
The real anti-Facebook is good old email - Alex3917
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/sorry-ello-real-anti-facebook-good-old-email/
======
pud
Founder of TinyLetter here. Cool article! Glad TinyLetter is still going
strong & a successful acquisition for MailChimp.

~~~
gozo
I would say mobog was the Facebook killer. Before its time though and when
Instagram hit the mark Facebook promptly bought them and later WhatsApp. In
Asia, primarily China, the Facebook killer is WeChat which is basically
Instagram and WhatsApp.

~~~
zhte415
> In Asia, primarily China, the Facebook killer is WeChat which is basically
> Instagram and WhatsApp.

And banking.

A huge 'value add' which has caught on is being able to send real-life money
with no transaction fees to other people.

And treated in novel ways - 'lucky money' to send friends in your friend
circles, paying for a taxi, utility bills, seeing a movie, train and plane
tickets, etc.

------
jsaxton86
I moved out of state a couple of years ago, and when I stopped using Facebook,
I realized:

1: Facebook never was a good way of keeping in touch with friends and family
back home for a number of reasons

2: I needed to be doing a better job of keeping in touch with friends and
family back home

My solution was to set up a newsletter. The idea is every 3-4 months I send
out a mass email to friends and family describing what I've been up to lately.
It's been a huge win for me for a few reasons:

1: Everyone uses email, so I can reach with friends and family who don't use
Facebook. I think my grandmother is my biggest newsletter fan, and is always
encouraging me to publish more frequently.

2: I'd rather share a well-written email (with lots of links to my self-hosted
photo gallery), than a series of short status updates that may or may not be
read by people I want to keep in touch with. Also, a lot of the information I
share in the newsletter I wouldn't share on Facebook. Not because it's super
private or anything, but I'm not going to post a status update that basically
says "My living situation is pretty good right now. I'm renting a nice house
in a nice neighborhood, and my commute is fantastic!"

3: I never really enjoyed checking Facebook, but I did it out of
habit/addiction. Quitting cold turkey has made me a happier person.

The feedback I have gotten has been overwhelmingly positive. I got a number of
really good responses to the newsletter in which friends and family provided
similar updates. It even inspired a friend of mine to write his own
newsletter. These responses were great, and much better than any information I
would have gleaned from Facebook.

The biggest downside is that people still try to contact me via Facebook. For
the most part, it hasn't been a problem, except for the time I missed an
invitation for a week-long hiking trip in Glacier National Park. I should
probably cancel my Facebook account, but I'm not ready to do that yet.

Edit: I should add I don't use TinyLetter. I instead send out a mass email via
gmail. It has worked well so far, but I don't have a good way of adding
subscribers except via word-of-mouth. Maybe I should investigate TinyLetter.

~~~
rdtsc
I think email works better because people perceive it as a more direct message
just to them. If say, you send an email and bcc people on it, they feel like
they were sent a direct one-on-one personal message (even if they objectively
know it is a newsletter). Status updates on Twitter, Facebook, etc, when it
was obvious that they are for multiple people not just a one-to-one message
don't produce the same effect. People don't feel like they have to respond
because someone else can respond instead.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think the difference is subtle, but a little different. Status updates on
Twitter, Facebook, etc. feel like a part of the service - something that
exists _on_ Facebook. By checking your timeline you're only looking at events
that exist elsewhere. On the other hand, receiving a mail feels like it came
_to you_. It does not exist as an entity somewhere in the world, it's a
message that came to your inbox (and possibly to others in the CC/BCC field).

It's sort of like receiving a letter vs. reading something on a pubic notice
board. The former is _yours_ , the latter is in public space.

~~~
tmail21
I think you hit the nail on the head. An email _is_ yours in the sense that
once sent to you, the sender cannot 'take it away' or 'modify it' or 'delete
it'.

This is different than many other 'communication protocols' out there such as
Facebook Posts, Twitter Posts, Slack comments, Shared Docs etc. which all have
the notion of an 'owner' who can retract permissions, modify, delete etc.
_after_ 'send'. The email analogy would be the sender reaching into _your_
inbox and deleting or modifying _your_ email (ugh!). This is fundamentally
what gives email the feel that there is no favored owner. Conversely, every
recipient can feel that the email is _theirs_.

We're launching an email-like service,
([https://tmail21.com](https://tmail21.com)) in the next couple of weeks. Our
premise is to preserve the best aspects of email while fixing or improving on
the worst.

