The problem is the network effect IS the game. Without it, you can have a perfectly functional but essentially useless social media application. MeWe comes to mind for me. I thought it would be a perfect Facebook replacement. I thought wrong. With a user community in the mere hundreds of thousands (last I checked) virtually nobody you know is on MeWe, even though technically they have all the bells and whistles Facebook does, and they pledge not to sell your information.