
Can Facebook be replaced? Let’s invest $100,000 - jph
http://calacanis.com/2018/04/20/openbookchallenge/
======
downandout
If anyone reading this undertakes this challenge, it would be a mistake for
you to focus on privacy despite the recent headlines. The problem is that
privacy, something that few people care about (as evidenced by the lack of
impact all of this has had on Facebook usage), is not a selling point. People
have something that serves their needs for social networking purposes, and
that something is Facebook. The only way to beat them is if you offer features
that help serve their social networking needs _better_ than Facebook and in a
way that is so compelling that it would be worth it for an average user to
make the switch.

Most people don't buy a $100K+ Tesla to save on gas or save the planet. People
buy them because they are amazing cars. Similarly, people won't switch social
networks because you offer better privacy. They'll switch only if you make an
amazing social network.

~~~
herbst
Also people are already switching, Facebook degraded itself to a event
calender and a lot of social activity wandered off to more closed environments
like chat groups which get popular again due to media enabled chats (telegram,
Wechat or also Slack and Discord)

IMO trying to replace Facebook is the wrong direction. Seems most people
totally forgot that we actually should not care what our ex girlfriends
neighbour is eating today and can't imagine a world without a central social
network.

IMO we already have more than enough badly done MySpace clones. It's time we
put our egos aside and move on

------
_nalply
It's my opinion that we should try to build a social network on e-mail. The
social network is just a new e-mail client or a web front-end looking like the
social networks we already know today (Reddit, Facebook, etc.). The challenge
is to write a new e-mail client / wrap the back-end such that most people
don't realise that they use e-mail.

Of course there are technical challenges like that e-mail is a very old
protocol and for some use cases quite a bad fit. But we should have created
new standards for e-mail2 instead of creating a plethora of incompatible
messaging formats.

I hope that the privacy problems of Facebook is a wake-up call for many people
and that we can reclaim e-mail as THE standard for messaging.

~~~
herbst
Email and the associated protocols are a painful nightmare. Nobody in their
right mind would build a platform based on a broken protocol.

~~~
jarfil
Are they? An application leveraging email for its transport layer could easily
use standard email libraries, and social networks are little more than mailing
lists with a different interface.

~~~
herbst
I am not aware of any 'standard email' libraries that actually work with the
majority of edge cases.

Whatever someone builds around email. It will be full of work arounds and
'temporary hacks'

------
robbrown451
This is the wrong approach, in my opinion. For a product in a relatively new
space, getting a good team together and showing traction makes sense. For
something like this, it is putting the cart before the horse. To the extreme.

Beyond anything else, what I'd like to see is a plan. And mostly, a plan for
cracking the network monopoly that facebook has. Maybe the new thing will
start as a "facebook helper" that allows users to easily scrape and manage
facebook data, and allows you to post/contribute to multiple networks at once.
Eventually it can allow people to transition away from facebook gradually, but
in the meantime, it gives you extra power on facebook and most importantly,
doesn't dump you in some isolated network where you suddenly have five friends
rather than 500.

~~~
loceng
I agree. Likewise, the VC model is part of the problem, including the
unreasonable returns they expect - because they're making so many bets, so
they don't really have to believe or understand why an investment will
succeed; one of the most difficult parts will be putting together the initial
team, and then growing the team, which in this situation requires a buffer of
money - along with a strong vision being honestly lead, without attempting to
bank on hype.

I've been evolving a plan and strategy over the years to address these
problems, unfortunately it's all mostly on hold while I try to organize more
stem cell injections to heal chronic pain I have; our healthcare systems
aren't adequate in dealing with uncommon scenarios either.

------
loceng
"What are you looking for?

We don’t want to tell you what to build, we want you to come up with your own
ideas. Keep in mind, that while ideas really matter, Zuckerberg has shown us,
execution matters more."

I think what Mark taught us is that we need to know the person in control
before backing them, and their ability to execute (or fuck over the brothers
etc) is probably the worst indicator, although is liked by VCs - as well as
the idea of "growth at all costs." That helps reduce their own personal risk,
offsetting the real cost to the rest of society.

------
diasp
Better invest some bucks in open bounties for Diaspora* to close the gap and
even to develop useful new features:
[https://www.bountysource.com/teams/diaspora](https://www.bountysource.com/teams/diaspora)

------
SeanMacConMara
Admirable enthusiasm, but I beleive this is a legal problem not a
software/product one. The network effect can only be broken by fashion or laws
requiring completely free movement of users and all their data among
competitors for ALL online services.

------
jph
If you want to help, here's the social network plan that has many comments
thanks to HN folks:

[https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_network_plan](https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_network_plan)

Comments welcome here or on GitHub or email me joel@joelparkerhenderson.com.