We think one of the best aspects of email is the aforementioned 'democratic'
(i.e. no favored owner) characteristic.

~~~
digi_owl
Reminds me that at one point Heinlein requested that any letter etc he had
sent people were to be returned, so he could burn them...

~~~
tmail21
Obviously Heinlein had not encountered Facebook where no random thought is too
minor to be broadcast to all your 'friends' :)

------
aws_ls
I don't think email is a good replacement for Facebook. Rather what we need is
open (email protocol like) social networks.

The problem with Facebook is that its a monopoly, and closed. What if it were
open, such that I can send a friend request from G+ to Facebook. Just like I
can easily send an email from yahoo email id to gmail.

This openness, if incorporated, can solve the monopoly problem as well. Plus
we don't have to complain of Facebook's AI/ML screwing/controlling our inbox
feeds.

All my (various social network) friends' statuses come to my hosted social
network (G+/Facebook, or my home built) and my host controls the feed, with
its own proprietary rules.

Everybody will be happy. Even Facebook, as there is no more bashing of it. I
guess Facebook can and should take the lead towards openness. It will be a
brave move, if it happens. But they will earn a lot of respect.

~~~
cortesoft
That is what diaspora tried to do. It has not gone well.

~~~
copsarebastards
Diaspora was written by a bunch of college students who were unqualified to be
implementing the security protocols necessary. Given that one of the biggest
reasons people want to move off Facebook is security, that's a no-go. The fact
that Diaspora failed at implementing this idea doesn't mean that the idea is
bad.

~~~
jseliger
_Given that one of the biggest reasons people want to move off Facebook is
security, that 's a no-go_

I'm not convinced that anyone apart from readers of Hacker News and Reddit
_wants_ to move off Facebook.

Discussions about the problems of FB on HN remind me of 2000s-era Slashdot
discussions of why Linux is better than Windows and is poised to takeover the
desktop: A popular subject for a tiny, passionate minority that has little
relevance relative to the huge number of everyday users out there.

(BTW, I'm not a big FB user and am sympathetic to discussions of its problems,
but I'm also aware that apart from a small number of nerds no one cares.)

~~~
pjbrunet
"A popular subject for a tiny, passionate minority that has little relevance
relative to the huge number of everyday users out there."

Linux did take over Windows. You realize Android is Linux, right? That's 80%
of the mobile market right here
[https://twitter.com/BIIntelligence/status/605748823709859840...](https://twitter.com/BIIntelligence/status/605748823709859840/photo/1)
And now Microsoft is building Android apps. So that tiny, passionate minority
was right ;-)

~~~
nickpsecurity
Linux didn't take over Windows: it took over much of the server space and a
specific form of it dominated mobile. Windows still dominates the desktop
space as the commenter clearly meant. Further, a single company and product
line has been holding its own against Android with profits that made Microsoft
and IBM look poor.

In the end, all the volunteers and paid programmers combined working on Linux
couldn't displace Windows as king. And all kinds of companies working together
got Android to 80% of the market with Apple getting 50% of market's profit. I
wouldn't be bragging in either of those two niches. Cloud, on the other hand?
Slam dunk.

~~~
tim333
>Apple getting 50% of market's profit

92% has been reported recently

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-share-of-smartphone-
indus...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-share-of-smartphone-industrys-
profits-soars-to-92-1436727458)

~~~
nickpsecurity
Wow. That's amazing. Their ability to get people to want over-priced stuff is
and often was amazing. I'll give them that.

------
libso
Facebook is flexible enough to provide this. You can post updates visible only
to a group of people. Problem with Facebook is how people use it. Users tend
to have > 500 friends on an average including ones to whom you have never
spoken or never want to speak. This would make your timeline pretty irrelevant
and uninteresting to you. Why would I care if a colleague in your first job
(10 yr ago) went on a trip with his childhood friends.

Take a scrub to your Facebook friends list and you can get a more powerful
TinyLetter.

Practically speaking you'd never un-friend people unless they personally
bother you. This is why I hardly check my Facebook timeline. All I use is
Messenger which is pretty useful to keep in touch with people you want to.

So, the real anti Facebook is Facebook itself with a fresh start.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I didn't know that Facebook can send status updates via email to people who
are not on Facebook.

~~~
lmm
It can't, but that's an incredibly niche feature.

------
codingdave
Periodic updates to friend and family about what is new in your life has a
long tradition behind it. Before email, even, it came in the form of Christmas
Letters, including with the Christmas cards. And they absolutely serve a
purpose for one-way communication out to people. TinyLetter sounds like it
would meet that need nicely.

