Ask HN: How would you steal market share from Facebook? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How would you steal market share from Facebook?

3 pointsrblion3 comments

Just curious. There is no better place to ask online than here (unless I'm missing something). I am sure there are at least a few seasoned entrepreneurs here who have succeeded by winning over users from another behemoth in another space.

Challenging Facebook seems like an impossible task because Facebook is hitting critical mass globally and showing no sign of slowing down. Not to mention, the push of the movie and the PR campaign. I am guessing only 1% to 10% would even consider leaving. Then again, Mac only has 10% market share anyways. I just want to try anyways, what do I have to lose?

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I also think that private social networks have a bright future, especially networks targeted to close friends, family, basically smaller groups (instead of FB approach where the notion of "friend" == anyone you meet in a bar). I would definitely switch to such a network, the thing is it will take a few years before I'm able to convince my friends. I think a YC combinator company is working on something like that, I can't remember which one. Some features I would love is such a site:

* No info is available to the outside world, not even the names, not even some kind of id. * No apps, only "core" apps useful to connecting with friends (photos, videos, chat, event planner, etc). * Simple, clean. * Ability to download my data and back it up locally * Ability to delete any photo with me in it

Anyhow, those are not new ideas, but still in my mind it's obvious that such a site will eventually succeed. At some point, I believe many people will trust another source for their personal info.

Personalized private social networks might possibly have a future. See Diaspora.

It would seem that in order to disrupt a market leader, you concentrate on what they're not excelling at or what feature users want but they don't have, and you go for that.

What's Facebook bad at? What do Facebook users want that Facebook doesn't offer?

I doubt one can totally steal Facebook's social market share in a short amount of time, but certain add-ons to Facebook are less than sufficient. Facebook Q&A is an example; see Quora. In my humble opinion, Facebook Classifieds is another.

nice try google!

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