and several of them work perfectly well.

If what you're expecting is one tool that both fits and performs well at all
possible use cases, then you're going to be severely disappointed.

------
MetaCosm
> I am readonly on YouTube, they have in my opinion the most healthy social
> community right now

... I assume the author was referencing maybe video responses... the meaning
can't be that YouTube comments are the best social community, can it?

~~~
MildlySerious
That was also my first thought. Thumbs Up for you!

------
edwardunknown
Isn't it all pretty much worthless? A few years ago I thought with google and
'social media' (hate that term) that no one would ever be misinformed again.
But look at 'em, people are dumber than ever. If every social thingamajig and
comments section were deleted off the internet I think it would be an
improvement.

Yeah, I see the irony of saying that in a comments section on the internet.

~~~
dpiers
Human interaction is hardly worthless, regardless of the 'quality' of said
interaction. We are social creatures, and the vast majority of people have an
innate desire to share their lives and thoughts with other people.

Instagramming the trail when I went for a walk last night^1 didn't make anyone
smarter, but it allowed me to share a piece of beauty from my day that could
quite possibly have made them feel happier.

That said, I disagree entirely with the idea that people are not more informed
because of social media. The first reports of the raid resulting in the death
of Osama Bin Laden came from a civilian in Islamabad who was live-tweeting
about the sound of helicopters overhead^2. Say what you will about
Twitter/Facebook, but they were both instrumental in the Arab Spring and
helped revolutionaries topple numerous oppressive regimes.

The news is being broken and made on social media. It's a communication tool
unlike anything humanity has ever had access to, so some people will continue
to swing it wildly like a child who has just been given a toy hammer, but that
does not negate its efficacy in the hands of someone who knows what they're
doing.

1: <http://instagram.com/p/aHyO-UgngM/> 2:
[http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/05/02/osama.twitte...](http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/05/02/osama.twitter.reports/index.html)

~~~
joyeuse6701
mm, Unless social interaction leads to a net negative outcome for the rest of
the world: I'm thinking of Nationalism in Europe and Japan for example during
the early 1910 and 1930s. I'd argue that the consensual agreement in the sub-
humanization of Jews would qualify as worthless human interaction.

As for the instagramming, here's a counterpoint:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/01/the_a...](http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/01/the_antisocial_network.html)

Sharing what makes you happy doesn't necessarily makes others happy.

And as convenient as social media was in speeding up the spread of news for
the OBL raid and coordination for Arab Spring, it's also lead to witch hunts
(Boston Bombings), and general spread of false information (politics anyone?).

You're right, some people suck and using social media, and others are very
efficient at it. But I think for what purpose someone uses a tool is
important.

------
thoughtcriminal
Why do we need to fix them? Why cling to social media? Everything has a
lifecycle, that's a law of the universe.

Lets chill for awhile and allow something to organically happen.

Seriously, would you or I _die_ if we didn't use any of those social media
channels for awhile, or would it create space for something new to evolve?

~~~
jeena
That is a odd argument, you could also ask: Who would die if we didn't use
electricity? or Who would die if we didn't use toilet paper?

~~~
mrwnmonm
ok, maybe no one will die, but it will lead to a serious problems, giving up
(facebook, twitter, etc) will not lead to