Of course, it cannot be too frequent. Family members and friends who send out
mass updates too often end up being ignored, just like frequent Facebook
updates. And that is because it is one-way communication. It is missing the
core piece of asking how the recipients of the email have been, and engaging
in a one-on-one conversation, even if just a brief one via email. (Posting a
note at the end saying, "Please reply to tell me how you are doing." does not
count.)

For my own communications, I am not on social media. I call family every week
or so. Sunday afternoons are a web of phone calls between us all. For old
friends, I send emails periodically, one or twice a year at least. And news
gets less frequent as you age. You aren't moving, you have the same job, the
kids are 6 months older, but no real news. So sometimes those emails only
purpose are to ask the other person how they are doing.

So TinyLetter sounds fine for what it is. But I don't see it as a replacement
for anything.

~~~
garduque
Reading the title I thought the subject was going to be more along the lines
of your response, not an ad for a newsletter service. The anti-Facebook is
going back to how we communicated on a personal level before there was
Facebook. Anything else still seems like a gimmick.

------
pjbrunet
I was saving up this idea, but here's how you could disrupt Facebook. This is
already happening, but it could be automated.

In short, automatically DELAY posting to Facebook. Let everybody know at the
bottom of all content: This was published first at example.com and released to
social media (Facebook) after X hours.

Make Facebook look antiquated like a newspaper. Let everyone know, Facebook is
the old news. If you want our latest news, you have to sign up for the email
list--you must to go to example.com for the LATEST news.

One way I'm thinking this could work with a WordPress plugin, when the
publisher schedules a post, the post would be "locked" from view with a
countdown timer. "This content unlocks in 6 hours. To unlock this content now,
and to get our content before everyone else, sign up for our email list."

Maybe for really time-sensitive info you could have three tiers. A paid tier
(instant release) and a free tier (unlocked 1 hour later) and a social media
tier (unlocked 6 hours later.)

Essentially, you're taking advantage of the value of time, automatically. For
example, if shampoo is on sale and you're 1 hour late, maybe the shelf is
cleared out.

But you don't necessarily need a paid tier, because the publisher is a)
getting more traffic to example.com, pulling traffic off Facebook and b)
getting more email subscribers.

Publishers do implement this on their own, but I think it would work well as a
WordPress plugin or as some kind of paid service if it was slick enough.

~~~
garduque
I don't know anybody who gets "really time-sensitive" info from Facebook. I
can't even think of an example beyond your not terribly good example of a
shampoo sale.

~~~
pjbrunet
In general, if publishers are automatically sharing to Facebook without some
kind of delay, people will just stay on Facebook. Also consider the private
groups on Facebook, they could be sharing paid subscriptions and who would
know?

The idea isn't just about Facebook, but publishing anything to get more
subscribers. If your posts are time-sensitive and people can get your info
through social media (without delay) then you're probably losing traffic,
because people are busy, lazy, whatever--they're often already on Facebook and
need a reason to go somewhere else.

Paid subscriptions aren't as common, and I almost deleted that part of my
comment, but people do pay for time-sensitive info. As far as the "paid tier"
I was thinking out loud, in terms of building a general purpose SAS app for
publishers. I haven't nailed down exactly how it would work, to delay posts to
social media. Obviously it would need compelling case studies where people
increased traffic and subscribers, and revenue. I can think of a couple of
markets to start with, but not getting more specific than that.

Another aspect of this is the notifications. I think email notifications are
good to start with because they show up on your phone, and if those
notifications are customizable and targeted, that's convenient. But I think
there's more you could do with notifications, so that people aren't annoyed
that they have to go to your website to find the (timely) information they
want. If you can do better notifications than social media (more specific,
less annoying) then I think people will more likely go to your website vs.
consume your content through social media which sends less-useful
notifications.

------
tommoor
This is a great advert for TinyLetter, would love to know if they approached
Wired to get this published and how that process went down.

~~~
Animats
That's got to be a "sponsored story". At the bottom of the page, there are
links to more "Sponsored Stories - Powered by Outbrain".

What is happening, and happened years ago, is that many people stopped using
Facebook messaging and went back to email. It's easier to get messages via
email on smartphones than to run Facebook's app.

~~~
morgante
Maybe in your social circles that's true, but everyone I know has started to
rely on Messenger for almost all their non-professional communication. It's
simultaneously killing both email and SMS.

~~~
andybak
Messenger == Facebook Messenger?