~~~
loceng
I've been thinking through this problem for awhile, 7+ years.

Re: Funding - One I'd add to the list is to lobby government to provide $X
annually per citizen that gets allocated to the user's choice to pay for their
social network platform of choice; this would have to be tied to specific
rules/guidelines. E.g. mandatory tax money that the person distributes how
they want. Whether this will lead to the desired outcome, I'm unsure - people
might still just want to give their money to Facebook or a platform who takes
that money + still does less-than-good or less-than-desired behaviours,
requiring regulation and oversight, costing taxpayers anyway. It might also
incentivize private dollars to be more willing to invest in platforms if
there's that money per-user that would be available.

Another I'd add or that's not explicitly stated is to create enough value that
people - or enough people - are willing to pay; this ties into freemium model
or subscription model.

I think the solution is, as you list, is a mix of different funding sources.

Investment should likewise not solely come from the VC model, it should come
from a combination of sources: \- From government -- if you can't convince a
government to invest, then why not? \- From philanthropic -- who will have a
longer horizon than traditional VC, and who will hopefully require a higher
burden on evidence that the leader(s) are good people. \- From traditional VC
-- who can benefit by reducing risk from the other funding sources, and to
leverage the experienced VC's network and resources.

Also, brand names.

Facebook is brandable, Diaspora - I'm still not sure I pronounce it properly.
App.net was a good attempt, a little more brandable than Diaspora - at least
with technologists, however not necessarily consumer-friendly; their mission
and fight, similarly to how Evan from Snapchat pushed back against what was
essentially Mark bullying (sell to me or we'll copy you); ~7 years ago I wrote
a blog post after Fred Wilson suggested I turn a comment into its own post,
related to The Independent Web - and the requirement that that will require
sharing, which means not being greedy, and not trying to capture 100% of
value; [http://mattamyers.tumblr.com/post/2903098250/the-
independent...](http://mattamyers.tumblr.com/post/2903098250/the-independent-
web-how-can-it-work)

Another competitive advantage: differentiation. Copying Facebook doesn't give
anything to people that they don't otherwise have.

Whenever I see discussion about people creating a competitor to Facebook, they
miss out on these two staples - differentiation and branding.

I've been evolving my own ideas and plans, multiple platforms to create an
ecosystem, however I've been struggling with chronic pain the last few years -
and finding doctors locally to do continue the simple stem cell injections I
was getting (and that 100% were healing the pain) has proven difficult due to
incompetence in the system; I've come to realize that doctors are selected for
their memorization skills (via tests), and not for critical thinking skills.
The pain primarily disrupts my executive function and decision making, and so
this has lead to me almost being paralyzed - but more unfortunately dependant
on other people who haven't been competent or available enough to do the work
of finding a willing doctor for me. What confuses people is I can reason and
storytell still, not really any decision making required when simply stream of
consciousness writing, otherwise I find myself stuck in routine I had before I
was introduced to the pain in my body. I can ramble on forever, until mentally
exhausted anyhow - and then I ground again slightly to feeling the pain more
clearly. Actually I wrote about how I reconnected with the pain in an HN
comment yesterday, if curious in a simplified version:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16894072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16894072)

The brand name for one of two main platforms I have been evolving my plans for
is ENGN, pronounced engine. There's a story of how I evolved to that name, my
focus is fading now though, so won't share it now. Randomly writing long
comments pretending people will care as a mechanism to give meaning and feel
connected to people more than I currently can in real life; I can't really
participate in emotional bonds/relationships with emotion as the added stress
is another variable to manage with the pressure the pain puts on my system.

