4 ms·

I think they are like a bank or big tobacco. Too big to fail. They have 2 billion users. Supposed someone came up with a new search engine better than google. Y

I think they are like a bank or big tobacco. Too big to fail. They have 2 billion users. Supposed someone came up with a new search engine better than google. You can go switch to that and it wouldn't be too hard. For a new social network you would need all you friends too switch too. How is grandma going to share her grand kids pics.

vidarh 8y ago
While that is to an extent a hindrance, it is also an opening. Social groups in real life are relatively contained. Facebook just mushes it all together. This is one of the few things Google+ got right, with asymmetric relationships and ease of controlling who sees what. While Google+ "failed", that's the attack angle I'd take if I wanted to go after Facebook: Look for ways to let people better limit sharing, to encourage deeper sharing. To truly get that right you need to also let people manage separate identities. Though really, I'd like to see more decentralised approaches to take over.
- samfisher83 8y ago
  I think most people she want to share a pic and tag their friends. I don't think people want something so complicated.
  - vidarh 8y ago
    It doesn't need to be that complicated. The Google+ model let you do what you suggest, but also let you assign people to one or more circles, so that you could share with specific subsets of your friends by picking a circle. E.g. "family", "people it's ok to share pics from nights out partying with", "work colleagues" etc., and you can assign people to more than one circle. It provided a decent basis for enough containment, if it wasn't for their lack of willingness to deal with pseudonyms and multiple identities. As for "most people" wanting something simple: I'd argue that most people have something far more complex today: People sign up to multitudes of sites and create different identities for e.g. dating, different forums, their regular circle of friends. People often go to great lengths to separate them. People even often have multiple accounts on the same sites. Sites like Facebook stubbornly trying to get people to tie everything to a single name that they're know to by everyone is fundamentally flawed for this reason, and it will always present a barrier, and it's something that's exploitable if someone comes up with the right model to start eating away at them at the fringes.

vidarh 8y ago

While that is to an extent a hindrance, it is also an opening. Social groups in real life are relatively contained. Facebook just mushes it all together. This is one of the few things Google+ got right, with asymmetric relationships and ease of controlling who sees what. While Google+ "failed", that's the attack angle I'd take if I wanted to go after Facebook: Look for ways to let people better limit sharing, to encourage deeper sharing. To truly get that right you need to also let people manage separate identities. Though really, I'd like to see more decentralised approaches to take over.

samfisher83 8y ago
I think most people she want to share a pic and tag their friends. I don't think people want something so complicated.
- vidarh 8y ago
  It doesn't need to be that complicated. The Google+ model let you do what you suggest, but also let you assign people to one or more circles, so that you could share with specific subsets of your friends by picking a circle. E.g. "family", "people it's ok to share pics from nights out partying with", "work colleagues" etc., and you can assign people to more than one circle. It provided a decent basis for enough containment, if it wasn't for their lack of willingness to deal with pseudonyms and multiple identities. As for "most people" wanting something simple: I'd argue that most people have something far more complex today: People sign up to multitudes of sites and create different identities for e.g. dating, different forums, their regular circle of friends. People often go to great lengths to separate them. People even often have multiple accounts on the same sites. Sites like Facebook stubbornly trying to get people to tie everything to a single name that they're know to by everyone is fundamentally flawed for this reason, and it will always present a barrier, and it's something that's exploitable if someone comes up with the right model to start eating away at them at the fringes.