Please specify for those of us that don't use it. There's been several apps
known as 'Messenger' over the years.

~~~
morgante
> Messenger == Facebook Messenger?

Yes. At least among my social circle, it's become the go-to messaging
platform.

------
DiabloD3
I don't agree with that. The real anti-Facebook is a combination of email and
well formatted RSS feeds. Email for actual legitimate notifications and mail,
RSS feeds for news and news type bloggy stuff and blogs.

~~~
kkarimi
Why not both? I would prefer to have my emails and feeds in one place, just no
status updates.

~~~
mrec
What's stopping you? No reason a mail client can't do RSS as well, is there?
(I'm pretty sure some do, or at least did.)

~~~
MagnumOpus
Every good mail client does RSS, including T-bird and Outlook - but they don't
sync subscriptions and read/unread posts to the cloud, so most power users
prefer a Google Reader clone.

------
wyclif
_Now, only a year later, Ello is nearly forgotten, filed away with other
would-be Facebook killers like the open source Diaspora and the near-dead
Google+_

The problem with this statement is that there is a _vast_ difference in number
of users between Ello and Google+. The latter is far from "forgotten" or "near
dead." Every time I hit G+, it's teeming with activity. I can't say that about
Ello, which seems to be populated by mustachioed German font designers who
love custom bicycles and the music of Kraftwerk.

Now, Google+ has had its issues. It might even be going away or abandonware.
And it's a blip on the radar compared to Facebook. But that's different from
comparing it to Ello! The "Google+ is dead" meme is just lazy tech reportage.

~~~
lmm
Shrug. Not my experience. Google+ looks deader than disco here.

~~~
wyclif
It's going to if you never circle anybody and none of your friends use it.

~~~
knight17
None of my friends use G+ but it has lots of active communities and there are
many people who use it in a twitter-like manner -- posting non-personal items,
starting discussions and the like that are crowd pullers (+1s, comments,
resharing to other communities).

G+ is a good network, I hope the Facebookers will remain on Facebook and
Google will find some way to open it up to outside web to integrate it with
its active communities and the wide web - a prime example is the G+ blog
comment system. It had potential to be the no 1, but they squandered away the
opportunity by limiting it to G+ and Disqus scored there.

------
floatboth
And the real anti-Twitter is good old websites.
[https://indiewebcamp.com](https://indiewebcamp.com)

~~~
superuser2
I think the biggest barrier to people setting up personal/"open" websites is
the exhaustion of the .com namespace. If your name is common or even remotely
plausible, it's taken by a squatter. One of the key advantages of a closed,
locked-down social networking environment is the ability to have multiple
people identified by the same real name, and a relatively less crowded field
for screen names (because squatting is less of an issue).

------
vinalia
I'm not sure I buy the idea of email as a private alternative to Facebook. To
keep your message content private, wouldn't all parties need to be hosting
their own servers or using encryption?

There's also the problem of knowing who you're contacting and when. Hiding
that would probably take some kind of anonymous remailer program.

Normal people would probably just have a free email account from companies
like gmail or yahoo and not use any encryption. Wouldn't services like
TinyLetter then be transferring the data from Facebook to other email hosting
companies? This takes care of some privacy issues but still doesn't seem to
solve all of problems for private communication.

~~~
kedean
It doesn't sound like it's meant for private social media, it's an alternative
to the ultra-public social media that's gotten popular in the last few years.
It's about broadcasting yourself, not contacting a small subset of people
(hence why you can only publish to the entire set of subscribers). If you need
secrecy, then a system billing itself with the term 'newsletters' is probably
not for you.

The real benefit, as the article points out, is that the empty room problem is
solved. Everyone already has an email address, it's your online identity, and
email addresses aren't tied to one provider like a facebook account or a
twitter account. If gmail dies, TinyLetter still lives. If TinyLetter dies,
there's nothing stopping someone from creating an alternative version that
imports old newsletters to reconstruct everything.

------
ssivark
Interesting; I was not aware of TinyLetter. Though it doe nothing to address
the use of Facebook for interpersonal communication, I guess they're referring
to the use of facebook to nurture an audience and reach out to them en masse.

Would folks consider this approach a practical replacement for RSS-like
services, to reach out to a broader audience? Since most ("lay")people don't
seem interested in going out of their way to subscribe to RSS feeds; seems
like they'd be happy to subscribe in a manner where (more!) things will land
up in their inbox.