I honestly don't know if I will find a doctor to heal the pain within a timely
manner - have already been at my wit's end, however I don't want my life's
work to disappear, so I have it written to give my domain names, etc to Elon
Musk - as he's the only most obvious holistic thinker that wears his heart on
his sleeve, and does his best to think through things will affect everyone;
the current condition and lack of organization for my plans would likely be
describable as a clusterfuck, so the domains and logos may be the only thing
really usable for him/the team he'd hopefully put to work if I'm not around to
execute on it myself.

Clearly I got a second mental wind, though it's getting cooler outside now and
the hunger signal is telling me/directing me to get food now. Thanks for
reading, internet stranger, if you got this far.

If I had the focus/concentration and self-direction/executive function
ability, I'd go through all of the social network plan repository and comment
on it all from my perspective.

~~~
jph
Thanks Matt! I added your article link and related info to the repo:
[https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_network_plan/c...](https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_network_plan/commit/19e7d799c008fb447be4359ed81815a40715addc)

~~~
loceng
Cool.

------
whitepoplar
The replacement for Facebook is likely already being used by many people,
perhaps even yourself. You just don't know it yet. ;)

~~~
vm
Agreed. So then what are the _most active_ online communities today that
aren't Facebook/Google/Twitter/LinkedIn?

At first cut I think of Telegram, Signal, Discord, Snap, WeChat, Line (East
Asia), KakaoTalk (Korea). Maybe HN.

~~~
whitepoplar
Reddit! It's a sleeping giant.

~~~
_nalply
No! It's email! See my opinion piece above about e-mail the new social
network.

Reddit and other social networks could have been implemented using e-mail as a
back-end.

~~~
whitepoplar
You're right! Although email is already more popular than Facebook. ;)

~~~
loceng
So the user defaults to trusting their email host/server for their privacy,
data safety, security, etc? And the users who connect to that user (their data
will be sent to the email host as well) will need to put their trust in them
as well. Is that the only concern?

Have you thought through what the other positives or potential negatives are
of using email?

------
egypturnash
There's a bunch of existing Facebook Alternatives. How about putting some of
this money into one of those? Improve the migration process and the UI and the
non-tech-user-friendliness, on the front and back end - can you get setting up
a node on one of these to be as easy as, say, installing Wordpress?

~~~
egypturnash
(And make it as easy to keep up to date as WordPress, too. My Mastodon
instance needs updating but first I have to stare at a Git client and figure
out how to merge all my tweaks with the latest version.)

------
throwaway2016a
There are already tons of Facebook competitors. But most of them miss the
point.

For example, Diaspora really misses the mark. You go to their homepage it
emphasizes freedom and controlling your data and doesn't once mention the
thing people care about in a social network... people.

Most people don't care about privacy except nerds like me and most of you.
They care that they can view the latest adorable photos of people kids and
pets and message all their friends.

For that point most tech people care about those things too. Which is why, for
example, even though I have been aware of Facebooks issues for years I am
still on there. My friends and family are there.

The first thing they ask is "can I connect with the people I care about on
this site." If the answer is "not yet" then most people won't join.

------
Karrot_Kream
There's already a bunch of vigorous FB alternatives. I'm personally familiar
with the Fediverse and Secure Scuttlebutt and they both have a growing and
active userbase. Be your own entrepreneur, take some social risk, and join
these networks. If you want to spend money finding them, then put up feature
bounties, or marketing bounties to make marketing campaigns for these
networks.

------
bytematic
There are lots of models, but getting people to actually switch, that is the
issue.

------
TenJack
2, 3, and 5 seem to be problems that only occur at scale so it seems odd to
focus on solving these in the beginning when the nascent social network
wouldn't be big enough to even have a breath of these symptoms.

