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To all the people poking fun at "thousands"... You have to start somewhere, and I'm sure you'd be tickled pink to see thousands of new users signing up for you

To all the people poking fun at "thousands"... You have to start somewhere, and I'm sure you'd be tickled pink to see thousands of new users signing up for your app...

metalliqaz 7y ago
I agree with everything you said, but I still think "thousands" is way too low for newsworthiness. Social networks need a critical mass before they are good for anything. Surely that number has to be in the millions, right?
- gfodor 7y ago
  The metric relevant for social network sustainable growth seem unlikely to be total user count. It’s probably a mixture of metrics around inter-connectivity and rate of adjacent edge growth.
- appstorelottery 7y ago
  That number is multiplied by the social cred of Wikipedia. Right?
- johannes1234321 7y ago
  The "critical" mass however doesn't refer to absolute numbers. A million users with no relation to each other don't make it work. A few thousand with a tight network relationship cn make a busy place.
- rvz 7y ago
  Well, Twitter was seen as a failure in 2009 compared to Facebook at the time. What constitutes to mass adoption is if several so-called 'influencers' try it out and if they make more money on the platform than both Twitter/Facebook and if the social network allows advertisers on there too. Then the millions of users will follow suit. Its that simple and it is has worked for Snap and it is working for TikTok. If there is no gain or incentive for the famous users or the so called 'influencers', then the 'millions of users' will stay where the famous users are.
- behringer 7y ago
  Do you think HN is in the millions of users?
Kye 7y ago
Seriously. Mastodon started at thousands. People wrote articles insisting it would never go anywhere. It's still growing with thousands of instances for every sort of community three years after the dismissive op-eds started, and it didn't have the benefit of a major profile promoting it.
- dimensi0nal 7y ago
  The largest Mastodon instance is full of content that isn't exactly allowed on traditional social media (i.e. lolicon). I don't think WT:Social will have the same competitive advantage.
  - hnuser77 7y ago
    Technically speaking, the largest Mastodon instance is full of content that isn't exactly allowed on traditional social media (i.e. far-right extremism). See https://fediverse.network/ https://fediverse.network/
    - Semiapies 7y ago
      Which is going to be an anti-selling point for a lot of people.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - viraptor 7y ago
        It depends how well the blocking features will be advertised. "Lots of extremists have converged at xxx.social. You can block them all in one go." sounds better to me than what's happening in Twitter.
        lasagnaphil 7y ago
        Agreed, federated instance is a way better solution than Twitter blocklists. In fact, I think Mastodon was designed to combat such extremists from day one, so even with the alt-right’s foray into the fediverse things will go at least better than Twitter.
class4behavior 7y ago
Both sides are in the wrong. Comparing the numbers of the first few days to Facebook suggests either ill intent or willful ignorance, while praising a new start-up as a Facebook rival without baking up that claim with some relatable rationale indicates bias or an agenda. Facebook aims to cover anyone's every need which could come up in a social interaction or how communication could occur. In other words, FB is a communication, an entertainment and a business platform. WT:Social, on the other hand, seems to be an evolution of the WikiTribune diving into the social market world, yet continuing its focus on reporting and fact-based information sharing. This involves work which isn't all too appealing to the general public.
filmgirlcw 7y ago
If I was the co-founder of one of the top websites in the world that had to pivot from my shitty news organization into what looks like a shitty version of Diaspora, I’m not so sure I’d be thrilled with “thousands.” You need network effects for social network rivals to take off. That isn’t to say there won’t be a Facebook successor (there almost certainly will be one — the big challenge for Facebook is if it has a piece of that or not), but just as Diaspora, Google+, Peach, Ello, App.net, Gab, Mastadon, and any other number of attempts at this have failed (calling Mastadon a failure is unfair, but its not Twitter and won’t ever be), so will this. Snap was a threat to Facebook’s core messaging properties (WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram), so Instagram had to blatantly copy Snap to win back momentum. Snap is still a thing, but unless it leans into the fact that it isn’t owned by Facebook (which is ultimately what hurts WA and Instagram), it isn’t ever going to catch-up, especially on a global level. TikTok has the sort of network effect Vine never had, and could be a real contender for the next generation, even with its ownership questions. Twitch and YouTube still have opportunities for growth — and there is still lots of room for innovation in the live video space. And look, maybe this will be a really nice niche community for a small group of people. I hope it is. I hope the people that signup and pay for it enjoy it. I hope Wales doesn’t get bored when it doesn’t have tons of users and make tons of money. There is a market for small community social networks. Not everything has to be the scale of Facebook — I’d argue it’s better when things aren’t that size — but let’s not pretend we’re not talking about this because it’s being positioned as something that is “taking on” the giant — when it would be more helpful - but make for a poorer headline/narrative - to say, “rich dude wants to recreate The Well for a generation of users who doesn’t know what The Well was.”
- tomaszs 7y ago
  A lots of this is true. I can only debate what networks need to have. Facebook became popular not because social effect but because it used "on behalf" emails to spam friends of users with optout error by design and because of automated scraping emails from an email account when user got lured to give login and password. Than it was new, now these things have special words to describe it.
- Zenst 7y ago
  Maybe, but then you have a different financial model being played out with it being subscritpion based and no small fee either. This changes how it can be marketed and the pyrimid approach would not supprise me in that once the subscriptions level of, they offer them referal links in which they get $1 a month for people subscribing via their link after their extended trial period of say 90 days. At least, that is what I would be looking at doing. Certainly the monthly fee is high, so what level they break even in running costs will be lower and may well be that they already break even in running and depreciation of assets -costs. May even be a small monthly profit already. We just don't know.
TomMasz 7y ago
I hear you but Facebook, for better or worse, is the social networking site everyone you know is on. It has a tremendous advantage over any upstart for that reason. Lots of geeky folks flocked to Google+ in its early days but that wasn't enough to replace Facebook. Even when they gave everyone who had a Google account of some kind a G+ profile it still wasn't enough. I will definitely check this out but it'll be back to FB when I need to know what my friends are up to.
- jay_kyburz 7y ago
  Google+ always had a weird broken interface and they just never finished it. I was one of the geeks that flocked to it, and had plenty of friends there. It didn't fail because of network effects, it failed because they stopped working on it before it was finished. It was really strange and I always assumed at the time that Facebook and Google had come to some agreement behind the scenes.
  - post_below 7y ago
    It really was strange, continues to be, the way Google wanders away from products before finishing them. I get ditching things that don't work, but G+ is a great example of something that had plenty of traction in it's early days and, as far as I can see, lost it purely because G didn't seem to care about it.
    - logjammin 7y ago
      As a big fan of their Nexus line of mobile phones, I concur. They weren't perfect, but they were solid, stock Android devices at a reasonable cost. Then they ditched them all of a sudden, and now we have premium-priced Pixels that fall well short of the competition.
    - wutbrodo 7y ago
      Can you elaborate on what you mean? From inside Google at the time, the general consensus was that they cared too much about it, at the cost of much of the rest of the company.
Fnoord 7y ago
Yes. At least Jimbo is trying. He might fail, but at least he tried. Network effect is a bitch, as others already noted.
ekianjo 7y ago
You'd think you would need a lot more than "thousands" for it to be called an actual trend worthy of an article.
AndrewKemendo 7y ago
It's at least around 300,000 as of 9PM EST based on the waiting list page I received.
asjw 7y ago
It's actually hundreds of thousands and they are paying users.
KuhlMensch 7y ago
Its not the number which makes me chuckle, its the relative importance the number is given, and the associated tone. A sensible headline would be: "Wikipedia have launched a social media site, based around sharing news"