~~~
themodelplumber
TinyLetter is a really funky thing, and as you say it's more about nurturing
an audience. What's special about it is more the way people have adopted it
than anything. Like a public corkboard, its size and functionality belies its
usefulness to a wide group (the analogy stops there, as these emails are one-
way). Most of the TinyLetter emails that I get are just different, like a
special recipe almost.

I've been subscribing to tons of RSS feeds for business blogging recently, and
while there are similarities, there's just no way I'd accept TinyLetter as a
substitute for a feed. First there's the awkward idea of a gigantic email
folder hierarchy to store it all. Then there are things like enclosures, a
Youtube video, mp3 files, etc. Also, I've noticed that email links (view this
in your browser!) tend to rot about 10x as fast and are not indexed by e.g.
archive.org. So I dunno, it's just different tech.

------
drvortex
We all know what keeps Facebook going. Facebook isn't running on well-paid,
well-employed family dudes who want to get in touch with relatives. Nor on
intelligent commentators on society and tech. It is kept going by gossipy
teenagers who want to snoop on their bff, bored housewives and creepy middle-
aged men who want more 'social' interaction than they can possibly manage in
the physical world.

Google+ failed because of they didn't give anyone a good reason to move away
from Facebook where such networks already existed, and they insisted on lack
of anonymity. The intelligent commentators are all on Twitter anyway.

But the demographic of teenagers, bored housewives and creepy middle-aged men
on the internet is very large, and they are on the side 24/7\. Pretty much
everyone else who uses the internet uses it for work and hardly uses Facebook.
But they trudge along to Facebook a bunch of other people who of course need
to stay in the communication loop.

Email is not going away because no other system is a wide-spread. Slack could
come close, if only they took away their silly way of logging in. It was a
shame that Gmail is rooted in email. Heck, if Gmail changed their backend to
something like Dlack, 50% of internet users would be no longer using email and
they wouldn't even know it. I dream of a Slack to Email gateway.

------
fiatjaf
Why feeds? Getting a newsletter is getting a feed, Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, WhatsApp are all about getting a feed of endless news. All
alternative social networks are the same.

Why "social network" became synonymous of producing and reading news from the
life of people?

MySpace and Orkut were not that way. I imagine other social networks from the
early 2000's were not that way also.

~~~
lmm
Livejournal was definitely that way. Did Myspace really not give you updates?
I find it hard to believe it was so popular with bands if you couldn't tell
your friends/followers/whatever "here's our new track"/"we're playing a gig on
x date".

------
meeper16
Facebook = AOL 2.0.1. Maybe they'll do a merger more valuable than AOLs merger
of $350 billion, maybe not: [http://www.fastcompany.com/3046213/verizon-
aol](http://www.fastcompany.com/3046213/verizon-aol)

Facebook is what you get when you have a founder that cuts and pastes myspace
code to voyeristically spy on girls he can't get while holding a business card
that says "I'm CEO bitch" while calling his users "dumb fucks". Worse than the
next AOL 2.0.1

The past Prodigy's, Compuserves, AOLs, TheGlobes, geocities, friendsters,
myspaces, facebooks have never done very well especially when compared to
truly innovative companies like Google which also happens to make billions
more and has billions more users.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Google's an exception to almost every rule. And that exception started with
their _patented_ Page Rank algorithm. Patents on important stuff forcing users
to pony up isn't exceptional, though. So, they can't be used as an example
except for what brains + patents + critical tech can earn you.

------
Philipp__
I quit facebook 2 years ago. I found out that Facebook was just another place
on internet for wasting time, not for communication and staying in contact
with someone.

Now when I meet someone new, and he's like add me on Facebook, I give them my
email and always get _that_ look in return.

------
ettolurb
My real Facebook is the bar. US Social Networking since White Horse Tavern –
Rhode Island – Founded 1673

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
One expert discovered this new neat social hack: hanging out in person.

Kidding aside, I prophesize that the next really big, impactful American
political movement will not have a web page or twitter/facebook account or
forums. The internet as a useful tool for outsiders is over.

------
superuser2
As it stands, Facebook has a better privacy story than email. Facebook traffic
is encrypted straight through to Facebook's servers, and I'm confident that my
data is not leaving Facebook. (You can pay Facebook to show ads to specific
demographics; you can't actually buy user data.)

Email, on the other hand, is plaintext for most of its journey and available
in cleartext to dozens of shady actors (every ISP in the path, sender's
provider, recipient's provider). The courts are clear that email is not
considered private and not protected by law.

I'd like to see GPG+email become the new Facebook, but I'll take Facebook over
email as it stands now easily.

------
tedunangst
"And on an average day, maybe 51, 52 percent of them open it."

Engagement metrics for my status updates! I knew I was missing out on
something.

------
TrevorJ
Facebook lowered the overhead for staying in touch with your friends.

Pretty much every update since the beginning has steadily raised that
overhead, and now it's no more efficient than email was at solving the
problem.

------
jister
Facebook replacement, email replacement, Windows replacement, etc etc...we
heard about these attempts for a long time and yet they failed. Why?

From the article, is the problem really the technical complexity or the empty
rooms? Is it privacy? Or, is there really a problem at all? Of course there
is! Just like any other businesses/companies there some people that will
always complain!

In the case of TinyLetter, it is NOT a replacement of Facebook. It will NOT be
-- far from it. People don't use Facebook just to communicate. Some people use
it to advertise, to sell, to communicate (sure), to look for old friends, to
pretend to be somebody else, to boast that they are successful, to look for
missing people important to them just like this:

[http://gary.littlethings.com/gary-bentley-
nurse/?utm_source=...](http://gary.littlethings.com/gary-bentley-
nurse/?utm_source=soup&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=misc)

Now, can you do this in a newsletter? Don't think so...

------
MikeNomad
Glad to see pud is still knocking around. Didn't realize he was the TinyLetter
guy. FC was one of the best things ever to hit the web. As for E-mail vs.
Fb...

It is simply an issue of control: Content, speed, and the Signal-to-Noise
ratio. And that goes for both the Sender and the Receiver. Makes e-mail the
obvious choice.

------
krick
Except “good old email” is basically owned by Google now, so there’s small
choice in rotten apples.

