4 ms·

Serious question: How would such a platform be significantly better than email? I'm genuinely curious as to what features of social networks people think can't

Serious question: How would such a platform be significantly better than email? I'm genuinely curious as to what features of social networks people think can't be fulfilled by email. The only issue I have with email is convincing other people to use it for sharing their life, rather than/as well as on Facebook, but I would have exactly the same problem with a brand new social network.

philliphaydon 8y ago
Just that you can post something and then your circle of friends / family can view your post. At their own leisure. You don't have to write an email and send it to people and such, and try figure out which friends want to see it and which don't. IMO 'Facebook' should be a /dumb/ social network, dumb in the sense that it's features are basic, once built it doesn't need a billion features added to it.
- clusmore 8y ago
  What if it was easy to manage mailing lists? So my email provider allowed my friends to subscribe to my mailing list if they want to hear from me, and unsubscribe when they don't. The good thing about email is: * Everybody has it, * It's decentralized, we don't need to all agree on one company, * There's a lot of clients for reading it already, and everybody can choose their favourite, * If I own my domain, I can change providers transparently, * etc.
  - philliphaydon 8y ago
    I can't imagine any of that working for my inlaws and such. But thinking about this, what if (assuming this was an open source social network) there was a data source hook. For example: When I create my account, I could say "Get my data from X, and send my data to Y". Where I can expose an API on... AWS Api Gateway. Then when you visit my feed/wall, it pulls the data from that source. The only thing the social network stores is the API, and any Auth criteria. Then (Say I owned "Dumb Social Network") I don't own your data, you do, I just provide a place to display it. If you don't want to use your own source for data then I can store it for you, but I may limit what I store to protect myself as a company (like GDPR)
    - clusmore 8y ago
      I agree my family couldn't handle it currently, but I think that's a UX problem rather thana protocol problem. I've often fantasized about creating a social network that just creates an inbox for each user and then sends emails for each post, and then later "opening it up" by revealing it's really just email.
    - SilverbackCoder 8y ago
      This project will likely be of interest to you - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_(web_decentralization_project) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_(web_decentralization_pr...
  - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
    > The good thing about email is: * Everybody has it, * This is not necessarily the case. For a considerable portion of humanity getting online these days, social networks are the internet for them and they might not use email at all. Even in places where email is a thing, many young people these days don’t have email unless and until they go to university.

philliphaydon 8y ago

Just that you can post something and then your circle of friends / family can view your post. At their own leisure. You don't have to write an email and send it to people and such, and try figure out which friends want to see it and which don't. IMO 'Facebook' should be a /dumb/ social network, dumb in the sense that it's features are basic, once built it doesn't need a billion features added to it.

clusmore 8y ago
What if it was easy to manage mailing lists? So my email provider allowed my friends to subscribe to my mailing list if they want to hear from me, and unsubscribe when they don't. The good thing about email is: * Everybody has it, * It's decentralized, we don't need to all agree on one company, * There's a lot of clients for reading it already, and everybody can choose their favourite, * If I own my domain, I can change providers transparently, * etc.
- philliphaydon 8y ago
  I can't imagine any of that working for my inlaws and such. But thinking about this, what if (assuming this was an open source social network) there was a data source hook. For example: When I create my account, I could say "Get my data from X, and send my data to Y". Where I can expose an API on... AWS Api Gateway. Then when you visit my feed/wall, it pulls the data from that source. The only thing the social network stores is the API, and any Auth criteria. Then (Say I owned "Dumb Social Network") I don't own your data, you do, I just provide a place to display it. If you don't want to use your own source for data then I can store it for you, but I may limit what I store to protect myself as a company (like GDPR)
  - clusmore 8y ago
    I agree my family couldn't handle it currently, but I think that's a UX problem rather thana protocol problem. I've often fantasized about creating a social network that just creates an inbox for each user and then sends emails for each post, and then later "opening it up" by revealing it's really just email.
  - SilverbackCoder 8y ago
    This project will likely be of interest to you - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_(web_decentralization_project) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_(web_decentralization_pr...
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  > The good thing about email is: * Everybody has it, * This is not necessarily the case. For a considerable portion of humanity getting online these days, social networks are the internet for them and they might not use email at all. Even in places where email is a thing, many young people these days don’t have email unless and until they go to university.