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If anyone reading this undertakes this challenge, it would be a mistake for you to focus on privacy despite the recent headlines. The problem is that privacy,

If anyone reading this undertakes this challenge, it would be a mistake for you to focus on privacy despite the recent headlines. The problem is that privacy, something that few people care about (as evidenced by the lack of impact all of this has had on Facebook usage), is not a selling point. People have something that serves their needs for social networking purposes, and that something is Facebook. The only way to beat them is if you offer features that help serve their social networking needs better than Facebook and in a way that is so compelling that it would be worth it for an average user to make the switch. Most people don't buy a $100K+ Tesla to save on gas or save the planet. People buy them because they are amazing cars. Similarly, people won't switch social networks because you offer better privacy. They'll switch only if you make an amazing social network.

herbst 9y ago
Also people are already switching, Facebook degraded itself to a event calender and a lot of social activity wandered off to more closed environments like chat groups which get popular again due to media enabled chats (telegram, Wechat or also Slack and Discord) IMO trying to replace Facebook is the wrong direction. Seems most people totally forgot that we actually should not care what our ex girlfriends neighbour is eating today and can't imagine a world without a central social network. IMO we already have more than enough badly done MySpace clones. It's time we put our egos aside and move on
IshKebab 9y ago
Agreed. But at this point there are some relatively easy things to compete with Facebook on - have less advertising, and less crap content (shared things, memories, mentions etc.) Basically recreate the Facebook experience from around 2008-2010. Probably still not enough, and people would definitely doubt your motivation ("they're going to sell out like Facebook anyway...").
mk89 9y ago
Agreed. Otherwise there's plenty of alternatives, like diaspora. Supercool etc, however quite unlikely to replace Facebook any time soon...

herbst 9y ago

Also people are already switching, Facebook degraded itself to a event calender and a lot of social activity wandered off to more closed environments like chat groups which get popular again due to media enabled chats (telegram, Wechat or also Slack and Discord) IMO trying to replace Facebook is the wrong direction. Seems most people totally forgot that we actually should not care what our ex girlfriends neighbour is eating today and can't imagine a world without a central social network. IMO we already have more than enough badly done MySpace clones. It's time we put our egos aside and move on

IshKebab 9y ago

Agreed. But at this point there are some relatively easy things to compete with Facebook on - have less advertising, and less crap content (shared things, memories, mentions etc.) Basically recreate the Facebook experience from around 2008-2010. Probably still not enough, and people would definitely doubt your motivation ("they're going to sell out like Facebook anyway...").

mk89 9y ago

Agreed. Otherwise there's plenty of alternatives, like diaspora. Supercool etc, however quite unlikely to replace Facebook any time soon...