4 ms·

Has anyone seen a product that was functional, polished, and enjoyable to use that would be capable of replacing Facebook? I haven't. Diaspora, Mastodon, Ello a

by p49k 9y ago

Has anyone seen a product that was functional, polished, and enjoyable to use that would be capable of replacing Facebook? I haven't. Diaspora, Mastodon, Ello are the only things that I can think of, and none of them come close to matching the basic functionality and the "it just works" factor of Facebook. Maybe someone should put in some resources to create a polished product and see what happens? It doesn't even have to be some idealistic p2p distributed system or anything like that, just a company who actively works to minimize the data they store and to allow users to control and manage their data effectively.

haylem 9y ago
True, I haven't seen another product "match" Facebook. But I also don't see much need for it (entirely), or at the very least for most of its features. The Facebook of ~2007 was about as good as it ever needed to be (minus the pokes). It served its purpose well. It could have used some of the UI polish it got afterwards, but no new feature addition has made any significant change to end users in my view, apart from pushing them towards more extreme sharing. It's a super cool app, and a super cool platform, with unfortunately little actual value to its end users (except if you consider advertisers and users of the tech platform the end users, not the actual Facebook users). Not that I think it's all Facebook's fault: you build something for a certain purpose, and it naturally evolves, and you adapt to what people want, or what you think they want based on some metrics or "need" for growth. And then you get... this.
- p49k 9y ago
  The biggest feature for me that no one has replicated is the ability to create events with extremely customizable privacy preferences in which you know people will get the invite, even if they’ve changed phone numbers (in other words, some level of contact redundancy).
alecco 9y ago
An even bigger problem is making critical mass. Young people are already tired of old Facebook. The problem is Facebook keeps acquiring the competitors gaining ground (WhatsApp/Instagram), and if not possible just ripping off the features. It's grown too big to be upended easily. And they are not stupid. They see the writing on the wall.
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  Don’t a decent portion of people sign up to FB once they finish high school/begin college or after they finish college (or are around that age). FB would obviously want every age signing up, but having young people sign up eventually doesn’t seem so bad either.
brylie 9y ago
The closest open-source, distributed option I know of is Friendica; https://friendi.ca/ https://friendi.ca/ Of course, there is room for improvement in the Friendica UX, but it still seems like a viable option for federated social network. The Friendica devs seem to strive for interoperability with other networks and support open standards for the social Internet.
pnutjam 9y ago
Try this one. It's the most user friendly I've seen: https://mewe.com https://mewe.com
- dhimes 9y ago
  OK- just signed up
ytjohn 9y ago
I'm planning to setup Hubzilla as a forum/wiki for my local radio group and local tech community. Hubzilla might not have everything right (I would prefer the scuttlebut/patchwork approach), but it definitely checks most boxes for me. The key one being Nomadic identity - they can export everything they've ever posted and upload it to another server. This is really crucial (not for my club, but for other groups). Hubzilla also federates with ostatus, diospara, gnusoc, frendica, mastadon, and others. Hubzilla only has a few thousand users. In a social media world, that's a rounding error. So my thought is that people should setup Hubzilla for a targeted group. Get an active community of dozens or possibly hundreds of people, and if they like the platform, encourage them to invite other people and start additional communities. Or find communities through the federation. https://project.hubzilla.org/page/hubzilla/hubzilla-project https://project.hubzilla.org/page/hubzilla/hubzilla-project https://medium.com/we-distribute/the-do-everything-system-an-in-depth-review-of-hubzilla-3-0-692204177d4e https://medium.com/we-distribute/the-do-everything-system-an...

by p49k 9y ago

haylem 9y ago

True, I haven't seen another product "match" Facebook. But I also don't see much need for it (entirely), or at the very least for most of its features. The Facebook of ~2007 was about as good as it ever needed to be (minus the pokes). It served its purpose well. It could have used some of the UI polish it got afterwards, but no new feature addition has made any significant change to end users in my view, apart from pushing them towards more extreme sharing. It's a super cool app, and a super cool platform, with unfortunately little actual value to its end users (except if you consider advertisers and users of the tech platform the end users, not the actual Facebook users). Not that I think it's all Facebook's fault: you build something for a certain purpose, and it naturally evolves, and you adapt to what people want, or what you think they want based on some metrics or "need" for growth. And then you get... this.

p49k 9y ago
The biggest feature for me that no one has replicated is the ability to create events with extremely customizable privacy preferences in which you know people will get the invite, even if they’ve changed phone numbers (in other words, some level of contact redundancy).

alecco 9y ago

An even bigger problem is making critical mass. Young people are already tired of old Facebook. The problem is Facebook keeps acquiring the competitors gaining ground (WhatsApp/Instagram), and if not possible just ripping off the features. It's grown too big to be upended easily. And they are not stupid. They see the writing on the wall.

skinnymuch 9y ago
Don’t a decent portion of people sign up to FB once they finish high school/begin college or after they finish college (or are around that age). FB would obviously want every age signing up, but having young people sign up eventually doesn’t seem so bad either.

brylie 9y ago

The closest open-source, distributed option I know of is Friendica; https://friendi.ca/ https://friendi.ca/ Of course, there is room for improvement in the Friendica UX, but it still seems like a viable option for federated social network. The Friendica devs seem to strive for interoperability with other networks and support open standards for the social Internet.

pnutjam 9y ago

Try this one. It's the most user friendly I've seen: https://mewe.com https://mewe.com

dhimes 9y ago
OK- just signed up

ytjohn 9y ago

I'm planning to setup Hubzilla as a forum/wiki for my local radio group and local tech community. Hubzilla might not have everything right (I would prefer the scuttlebut/patchwork approach), but it definitely checks most boxes for me. The key one being Nomadic identity - they can export everything they've ever posted and upload it to another server. This is really crucial (not for my club, but for other groups). Hubzilla also federates with ostatus, diospara, gnusoc, frendica, mastadon, and others. Hubzilla only has a few thousand users. In a social media world, that's a rounding error. So my thought is that people should setup Hubzilla for a targeted group. Get an active community of dozens or possibly hundreds of people, and if they like the platform, encourage them to invite other people and start additional communities. Or find communities through the federation. https://project.hubzilla.org/page/hubzilla/hubzilla-project https://project.hubzilla.org/page/hubzilla/hubzilla-project https://medium.com/we-distribute/the-do-everything-system-an-in-depth-review-of-hubzilla-3-0-692204177d4e https://medium.com/we-distribute/the-do-everything-system-an...