Rise of the Facebook-Killers | Hacker News Reader

Rise of the Facebook-Killers

villagevoice.com

15 pointsdandrewsen10 comments

This is pretty much the stupidest thing I've ever read.

I think it's absolutely hilarious that people keep predicting the end of Facebook. In reality no one cares and everyone will keep using it.

Mark Zuckerburg has done more harm to the human race than anyone else his age?

I get the point he is trying to make and Mark is no saint but that is a ridiculous statement.

I think he meant that thanks to FB, a lot of people over the world have wasted a lot of time.

What about TV? What about Movies? What about listening to Music?

These are all wastes of time and everyone should stop doing them.

Absolutely, but it's not Zuckerberg's generation that created them.

I believe I know which Moglen talk the article is talking about (it convinced me to close my Facebook account and eventually switch to Linux from Windows).

I believe what he means is that Facebook makes it easy for you to share information on not only yourself, but on other people (photos, tags, places, relationships, etc). Not only that, but Facebook makes it "feel" like the good thing to do: sharing is encouraged, even if you give away your and your friends' privacy. I believe that's where he's coming from.

Old article. Are any of these Facebook killers still doing well? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm actually curious about the answer.

FYI this is from Feb 2012

Over the top? Sure, but the take-home message is that there's an alternative to Facebook and that is Diaspora. We should use it and invite others to as well.

You won't ever look like a moron recommending Diaspora (like you most certainly do recommending Path or Facebook).

What is it about Diaspora that makes it a facebook-killer? I am not convinced that giving people the option of controlling their own data would convince them to switch? I think suggesting something like that is pretty ignorant of facebook's appeal and growth. If the argument is "people will switch because they will realize facebook is bad for them" then facebook becomes an industry behind a long line of other industries taking advantage of people, and on the grand scale of things, is probably one of the most harmless.

Next, it seems to me for this approach critical mass, you may end up with a centralized diaspora pod, in which that user is hypothetically free to sell your data, which doesn't really fix the problem.

At the end of the day if I need a tight, controlled, social network of only people I trust without the fear of my data being sold, I will use the social networks I've already been using, namely, email, phone, and in-person communication.

IMO, Diaspora is pretty low on the list of what will bankrupt Zuckerberg. If Google can spend 100s of millions of dollars on a social network and not steal significant traction, diaspora needs a better killer feature than "you own your data." Lets face it, a large part of the facebook community (if not all of it) doesn't give a shit about their data.

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