
Ask HN: Social Network for Geeks? - karlhills
Would you be interested in an invite only social network for Geeks?<p>If so, would it be to find others with similar interests, to share things you&#x27;ve made, find news other geeks find interesting, or something else?<p>Are there any networks you currently use that already meet those needs?
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krapp
I think you'd have to define "Geek", then somehow enforce the terms just in
case someone invites a member who isn't sufficiently "Geeky." Otherwise you'll
have people bickering over who belongs there and who doesn't. How about car
geeks? Sports geeks? People who bite the heads off chickens for a living? Will
prospective members have to prove their "Geek cred" somehow?

It's sort of like how Hacker News is for "anything that good hackers would
find interesting," which sounds like it means something but really doesn't
mean anything specific, and probably just resolves to "anything that
correlates with the interests of the mods," like every other moderated
community. Other than branding, what even is the point of using "Geek" at all?

But to actually answer you question, personally, no. I think there are already
tons of sites which cater to "Geek culture" (or nerd culture or... whatever)
of various niches, and of course if what you want in HN, but with invitation
only, there is lobste.rs. Someone can basically set what you're describing up
as a subreddit. I also don't like invite-only communities on general
principle.

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thumb
My opinion is that at some point, things will go the way of Facebook. Facebook
started as a college-student-only social network, and then eventually became
available to the general public. I feel the same will happen with this idea.
:/

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DrScump
You don't think that "geeks" would prefer to gravitate toward an environment
that is not laden with privacy theft and pervasive adware, then limit their
Facebook activity to those connections _not_ present in a better environment?

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bhartzer
>> find others with similar interests, to share things you've made

How would that be different than what we already have... right here on H/N?

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sunnyisme
If done right, I think that I would be interested. It's hard to get people
active in a niche network compared to a Facebook group or a subreddit, but
certain features could make it worth it. Here's one geeky network I recently
came across that I think is executed well:
[https://gemr.com/](https://gemr.com/)

Shameful plug (hope this is ok, this is my first HN comment), but I'm also
working on a "social network for geeks" but is more specific to developers and
designers: [https://codebee.io/](https://codebee.io/) It's a big hurdle to
keep users active but it's a side project and haven't been able to devote a
lot of time.

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stevekemp
Wasn't that one of the roles that [http://advogato.org/](http://advogato.org/)
was going to solve? People would write content, list projects, write blogs,
and certify each other.

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mei0Iesh
IRC

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thumb
This is the tried and true response. It's been around for 20+ years and
chanops enforce channel topics.

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giaour
Unless you're looking for facebook-like profiles, I think HN, GitHub, and
StackOverflow fit the bill.

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theklub
ello.co

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thecupisblue
Ello is more for "tumblr/SJW" crowd than anything else.