To all the people poking fun at "thousands"... You have to start somewhere, and I'm sure you'd be tickled pink to see thousands of new users signing up for your app...

metalliqaz 7y ago

I agree with everything you said, but I still think "thousands" is way too low for newsworthiness. Social networks need a critical mass before they are good for anything. Surely that number has to be in the millions, right?

gfodor 7y ago
The metric relevant for social network sustainable growth seem unlikely to be total user count. It’s probably a mixture of metrics around inter-connectivity and rate of adjacent edge growth.
appstorelottery 7y ago
That number is multiplied by the social cred of Wikipedia. Right?
johannes1234321 7y ago
The "critical" mass however doesn't refer to absolute numbers. A million users with no relation to each other don't make it work. A few thousand with a tight network relationship cn make a busy place.
rvz 7y ago
Well, Twitter was seen as a failure in 2009 compared to Facebook at the time. What constitutes to mass adoption is if several so-called 'influencers' try it out and if they make more money on the platform than both Twitter/Facebook and if the social network allows advertisers on there too. Then the millions of users will follow suit. Its that simple and it is has worked for Snap and it is working for TikTok. If there is no gain or incentive for the famous users or the so called 'influencers', then the 'millions of users' will stay where the famous users are.
behringer 7y ago
Do you think HN is in the millions of users?

Kye 7y ago

Seriously. Mastodon started at thousands. People wrote articles insisting it would never go anywhere. It's still growing with thousands of instances for every sort of community three years after the dismissive op-eds started, and it didn't have the benefit of a major profile promoting it.

dimensi0nal 7y ago
The largest Mastodon instance is full of content that isn't exactly allowed on traditional social media (i.e. lolicon). I don't think WT:Social will have the same competitive advantage.
- hnuser77 7y ago
  Technically speaking, the largest Mastodon instance is full of content that isn't exactly allowed on traditional social media (i.e. far-right extremism). See https://fediverse.network/ https://fediverse.network/
  - Semiapies 7y ago
    Which is going to be an anti-selling point for a lot of people.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - viraptor 7y ago
      It depends how well the blocking features will be advertised. "Lots of extremists have converged at xxx.social. You can block them all in one go." sounds better to me than what's happening in Twitter.
      - lasagnaphil 7y ago
        Agreed, federated instance is a way better solution than Twitter blocklists. In fact, I think Mastodon was designed to combat such extremists from day one, so even with the alt-right’s foray into the fediverse things will go at least better than Twitter.

