Nobody Goes to Facebook Anymore. It’s Too Crowded.
uncrunched.com
uncrunched.com
I know it sounds like I'm a hater but, read between the lines of this article.
Also, this is an edge case, most people don't have the number of "unknown friends" Michael Arrington has. It takes me less than 5 minutes to go over my friends and delete the ones I don't know.
I'll never understand fluff pieces like this that hit on the argument 'we need less "friends" so we can share more with them'.. failing to realize that maybe a lot of people enjoy passively keeping in touch with people from high school / college that they may have absolutely no contact with otherwise.
I don't WANT to have to ask to subscribe to someone. I don't WANT to have to give approval to everyone who wants to watch my stuff. I don't WANT to see every post from everyone who thinks my art and writing is cool. I want to broadcast, not narrowcast. And when I go see what people are up to, I want to see the tiny number of people I'm I interested in, not everyone who thinks I'm cool.
I just tried Path today. My reaction? Pretty UI but I need another place to build a wholly-private friends network like I need a hole in my head. If any of these social networks becomes popular, people will be complaining about the EXACT SAME PROBLEM because these networks are designed in such a way that these problems are INEVITABLE.
Asymmetric follow relationships rock.
Despite this I still use it a lot, but I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I don't want to be completely isolated from the community (a lot of socializing among my 'friends' actually does take place on facebook.)I think this is also the reason that so many people use facebook, you're connected with what's 'hip' even if you don't give a damn about it. Knowing what's 'in' makes it much easier to actually have meaningful conversations, it's a sort of appetizer, and that's why even if facebook gets even more crowded, people will still visit it.
Facebook is already starting to lose the very same people it attracted when it was made.
I love Skype because it is all about one-to-one or one-to-few. I love email because it is long-form, thoughtful and easier for my busy friends. I love Twitter & HN because I am always learning something. I love Path because I have rebuilt my real social network and will not accept people I do not care about.
I hated Facebook.
You missed the point. You use all those other services (aside from Path most likely) anyway. I just use them more and more-deeply.
It is what I am now going to be calling "the web of people"
I have 'Close Friends' that I care a lot about, then I have classmates, contacts, work friends, etc. In that aspect, a bigger social network like Facebook (or Google+) is much better than a smaller more restrictive one.
I think you can draw your own conclusions.
They all have fairly small friend lists comprised of people they actually see in real life. Plus Instagram has that slight "exclusiveness" to it because it is iOS only.
I think everyone in the geek community can sense that Facebook is beginning its (probably very long, slow) descent, but I don't know exactly why I don't use it much anymore. It's just not fun or worth my time like it used to be.
Someone who's just jumped on Path (but also uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) said to me that they were hoping to use Path simply with their husband only. Made me wonder about social network opportunities based around very specific relationships.
Is Just.me cutting that back further? A completely private way to document your life? Not sure how that would have viral advantages.
Interestingly, the solo founder and ceo Keith Teare is credited on his Crunchbase page with being a co-founder of TechCrunch
From what I’ve gathered so far, the company is building a ‘new type of social network’ that lives on your smartphone and the cloud and can be accessed from your desktop browser, rather than the other way around (e.g. what Facebook does). Basically, it sounds like just.me wants to turn your phone into the post-PC centerpiece of your social graph, and not just a tool to gain access to it.
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http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/29/stealth-social-mobile-start...
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/29/fund-me-mobile-social-netwo...