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> I wonder how long that will last until people start moving away from the platform. I think we'll need a solid alternative first. What would people want in th

> I wonder how long that will last until people start moving away from the platform. I think we'll need a solid alternative first. What would people want in the "next Facebook" anyway? Easy contact with every old classmate, friend, and family member? A place for their photos? An easy way to invite anyone to an event? I would wait for that day, but personally my use of FB has majorly changed over the past 10 years on it and now I get more utility out of smaller, more focused services. I think Facebook is trying to do the Google thing and have a bunch of discrete services under their umbrella, though they don't seem to have a clue how to do that. At least they're smart enough to buy up products that their alienated users will start running to.

notifier2050 10y ago
I hope they won't screw WhatsApp up, since it's pretty minimalistic and nice app.
- mixedCase 10y ago
  They have enabled E2E encryption, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they won't screw it up like they have everything else.
- vonuebelgarten 10y ago
  They are the dominant player in this market, I simply can't understand why they didn't crewed it already. I can only speculate: it's because WhatsApp is giving them an always-updated social graph of a billion people right now (including inferred information on people who, like me, didn't install the application but whose numbers are in the contacts books of people who did it) and crossing this information with FB data brings more revenue than anything they can do with WhatsApp itself.
rpgmaker 10y ago
> I think Facebook is trying to do the Google thing and have a bunch of discrete services under their umbrella, though they don't seem to have a clue how to do that. I think they're doing fine, by their metric. People are not going to abandon their services anytime soon. Me and other HN users may complain but the rest of the world doesn't care.
soylentcola 10y ago
The problem isn't that we're missing a "next Facebook". There have been several from both large companies and smaller startups that offer a better Facebook than Facebook in terms of UI, features, etc. The features are the easy part. The thing that prevents adoption of the next Facebook is that everyone is already on Facebook. Unlike email, you can't switch your provider or roll your own and still communicate with everyone who's still using AOL or Yahoo or whatever provider you may have used in the past. If you want to communicate with Facebook users, you have to use Facebook. And for a large number of people, Facebook was the one that got them to sign up first. Techies and early adopters will sign up and try out a new service at the drop of a hat but your 60 year old mom or your local barber or your kid's piano teacher didn't bother with MySpace or Friendster. They only even got into social networking after years of hearing about Facebook and they are unlikely to switch to anything else and learn a new setup. Even when Facebook changes their UI slightly, these folks are the ones who flip out and complain loudly. They're the people you'd never convince to try out a Google+ or a Diaspora. It's as if everyone who was on AOL back in the 90's could only switch to a different email and ISP if every one of their contacts switched over as well. Since that won't happen any time soon, Facebook has staying power. I know the only reason I still check it more than once a month is that it seems to be the only common platform everyone I know is on to some degree. I'm throwing a party? Can't send a Google group calendar invite because not everyone uses Gmail/Gcal. I'm collaborating on a project for an upcoming burn-type festival? Can't do a group Hangout because not everyone in my camp uses Gmail/Hangouts. So I have to log into Facebook daily while these things are being planned and worked on because that's the only place I can see updates and follow along with progress. It's annoying to use and I won't install Facebook/Messenger/Memories/etc on my phone so I now I have to deal with increasingly incompatible third-party apps like Metal and Tinfoil or the increasingly broken mobile web version when I'm not at the computer.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  And a lot if techies are actively recommending the most useless alternative (twitter: everyone shouting to everyone, only very basic features etc) while actively hating the only network that had a chance, google+. And the reason for the hate: mostly it seems because google in their infinite I-dont-know-what decided to 1. push the hated (but understandable for technicians even at my level) common identity solution under the same name as the new social network 2. destroy reader at the same time and for apparently no good reason. (Oh, and for those who missed it they since came back with support for using pseudonyms.) Edit: I hope for something better, for google to create something that connects to g+ and can be self hosted, I hope for them to hold out a hand and make Facebook look bad, I hope for somethong like matrix or hubzilla or something to become common. Oh, and I already use sandstorm.io
Brandanna 10y ago
I want the next Facebook to run on top of colony.io. Matrix would be a close second.

notifier2050 10y ago

I hope they won't screw WhatsApp up, since it's pretty minimalistic and nice app.

mixedCase 10y ago
They have enabled E2E encryption, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they won't screw it up like they have everything else.
vonuebelgarten 10y ago
They are the dominant player in this market, I simply can't understand why they didn't crewed it already. I can only speculate: it's because WhatsApp is giving them an always-updated social graph of a billion people right now (including inferred information on people who, like me, didn't install the application but whose numbers are in the contacts books of people who did it) and crossing this information with FB data brings more revenue than anything they can do with WhatsApp itself.

rpgmaker 10y ago

> I think Facebook is trying to do the Google thing and have a bunch of discrete services under their umbrella, though they don't seem to have a clue how to do that. I think they're doing fine, by their metric. People are not going to abandon their services anytime soon. Me and other HN users may complain but the rest of the world doesn't care.

soylentcola 10y ago

The problem isn't that we're missing a "next Facebook". There have been several from both large companies and smaller startups that offer a better Facebook than Facebook in terms of UI, features, etc. The features are the easy part. The thing that prevents adoption of the next Facebook is that everyone is already on Facebook. Unlike email, you can't switch your provider or roll your own and still communicate with everyone who's still using AOL or Yahoo or whatever provider you may have used in the past. If you want to communicate with Facebook users, you have to use Facebook. And for a large number of people, Facebook was the one that got them to sign up first. Techies and early adopters will sign up and try out a new service at the drop of a hat but your 60 year old mom or your local barber or your kid's piano teacher didn't bother with MySpace or Friendster. They only even got into social networking after years of hearing about Facebook and they are unlikely to switch to anything else and learn a new setup. Even when Facebook changes their UI slightly, these folks are the ones who flip out and complain loudly. They're the people you'd never convince to try out a Google+ or a Diaspora. It's as if everyone who was on AOL back in the 90's could only switch to a different email and ISP if every one of their contacts switched over as well. Since that won't happen any time soon, Facebook has staying power. I know the only reason I still check it more than once a month is that it seems to be the only common platform everyone I know is on to some degree. I'm throwing a party? Can't send a Google group calendar invite because not everyone uses Gmail/Gcal. I'm collaborating on a project for an upcoming burn-type festival? Can't do a group Hangout because not everyone in my camp uses Gmail/Hangouts. So I have to log into Facebook daily while these things are being planned and worked on because that's the only place I can see updates and follow along with progress. It's annoying to use and I won't install Facebook/Messenger/Memories/etc on my phone so I now I have to deal with increasingly incompatible third-party apps like Metal and Tinfoil or the increasingly broken mobile web version when I'm not at the computer.

reitanqild 10y ago
And a lot if techies are actively recommending the most useless alternative (twitter: everyone shouting to everyone, only very basic features etc) while actively hating the only network that had a chance, google+. And the reason for the hate: mostly it seems because google in their infinite I-dont-know-what decided to 1. push the hated (but understandable for technicians even at my level) common identity solution under the same name as the new social network 2. destroy reader at the same time and for apparently no good reason. (Oh, and for those who missed it they since came back with support for using pseudonyms.) Edit: I hope for something better, for google to create something that connects to g+ and can be self hosted, I hope for them to hold out a hand and make Facebook look bad, I hope for somethong like matrix or hubzilla or something to become common. Oh, and I already use sandstorm.io

Brandanna 10y ago

I want the next Facebook to run on top of colony.io. Matrix would be a close second.