------
wjkohnen
We have been here before, resulting in Diaspora*. What is different this time?

~~~
adventured
Nothing. Replacing Facebook is a perpetual tall poppy fantasy; that was the
case before the privacy abuses of the last several years.

I watched the exact same thing obsess the tech world and Silicon Valley in
particular, for over a decade, regarding Windows. Windows never got replaced,
instead the ground changed under it, an inflection opened up new opportunities
(which created nothing more than a duopoly in iOS + Android for two other
giants). That's exactly what will happen with Facebook. Five or six years from
now, they'll be doing a hundred billion dollars in sales, they'll be larger
than ever before, and more profitable than ever before. Some day the ground
will shift under them, opening up a big opportunity, and it'll require a
technology shift. Then we'll probably just get another tech giant or three
dominating the new thing, rinse and repeat. This is all extraordinarily
predictable. The easiest thing of all to predict? Decentralization will
perpetually continue to fail as a mass-consumer premise. Decentralization is
the ultimate tech fantasy, and the greatest demonstration that engineers very
often have a poor understanding of typical consumers. Nothing has had more
thought & effort put into it, with fewer results to show for it, than
decentralization for mass consumer products/services, over the last 15-20
years.

------
alexose
The question isn't "can Facebook be replaced" as much as it is "why haven't
alternatives already succeeded?"

I'm thinking of Diaspora* in particular.

~~~
jph
For Diaspora in particular, this archived article goes in depth. "What
happened to the Facebook killer? It's complicated." (2012-10-02)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20121009223506/https://motherboa...](https://web.archive.org/web/20121009223506/https://motherboard.vice.com/2012/10/2/what-
happened-to-the-facebook-killer-it-s-complicated)

Excerpts:

* The team of four young kids had little real-world programming experience.

* The team found themselves crushed under the weight of expectation.

* The first release, on September 15, 2010 was a public disaster, mainly for its bugs and security holes.

* Google+ imitated Diaspora core features such as circles, and invested lots of money, but still failed.

* The team ran low on money, and VC interested waned.

* Sadly one of team members suicided.

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
here's a direct link:

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pggg3z/what-
happe...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pggg3z/what-happened-to-
the-facebook-killer-it-s-complicated)

------
herogreen
Dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633986](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633986)

~~~
0xCMP
Not really. This was posted 2 days ago where that HN post was 30 days ago. You
can't even comments there anymore.

------
marknadal
There is a group of people in our Open Source community that is getting
together to build a Facebook replacement, and mentioned this $100K prize. Open
invite to anybody interested in wanting to join their team :) I myself am too
busy working on the underlying libraries for it.

None-the-less, here is our progress:

[https://d.tube/#!/v/marknadal/lanz4e6z](https://d.tube/#!/v/marknadal/lanz4e6z)
(update 1, idea)

[https://d.tube/#!/v/marknadal/gfqglxvd](https://d.tube/#!/v/marknadal/gfqglxvd)
(update 2, accounts)

[https://d.tube/#!/v/marknadal/ganoayt8](https://d.tube/#!/v/marknadal/ganoayt8)
(update 3, private messages)

Here is the docs for the End-to-End Encryption library (a wrapper around the
Browser's Native WebCrypto API)

[https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/SEA](https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/SEA)

~~~
sosborn
I think that approaching this as a technical problem isn't the best approach.
Unless the business questions are answered (how does one make a billion user
social network that makes enough money to keep the servers running without the
mess facebook created), the code doesn't really matter that much. Making a
social network is easy. Making one that sticks and satisfies this criteria is
much harder.

~~~
marknadal
Very true, and is kinda a sad reflection of us/me/people-in-general. I still
use Facebook, because its easy conveniences outweigh my frustration. :/

So what do we do? SSB is pretty good, and I think the Beaker guys are working
on one too. They require you to download/install to your desktop though, which
I'm fine with, but I don't think consumers will bother with.

~~~
egypturnash
They'll probably bother with downloading an app to their phones and tablets,
though. Beaker's desktop-only. So's Scuttlebutt. Half the world doesn't even
_own_ a desktop.

Get this stuff running on phones. Figure out how to cram a server into a
single iOS/Android app along with the client.

------
davidjnelson
lol, try _at least_ $100M spread among 10 promising teams before they start
coding. Building a better facebook _with traction_ for free to get $100,000 at
6%... This is completely ridiculous.

------
leetcrew
i feel like some sort of mass commitment by potential users to actually use a
new site would be much more valuable than any monetary investment. obviously
that's a lot harder to bring about.

------
sofaofthedamned
I have nothing interesting to add, other than its interesting and good these
conversations are happening.

------
allenleein
Just donate $100,000 to HackerNews.

