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Previously someone mentioned the idea of a $1/mo. social network. I think if someone were to make facebook in it's first ~2 years and keep it very basic it we
by danielecook 7y ago
Previously someone mentioned the idea of a $1/mo. social network.
I think if someone were to make facebook in it's first ~2 years and keep it very basic it we would be good to go. The only features you need are: a profile picture, a wall, chat, and events.
In other words - a photo of yourself, a way of publicly messaging, a way of privately messaging, and a way to coordinate social events.
What else do you need for a 'social network?'
I would pay $1/mo for that. The simpler the better.
- rdiddly 7y agoYeah, considering it's basically just a glorified CRUD app!
- CodeCube 7y agoAnyone remember app.net?
- WA9ACE 7y agoYeah I feel like it's a very similar idea, however WhatsApp did get it's start for $1 a year after the first year iirc?
- classichasclass 7y agoI sure do. I miss it. I think it was doomed the moment it went freemium instead of strictly pay.
- timdavila 7y agoI would say you also need Groups. But I love the idea.
- danfang 7y agoI've been hacking at a basic version of ad-free, subscription based group messaging, coordination, event planning, etc - check it out! https://get.thread-app.com/ https://get.thread-app.com/
- Corrado 7y agoI really liked the idea of Google+ Circles when they first came out. It allowed me to organize people I interacted with into a focused group; work, Linux, TF2, etc. If I wanted to talk about AWS, I could switch my brain into that mode and just post things about a single topic. It was really nice.
- Deadsunrise 7y agokeybase?
- s_dev 7y ago>Previously someone mentioned the idea of a $1/mo. social network. Didn't WhatsApp used to be $1 a year before Facebook bought them and it was a very successful pricing model? $1 a year for a website is very feasible for both parties assuming it's some Western society.
- davchana 7y agoThey used to say that at Signup, first year free, then again waive $1 every year in India.
- tehsauce 7y agoFacebook pulls an average revenue of $70/year on each American user, so $1/mo is leaving a lot of money on the table by their standard
- tw04 7y agoI don't think anyone expects this other option to be as profitable as facebook. If you actually managed to create something 1/7th the size/profitability of facebook and considered it a failure I guess I'd suggest you might legitimately suffer from visions of grandeur.
- johnnycab 7y ago>Didn't WhatsApp used to be $1 a year before Facebook bought them and it was a very successful pricing model? I was hounded and paid £0.69 to renew the 'subscription' ─ which was subsequently offered for free to everyone, shortly thereafter. I felt betrayed, but I would happily pay the same amount today (or slightly more), if only to preserve some shred of privacy.
- fossuser 7y agoI wish there was a text only social network - I think it would reduce the influence of memes. HN is kind of like that, though I guess you really just need a tightly curated community with a good culture that wants to be good (since reddit comments still are pretty low quality in most cases). Text only twitter would be interesting since you can curate your own slice of the community pretty easily, as a bonus it'd be fast.
- chillacy 7y agoLow effort ascii art was a mainstay on digg back in the day, I think moderation is more key.
- zokier 7y agoSurely making text only instance (or network) of Mastodon wouldn't huge endeavor. Attracting people could be bigger challenge
- yalogin 7y agoHow will that be different from a messages or WhatsApp group?
- esmi 7y agoSMS?
- otalp 7y agoYou can curate your reddit feed to include only text posts and links
- _chompsky 7y agosomeone is attempting to build a curated internet for each other, check this out: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/get-kelvin https://www.producthunt.com/posts/get-kelvin
- cpeterso 7y agoThe challenge is getting a critical mass of users to encourage people beyond just early adopters. Perhaps the new service could seed new users' accounts by offering to import their content/contacts/etc from their other social media accounts.
- generalpass 7y agoOr, just accept that it takes a long time to build a successful business.
- Keyframe 7y agoGroups, images / albums, tagging, friends.
- cududa 7y agoMy friends and I are currently building a donation platform for summer camp counselor alumni, church groups, etc. Basically small monthly reoccurring donations ($3-$20). We’ve been playing with the idea of having a social network aspect where to join you pick an organization to donate to and that’s your subscription for using the social network at large
- warkdarrior 7y ago$20/month?!? Forever?!?
- lucasmullens 7y agoTo charity. That's $240 to charity a year. Is that so much to sacrifice?
- mburst 7y agoDepending on where you find the data, a lot of Americans live paycheck to paycheck [1]. An extra $240 a year will certainly help a lot of people out there, not just in America. That's why free services like Google and Facebook continue to win out. I really like what some companies in the gaming sector have achieved where the richer subsidize the poorer via buying hats and other cosmetics to keep the game free or lower priced. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck...
- cududa 7y agoWhere did I say $240/ year is the baseline
- MustacheHaver 7y agoI could use any $240 spare you have if you would be so kind.