class4behavior 7y ago

Both sides are in the wrong. Comparing the numbers of the first few days to Facebook suggests either ill intent or willful ignorance, while praising a new start-up as a Facebook rival without baking up that claim with some relatable rationale indicates bias or an agenda. Facebook aims to cover anyone's every need which could come up in a social interaction or how communication could occur. In other words, FB is a communication, an entertainment and a business platform. WT:Social, on the other hand, seems to be an evolution of the WikiTribune diving into the social market world, yet continuing its focus on reporting and fact-based information sharing. This involves work which isn't all too appealing to the general public.

filmgirlcw 7y ago

If I was the co-founder of one of the top websites in the world that had to pivot from my shitty news organization into what looks like a shitty version of Diaspora, I’m not so sure I’d be thrilled with “thousands.” You need network effects for social network rivals to take off. That isn’t to say there won’t be a Facebook successor (there almost certainly will be one — the big challenge for Facebook is if it has a piece of that or not), but just as Diaspora, Google+, Peach, Ello, App.net, Gab, Mastadon, and any other number of attempts at this have failed (calling Mastadon a failure is unfair, but its not Twitter and won’t ever be), so will this. Snap was a threat to Facebook’s core messaging properties (WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram), so Instagram had to blatantly copy Snap to win back momentum. Snap is still a thing, but unless it leans into the fact that it isn’t owned by Facebook (which is ultimately what hurts WA and Instagram), it isn’t ever going to catch-up, especially on a global level. TikTok has the sort of network effect Vine never had, and could be a real contender for the next generation, even with its ownership questions. Twitch and YouTube still have opportunities for growth — and there is still lots of room for innovation in the live video space. And look, maybe this will be a really nice niche community for a small group of people. I hope it is. I hope the people that signup and pay for it enjoy it. I hope Wales doesn’t get bored when it doesn’t have tons of users and make tons of money. There is a market for small community social networks. Not everything has to be the scale of Facebook — I’d argue it’s better when things aren’t that size — but let’s not pretend we’re not talking about this because it’s being positioned as something that is “taking on” the giant — when it would be more helpful - but make for a poorer headline/narrative - to say, “rich dude wants to recreate The Well for a generation of users who doesn’t know what The Well was.”

tomaszs 7y ago
A lots of this is true. I can only debate what networks need to have. Facebook became popular not because social effect but because it used "on behalf" emails to spam friends of users with optout error by design and because of automated scraping emails from an email account when user got lured to give login and password. Than it was new, now these things have special words to describe it.
Zenst 7y ago
Maybe, but then you have a different financial model being played out with it being subscritpion based and no small fee either. This changes how it can be marketed and the pyrimid approach would not supprise me in that once the subscriptions level of, they offer them referal links in which they get $1 a month for people subscribing via their link after their extended trial period of say 90 days. At least, that is what I would be looking at doing. Certainly the monthly fee is high, so what level they break even in running costs will be lower and may well be that they already break even in running and depreciation of assets -costs. May even be a small monthly profit already. We just don't know.

TomMasz 7y ago

I hear you but Facebook, for better or worse, is the social networking site everyone you know is on. It has a tremendous advantage over any upstart for that reason. Lots of geeky folks flocked to Google+ in its early days but that wasn't enough to replace Facebook. Even when they gave everyone who had a Google account of some kind a G+ profile it still wasn't enough. I will definitely check this out but it'll be back to FB when I need to know what my friends are up to.

jay_kyburz 7y ago
Google+ always had a weird broken interface and they just never finished it. I was one of the geeks that flocked to it, and had plenty of friends there. It didn't fail because of network effects, it failed because they stopped working on it before it was finished. It was really strange and I always assumed at the time that Facebook and Google had come to some agreement behind the scenes.
- post_below 7y ago
  It really was strange, continues to be, the way Google wanders away from products before finishing them. I get ditching things that don't work, but G+ is a great example of something that had plenty of traction in it's early days and, as far as I can see, lost it purely because G didn't seem to care about it.
  - logjammin 7y ago
    As a big fan of their Nexus line of mobile phones, I concur. They weren't perfect, but they were solid, stock Android devices at a reasonable cost. Then they ditched them all of a sudden, and now we have premium-priced Pixels that fall well short of the competition.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    Can you elaborate on what you mean? From inside Google at the time, the general consensus was that they cared too much about it, at the cost of much of the rest of the company.

Fnoord 7y ago

Yes. At least Jimbo is trying. He might fail, but at least he tried. Network effect is a bitch, as others already noted.

ekianjo 7y ago

You'd think you would need a lot more than "thousands" for it to be called an actual trend worthy of an article.

AndrewKemendo 7y ago

It's at least around 300,000 as of 9PM EST based on the waiting list page I received.

asjw 7y ago

It's actually hundreds of thousands and they are paying users.

KuhlMensch 7y ago

Its not the number which makes me chuckle, its the relative importance the number is given, and the associated tone. A sensible headline would be: "Wikipedia have launched a social media site, based around sharing news"