They get more valuable the more people are on it. Imagine a platform with 100 people on it. Nobody's going to put effort into putting content on that.
Now look at something like X, Youtube, TikTok. It's a storm of content, because that's where the eyeballs are.
I care about a social networking site because my social network is on it, not because some third party goes through effort to post content. I want content from sites like hackernews because it is interesting in and of itself. I want posts of my parents’ dog because I care about my parents.
These are two totally different use cases and I don’t see what we gain from conflating them.
This is why Facebook sucks (it combines the two), while Reddit was good for a long time (of course Reddit has gone downhill in implementation, but the concept is solid).
I've taken this to mean the individuals in the group just don't really need another social platform. But I do wonder if there is a better way to get small communities like this to engage so it is more spread out.
I noticed a sustained usage from very few people (perhaps 10-20 users), even after a year.
So clearly there's some value other than the social aspect of the site. Not sure what to make of it though.
I said all the non-personal accounts. Accounts using it as a platform. Celebrity brands, business accounts, influencer, anything that's one directional. Maybe technically they are "people" but they're using it in a one directional way
What I meant by "platform" is that it's a meeting place for many people and it only has value because there's a lot of people already there.
Why not? Most people just want to show stuff to their friends, they don't care about being influencers and so on.
Since most simple "just for friends"-quality platforms aren't thriving, we can assume this assumption is wrong.
There is just no reason to go onto an app for it
The fact that people both use social media and have off-platform group chats should indicate that they serve different purposes.
Do you mean that social media platforms are distinctively for exploring content outside the people you know? Leaving aside the technical side, it seems to always come down to a social spectrum of public/private. From open web to social media like FB and Twitter to private group chats to private one-to-one chats. Another spectrum seems to be the one between topic/content-focused on one side and people/social-focused on the other, and everything in between.
That depends on your definition of value. I am craving for a small easy-to-use platform for people who are maybe all interested in a certain activity, talk about it, know each other, and support each other. Hopefully, that platform would stay so small that it would not be worth it to flood it with crap content made just as an advertising vehicle, fake reviews, narcissists trying to get attention, and all that crap that comes with the size.
Also, let me question a bit your claim that eyeballs are on X, etc. - I kind of agree, but only if we are talking about people who already have an audience. If you start on Twitter now, nobody will hear you. It's like shouting into emptiness. You have to scream really loud to get attention... and not everybody wants to be a screamer.
Am I wrong? Is it still possible to build an audience by being authentic, without things like commenting not because you have something to say but because you want to get noticed? Or YouTube... is it still possible to be seen without chasing retention and all the things Mr Beast talks about?
I miss those days of small internet when you could start a blog just for fun, about something that you simply liked, and people would somehow find you without the need to stuff your content with SEO words, do social media, link-building, and god knows what else people have to do these days.
Or maybe... am I turning into a "good old days" old dude?
Self-hosting and network size are independent. What matters is how many people use the protocol.
If Alice has her own instance and she's the only one on it, she should still be able to go to any other instance and seamlessly make a post as alice@aliceserver . Then she (i.e. her server) gets notified if the people there reply to it, anyone there can follow her and have her posts from her own server show up in their feed etc.
If the protocol was popular then your self-hosted server that only five people use would be in a network with a billion people. See email.
It’s just not as popular to as many people.