- cududa 7y ago
- danfang 7y agoI've been working on exactly this! https://get.thread-app.com/ https://get.thread-app.com/ It's a side project of mine at the moment, so it's quite basic, but I'd love it if you checked it out.
- generalpass 7y agoSeems to require a phone number? Won't be for me...
- ng-user 7y ago> What else do you need for a 'social network?' Mass adoption. The user base is the valuable aspect, everything else can be easily recreated.
- danielecook 7y agoBesides the advantage of an already established network - what are facebooks other advantages? I suppose money is the biggest. are there others?
- hutzlibu 7y agoSophisticated technology. I don't really use or like FB, but from what I have seen: stable and fast DB, intuitive, clean UI, lots of features. No hazzle to join. But biggest is network effect.
- eclipxe 7y ago>Besides the advantage of an already established network - what are facebooks other advantages? Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
- thrax 7y agoYou get adoption by datamining and autoenrollment so that when people do finally sign in/up.. they already have a network.
- cameronbrown 7y agoNot creepy at all..?
- rb808 7y agoWhy would you use that instead of FB though? FB is free and most people are on it already.
- justaguyhere 7y agoI wish Twitter did this. I still think in person meetings are the best, followed by phone calls and emails (when in person socializing isn't possible). I really don't miss a site like Facebook. But Twitter's use case is different - it is nice to have a place to check for quick updates from federal governments to our local post office and everyone in between, including thought leaders and such.
- peterwwillis 7y agoI would pay $1 to remove each feature that annoyed me. It may cost me $10, but my quality of life would significantly increase, while not being a total pariah.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nmfert 7y agofff
- jahnu 7y agoEvents are the thing that keep me and my peers using it.
- amwelles 7y agoI’ve been using https://gath.io https://gath.io to organize events. All you need is an email to create an event, and as far as I can tell, you can give it a fake email. It’s only used to send you the edit link (also displayed when you create the event). Same thing to RSVP, although it doesn’t share the link to remove yourself except by email, to my knowledge. They’ve just introduced groups, so setting up events for a group of friends is really easy. Bonus is that it’s open source and the person who maintains it has been really responsive to requests.
- Marsymars 7y agoOh man, this looks like exactly what I want. Will be trying this for next event I plan.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- navigatr 7y agoI would pay $1/mo for a chronological feed of my friends' updates and posts. I found Twitter and Facebook to be frustratingly unusable after they removed their chronological feeds in favor of feeds that prioritize ads and engagement.
- danielecook 7y agoYes!
- retsibsi 7y agoIsn't Twitter properly chronological with 'Latest Tweets' turned on? For a while that setting would frequently reset to the non-chronological default, but at the moment it seems to be sticky. (I mostly use Twitter in a web browser, but I think the Android app is working the same way.)
- noyesno 7y agoWe had it and it was beautiful: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriendFeed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriendFeed
- MustacheHaver 7y agoI could help you, but it is hard to believe a 15 days old account would stick to a deal, so bye, bye.
- headmelted 7y agoI was wondering why it needed to be such a jarring price. $13 per month? Really? What’s the bandwidth cost on text and a few images in S3? Critical mass is obviously the barrier to building something like this but I’m inclined to agree that charging $1/month and $10 a year should be able to turn a healthy profit. I do kind of wonder if the public is even aware of the problem, though. Anyone I’ve spoken to outside the industry seems to genuinely believe that folks with different opinions to them are stupid (rather than sorted into a different branch of Facebook/Google’s great graph of knowledge for their daily programming).
- kaplun 7y agoWhat costs more is not hardware but the salaries of employees.
- generalpass 7y agoThis, though there is a very real problem of a mass-adopted online payment method where that $1 transaction is a net profit.
- elmar 7y ago> Previously someone mentioned the idea of a $1/mo. social network. Dalton Caldwell currently chief of admissions at YC, tried exactly this at App.net a couple of years ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Caldwell https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Caldwell
- lcnmrn 7y agoWell, https://dubfi.com/ https://dubfi.com/ is there already and it's free. And yes, it's coded by me.
- mlaretallack 7y agoThe problem I always have is "all my friends". I joined MSN messenger in the 2003(ish) only because that was the only away to join my friends. Facebook came next, and what's app moved them over to that. When it comes to " social media", the clue is in the name. What is the solution? A system that using a unique ID I can contact anyone else in the world, the two methods are voice or message. :)
- amiantos 7y agoAll the ideas regarding $1-2/mo social networks seem to forget the enormous cost of moderating content on these social networks. Let's say your social network is $3/mo and people can upload unlimited photos. How long does it take for child porn to start getting shared on your service? Probably not long. That's not even getting into users harassing other users, and stuff like that. Volunteer moderators do the work on reddit for free because they get to feel ownership of their subreddits (until they try to delete them if they're popular, then the admins step in), but on a "normal" social network no one is going to moderate the content for free, especially not the horrible stuff people will post.