Ask HN: Do you know any company likely to beat Facebook?

Facebook is probably one of the single most hated companies in tech at the moment and it seems unlikely that is going to change anytime soon. I can't even remember the last time I heard someone mention that they actively enjoyed the product.

They are looking down the barrel at multiple major legal issues in the coming years and they are built entirely on a model that is fundamentally about selling personal data to advertisers without any other significant sources of income.

The main thing that is slowing down their decline (other than a lack of viable alternatives) is that they are basically able to hold peoples real life friendships / relationships hostage at the moment. Initiatives like https://datatransferproject.dev/ (of which FB is a member) have the potential to change that.

I could see a social network protocol emerging and that offered a number of different clients of which Facebook could be one.

Unfortunately, the closest thing we ever came to this was ActivityPub which well, let's say is a bit lacking both in adoption but also in it's vision but I think it's entirely possible that something like that could actually find some traction in the next few years.

1 Facebook is not a technology company. Facebook is a media (advertising) company.

2 Facebook, like most social media, is primarily dependent upon a business model formulated between 1998-2003. The business model is convince users to volunteer content to a central server, limit liability, and serve advertisements.

If you want to compete against Facebook and beat them at their own game you have to do a couple of things:

1 Take their market share

2 Make money

You will not win that game with a superior technology. You will win that game with a new and more durable business model, but sometimes new business models require new technology. Either way you have to be incredibly innovative and persistent, because most people absolutely hate original ideas.

Facebook isn't any single thing, some people use it for only Messenger, some for family photo Sharing, some for private status updates, and others as general news feed or public status. Then you have the other company customer chat/landing pages and marketplace.

If Facebook ever goes away it will be death by a thousand cuts, rather than some 800 lbs gorilla storming through and eating Facebook's lunch. It is too large.

1. They own ALL of Friendster's patents. they are all encompassing regarding social networking. No way any little guy can defend themselves.

2. someone said another obvious thing: ppl use different aspects of FB and not all.

3. after mons/yrs of teaching your grandma to use FB, no way anyone will move away and reteach.

4. FB offers no complete like Goog's Take Out scenario to easily reimport into another social network.

5. too many catfish. I suspect only 25% are real people. rest are entities, multi-accts.

6. too many simple thinking ppl are entrenched and won't change. comfort zone barrier too high to break.

7. governments worldwide now use them to control their people where in some coountries, every individual getting a cellphone must have a FB acct.

8. some countries like India use FB as their "internet." They don't know www exists.

9. FB can only be brought down by itself and they are already doing a fine job of it. There is a cycle for companies like this and although they now have a very long tail, there is an end to that tail. Next generation will have to make that change over so at a minimum, it will take a generation to make that fall.

10. FB are already losing the next gen, so opportunities abound except for the patent fights that will happen.

Bottomline is FB a road most will need to travel on for now, but I suspect like hwys, toll roads can lead a path out for some while the rifrafts will stay on the sinking boat.

"We didn't see it coming" is a famous phrase :D.

Maybe not a tech competitor but gradually when people start to realise the privacy violations and wake up from the bubble, new generations etc will break FB hegemony.

My social circle (consisting mostly of people in their upper 20s to early 40s) has largely abandoned FB in favor of Instagram. My understanding is the younger age brackets are also falling off Instagram in favor of things like Snap and TikTok? (correct me if wrong).

Seems like the major users of the original FB product are now older and/or less tech-saavy people who were late to catch the social networking boat? Again, correct me if I'm wrong.

My hope is that this concept will evolve into a more of an interoperating protocol of self-hosted entities, like RSS or IRC

I don't think another closed-garden-we-control-your-data website is going to replace Facebook, ever.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-st...

I doubt Facebook will be allowed to buy any more social networks like Instagram.