I think if someone were to make facebook in it's first ~2 years and keep it very basic it we would be good to go. The only features you need are: a profile picture, a wall, chat, and events.
In other words - a photo of yourself, a way of publicly messaging, a way of privately messaging, and a way to coordinate social events.
What else do you need for a 'social network?'
I would pay $1/mo for that. The simpler the better.
Text only twitter would be interesting since you can curate your own slice of the community pretty easily, as a bonus it'd be fast.
I found Twitter and Facebook to be frustratingly unusable after they removed their chronological feeds in favor of feeds that prioritize ads and engagement.
Critical mass is obviously the barrier to building something like this but I’m inclined to agree that charging $1/month and $10 a year should be able to turn a healthy profit.
I do kind of wonder if the public is even aware of the problem, though. Anyone I’ve spoken to outside the industry seems to genuinely believe that folks with different opinions to them are stupid (rather than sorted into a different branch of Facebook/Google’s great graph of knowledge for their daily programming).
Mass adoption. The user base is the valuable aspect, everything else can be easily recreated.
I suppose money is the biggest. are there others?
But biggest is network effect.
Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
Didn't WhatsApp used to be $1 a year before Facebook bought them and it was a very successful pricing model?
$1 a year for a website is very feasible for both parties assuming it's some Western society.
I was hounded and paid £0.69 to renew the 'subscription' ─ which was subsequently offered for free to everyone, shortly thereafter. I felt betrayed, but I would happily pay the same amount today (or slightly more), if only to preserve some shred of privacy.
But Twitter's use case is different - it is nice to have a place to check for quick updates from federal governments to our local post office and everyone in between, including thought leaders and such.
What is the solution?
A system that using a unique ID I can contact anyone else in the world, the two methods are voice or message. :)
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck...
Dalton Caldwell currently chief of admissions at YC, tried exactly this at App.net a couple of years ago.
It's a side project of mine at the moment, so it's quite basic, but I'd love it if you checked it out.