~~~
Tideflat
The difference is that email doesn't depend on Google to exist, and leaving
Gmail isn't all that bad. They even support email forwarding, so that you
wouldn't loose contact with people that only have your old email:
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10957?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10957?hl=en)

~~~
krick
Are you joking or what? I, personally, don't use gmail, that's not the
problem. The problem is everyone else does. And have you ever (in last 5 years
or so) tried using your personal email server to communicate with them? I'm
guessing you have not, because otherwise you would know how painful it is, as
Google does everything to make it painful as hell. Large portion of my contact
list are gmail users, especially that part of my contact list who I'm not
friendly enough with to tolerate continuously ending up in their “Spam”
folder. And that's exactly what you do, when you write to gmail from your own
private email server — end up in their “Spam” folder, no matter what you do.
So if you are ever going to communicate via email with whoever you might call
your _customer_ , you are basically forced to use gmail or another large email
service which will be whitelisted on other large email services. 2015 is not
the year of free Internet.

~~~
chrismartin
I have a very different experience, having run my own email server for the
past few months with no trouble communicating with many others on Gmail. Is
your SMTP server on a blacklist or something?

------
hardwaresofton
Ellos is a completely different beast than Facebook. While they're definitely
not in the spotlight as much as they were previously, the service is still
fundamentally sound, and some pretty amazing content gets uploaded there
daily. I have yet to see a listicle.

------
Rangi42
I check Facebook once in a while and keep getting alerts (via a userscript)
that friends of mine have deleted their accounts. On the other hand, the
mailing list that my close friends and I created in high school is still
keeping us in touch years later.

------
muddi900
Man newsletters are making a comeback, but the only one I am subscribed to is
Warren Ellis' Oribital Operations. If more newsletters were this well-written,
I'd subscribe to them.

------
leke
I'm still quite fond of both Google+ and Diaspora. The Google+ mobile app is
great, but I would go on Diaspora more if it also had a quality mobile app.

------
sea2summit
I'd like to see Facebook investigated for antitrust violations. If Google can
be investigated, Facebook should be more so.

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ArkyBeagle
Email isn't point-to-multipoint.

Usenet is.

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ljk
and IRC!

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rokhayakebe
"Social Media vs. Personal Media"

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linkydinkandyou
Maybe what's needed is something that _looks_ superficially like a social
media site, but under the hood is just an email system, using the tried-and-
true email protocols, maybe with white-lists enabled. Basically, you're not
"friending" someone...you're adding him to your white list.

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lcnmrn
The real anti-Facebook is Sublevel. But I can forgive Wired for not knowing
about it.

~~~
mrec
Just read their About page, can't see how it's significantly different to
Facebook or Twitter. It's still a proprietary network with all the
Balkanization and opportunities for abuse that implies, isn't it?

