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Comment by ibdf | Hacker News Reader

2018 will be the year of "alternative to facebook" apps that are in no way an alternative to facebook.

To be an alternative to facebook, it should at least do 50% of what facebook does, and it should be accessible to all.

Anything that takes more than 3 steps to get it running it's going to keep people out. And if you keep people out, you don't have a social network, at least not anything like facebook where your grandma and people you went to school with but never met (or pretend you never met) are.

Plus you need marketing, a business plan, and so much more than just code that puts people together on the same page.

I hope for a social network where the data belongs to the user, but unless you get the complication out of it... it will be just something cool but not worth the time.

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>it should at least do 50% of what facebook does

It's a common mistake to attribute the success of Facebook to its features (it boils down to microblogging + threaded discussions). The usefulness (i.e. product from a marketing perspective) of Facebook isn't its features, it's the people who joined it. Look at Google+, it's not that bad in terms of features. But it lacks people, therefore it's not a competing product. A competitor would be not someone who does 50% of what FB does. It would be someone who has 50% of what Facebook has.

Ahh, see, this is the second problem with Facebook alternatives- everyone misunderstands what other people use it for. For a younger demographic Facebook is not about microblogging at all. It's a (a) chat, (b) photo sharing, and (c) event/group organizer website. Everyone I know has a Facebook and uses it daily- can't remember the last time any of my closest friends posted a status.

> it boils down to microblogging + threaded discussions

I use facebook only for events, groups and chat.

Completely agree.

I am very interested in the UI/UX opportunities for training the decentralized generation how to interface with decentralized systems and manage their identities, especially across devices and contexts. This has been my biggest criticism of pretty much all of the attempts at a decentralized version of an existing mainstream web service that I have seen.

I love the decentralization community but it often feels very much like an engineer's realm, probably because it's mostly interesting from an engineering perspective. Maybe it's just who I follow, but I don't see a lot of activity in this area from user experience designers. Some collaboration could really help build a decentralized service that stands a chance of truly competing in the global space. Thus far I think it's highly unlikely the average mainstream user will convert.

very much agree.. i have been making that point (more or less) to the Dat Project community. no interest.

You can build 'a facebook' in Drupal which is more or less functionally equivalent and people have been doing that for years. But you still have the real work - building the network of users, which is where the value lies and not the software features (which are mundane in the case of fb).

What's far more compelling but challenging is open source federated social networking, which is a facebook on rocket fuel and overcomes the network effect as each provider implementing adds to a shared network. Even if it takes decades, this is going to be the inevitable model and fb will end up either joining in as a provider or do a myspace.

> What's far more compelling but challenging is open source federated social networking

OK, but that's not this. Scuttlebutt is peer-to-peer, not federated. There are no servers.

"You need ... a business plan."

I don't agree. What is the business plan of email (by which I mean SMTP, not some webmail provider)?

You're absolutely right! A protocol doesn't need a business plan.

Of course, a protocol by itself isn't very useful. You need services using it and systems implementing and supporting it, which do cost money and require some kind of resourcing model...

You don't need services when you can just use tools.

Is Morse code less useful because of the lack of viable Morse code service providers?

You're once again absolutely right! You can use tools without service providers.

You can use Morse code without any service providers whatsoever! Though using it to send messages solely to yourself might not be the best of all possible uses, it's absolutely a viable use.

Similarly, you could implement SMTP for yourself on paper. It might not be quite what was intended or maximally useful, but it's certainly a use. Some people might opine that it's far more useful with services implementing it widely and making its benefits available to many. I can't say they're being wildly unreasonable.

> by which I mean SMTP, not some webmail provider

Cheap cop-out. "some webmail provider" is what runs 99.999% of email. The people who run their own email, or run off hobby email servers, are insignificant.

You can't turn a blind eye to where the majority of users are going to be if you're implementing anything that actually needs traction in order to be successful.

No, there will always be a provider to webmail because there's demand for it. "Some webmail provider" is irrelevant, nobody is tlaking about people who run their own server here.

Federated social networks are like email: each instance is like the "webmail provider" you can pick and chose and some of them even come with their own clients and bells and whisltes.

Protocol doesn't need a business plan.

Each instance needs a business plan (or a way for the user to benefit directly). Those that don't have one either disappear or never grow past a few dozen users which is not enough on its own to push the protocol's adoption.

How is this so hard to understand?

You're confusing a protocol with a product (or in Facebook's case, hundreds of products).

billions of products is more accurate.

Products in developed countries is much more valuable than products in third world countries.

True! A protocol doesn't need a business plan!

One can always hope. But, we all know where "this is the year of..." gets us in the software industry.

Some day The Year of The Linux Desktop is gonna prove all the skeptics and doubters wrong.

The Year of The Linux Desktop is certainly coming sooner than the Year of the Windows Mobile ;P

Don't worry, I'm a dreamer too.

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