Ask HN: Facebook alternative - would you start one? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Facebook alternative - would you start one?

6 pointsneurotech112 comments

With all the attention on Facebook and their privacy, or lack thereof. I'm wondering if anyone is considering creating their own social network to correct the perceived negatives of Facebook and other existing platforms.

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I think Facebook is beginning to have systemic user privacy/comfort issues resulting from their persistence in oversaturating their social graph. yan is right in that only a tiny minority of their userbase (such as us) really cares about this right now, but I think that in this case our concerns are leading indicators for those of the rest of the Internet-using population.

I don't think that any site that tries to combine the entirety of the social graph with contextually agnostic personal content will ultimately be successful - in other words, no one wants a site where everyone they've ever met can see what they're doing all over the Internet, and this is what Facebook seems intent on creating. It's more than just a pure privacy concern (where privacy means restricted access to personal information) - there's also filtering issues, with my 'friends' being exposed to/spammed by content I create that simply isn't meant for them.

For what it's worth, I'm also actively working on an alternative to Facebook, which will be a tool for users to partition their online social network to match their real-world social contexts, and then use those partitions to manage their 'friends' lists on the myriad other sites where people already share content (Flickr, Foursquare, Vimeo, Twitter, and so on).

I don't think anyone (by anyone I mean techies or people specifically interested in this, read: tiny minority of their user base) really cares about this. People that do won't rush to join yet another social network and give them more personal info in the hopes that they'd be better with it than Facebook.

I actually think Facebook is doing the public a service by being up front with the lack of privacy you have on the internet. Do not ever, ever assume that you can hand over your private information to a corporation operating under US privacy laws and hope that they'll treat it respectfully (by some conservative definition of respectfully).

Social networks, by their very nature are about sharing personal information, and anyone thinking otherwise should ask Facebook for a refund.

They care that suddenly they're on Microsoft docs.com, and their settings are being changed. They may not look at the deeper implications, but they know they're being jerked around and don't like it.

No, insofar as it would be so hard to get off the ground commercially. There's already a business alternative in LinkedIn, and a lot of communities (eg Metafilter or various specialist discussion forums) already have the rudiments of a network in place.

I'm rather surprised nobody has made a peer authentication thing for PHP-BB or similar, so that members of on one of the many forums running on this platform can 'visit' another website and cross-post, if you see what I mean.

for that matter I'm surprised Google Wave hasn't been polished up yet - you'd think Google would take advantage of their enormous user base and prior experience with Orkut and Buzz etc. to offer robust group communication with the requisite privacy controls by now. It's not like they don't have all the necessary components.

To murder any competitor, Facebook only has to change their privacy (or other natives) "enough" - whatever prevents enough people from leaving. While you have to create a new model from scratch, get funding, find users, build up a platinum-standard brand...Facebook has to...jiggle the privacy settings a bit? I'd suggest that you'd need a seriously different model to succeed. Not "Facebook with a few changes", but "something Facebook can't get to without breaking their model".

The network effects of having every friend and family member you have on a website is very hard to beat. Google is trying. Yes it can possibly be done, but a couple of privacy tweaks won't do it.

Have you ever been in a relationship? Once trust is gone you can never get it back. No mater how hard you try.

Once Mark Zuckerberg loses people's trust - which it seems he is doing so now, he can never regain it.

Agreed it's a huge risk, but FB users have been getting shafted for ages in terms of privacy, and have hardly blinked. Geeks and privacy-oriented people yes, but most just want to share pics, see what their friends are doing and play games. It's easier to tweak their privacy settings than move to a place where they can't as easily (or automatically) share pics, have to build up their friend network from scratch, and there aren't as many games.

I agree that I'd need a seriously different business model.

My plan so far, for social networking, is a medical/health site, probably using BuddyPress on top of WordPress. I realize that BuddyPress may not scale, nor compete with FB but work be a good first step for a minimally viable network.

That's not a bad idea, because you're focusing on a segment that FB can't really aim at because it's just too small. That way, you can fulfil your customers' needs better than FB could. The risk is that an app could leverage the FB environment to replicate what you're doing, or an existing health site could pop some Facebook Connect or other social aspect onto their offering...but no reason not to try. Good luck!

I think theres space for creating a social network for private groups of friends - rather than competing head on with facebook.

FB became big initially, because their privacy settings were strong. What is the guarantee that a new social network starts off strong on privacy settings etc, will not become yet another FB as they grow big? (reminds me of Animal Farm).

End of the day, I guess it is a business and every business just cares about their profits and keeping investors happy.

What I'm working on will have the side effect, I hope, of moving into a competing social network but with clearer privacy constraints.

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