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#2. I've had an idea I've mulled around for a couple of years now about a new social network. One which limits your 'feed' to 25 friends and that is it. 25 mig

#2. I've had an idea I've mulled around for a couple of years now about a new social network. One which limits your 'feed' to 25 friends and that is it. 25 might even be too high (or potentially too low; the number is arbitrary), but the general idea is that in your life there are only a handful of people who you should really care to keep tabs on. You can "friend" more than 25 people but you can only see the activity of 25 of your friends and the others are relegated to essentially being contacts. I remember about two years ago Facebook was getting into a lot of trouble due to the amount of negative mental impact it had/has on its users and they did a study which found social media can have a negative impact on its users unless the user only follows a small circle of real-life friends and interacts with those people online. I don't have a source to this; I'm willing to accept there isn't real _evidence_ behind this claim. Anyway, I'm surprised social media has been around this long, has been the subject of such controversy and there haven't been any or many real, impactful changes to the nature of it. Facebook and Instagram are, in my opinion, trying to be too much. They want to combine personal and public spaces. This, of course, works from a business perspective. But what are the long-term consequences of these products on our mental health and society? We need a new social media focused on personal, tight-knit groups of people and interests. One that makes this the focus and doesn't stray for the purposes of profits. And, if that's not feasible in an economy that demands growth, we need better legislation demanding certain consumer protections are created for this sphere of products.

jbigelow76 7y ago
One which limits your 'feed' to 25 friends and that is it. An ex-Googler (that never played defense![1]) tried that with the social network Path. I think the limit was 50 friends though. It failed. Edit: [1] Quote attribution: "I don’t use a ring of any kind on my phone. This is so that I am always on offense and never defense." - Dave Morin
- freehunter 7y ago
  To be fair, almost every non-Facebook social network has failed. I wouldn’t consider that to be proof that a limited social network can’t succeed but rather that social networking sites are difficult to produce.
  - ckosidows 7y ago
    That's why this has remained an idea for me rather than anything I would consider attempting. Social networks have an enormous bar to entry. This is why I think this would most feasibly be applied as a restriction to Facebook/Instagram and it's probably something they will never implement unless forced.
    - throwaway1777 7y ago
      Facebook and Instagram have the concept of “close friends”. A lot of people use it pretty close to how you’re envisioning.
  - jbigelow76 7y ago
    No disagreement here. I just recall that guy being comically pompous (see also his penchant for carrying both a "day iphone" and a "night iphone") at the time Path launched.
    - wpietri 7y ago
      Wow, what is it with anti-social people starting social networks? I long ago lost track of my collection of ridiculous quotes from the Friendster guy. But I still remember him being outraged that people were using it wrong by creating profiles for abstract things they loved (cities, parks, stores, brands) and then friending them. Like, buddy, when your users find new ways to use your product, run with it. Instead, he just got big mad and banned a lot of people. Looking back, Friendster strikes me as the single biggest missed opportunity of that decade. He had a two-year lead on Facebook. In a network-effect business! But through careful focus and diligent effort, he managed to blow it.
      - swyx 7y ago
        wasnt inability to scale a part of it tho? we didnt know how to architect for eagerly connected graphs then.
      - cyborgx7 7y ago
- 1337biz 7y ago
  Have we ever seen social networks succeed that were not primarily driven by highschool kids? (except work oriented ones, e.g. LinkedIn/tech communities and pre-www communities)
busymom0 7y ago
Can’t that be achieved by simply Facebook offering an option for feeds of manually created group by you? Like you create a group called closefriends where you add your close friends and family upto 25 members. Then a feed for those people only shows up? Almost similar to where each user is a subreddit and you create a multireddit.
- bhl 7y ago
  Isn’t that the premise of twitter?
- ckosidows 7y ago
  I do this right now on Facebook; you can unfollow anyone. I'm not following anyone and I have no feed. But the problem is people aren't going to voluntarily do this, and it's a big pain to unfollow hundreds of people. This needs to be baked-in to have any real impact.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- VLM 7y ago
  Facebook is a video game where you honor the groupthink for max followers and upvotes; something like the 25 followers can be emulated but if you're the only person playing the new game, its not going to be a fun game because everyone else will have higher scores due to no made up limitations.
pbourke 7y ago
> We need a new social media focused on personal, tight-knit groups of people and interests Group chat: text/Messages/WhatsApp. The fewer frills, the better.
- Darkphibre 7y ago
  IRC is still kicking in some communities!
worldsayshi 7y ago
We need to separate the data layer from the app layer to allow free competition again. I don't think that Facebook will be replaced with something so similar. I think what we need is an open data-platform that can contain (in a controlled way) social media data along with other kinds of data and then allow building social media apps on top of it. Otherwise we'll always be stuck using whatever the biggest supplier builds for us.
- throwaway1777 7y ago
  Nah, this is what Facebook built and it caused Cambridge analytica.
  - worldsayshi 7y ago
    "controlled" is a key word here
_gx8n 7y ago
I can already see it, imagine people who have their list full, removing people and replacing them would be a public passive aggressive "thing" people would do and the such drama that would follow. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I think this would actually be a selling point of the platform, however could possibly turn into a negative part of the social culture.
- cooperadymas 7y ago
  So Myspace top 8 list? That's exactly what it was. Weade a game out of adding and removing friends from our top 8. Some of those friends didn't realize it was a game.
- 8ytecoder 7y ago
  I think it can built so the "Feed" is restricted to "Close Friends". You can still go checkout the other friend's profiles individually. I'd also like it to be set to filter out news articles and other crap like what photos they liked ...etc.
- petrocrat 7y ago
  What if it automatically populated the list of your "close friends" by some algorithm that ranks your overall interaction with them. So you can't arbitrarily add or remove the friends. You could "game" it but only by actually interacting with the person. If they include sentiment analysis on the interactions, then you couldn't "game" it by spamming or being a cyber bully either. You'd actually have to be friendly towards that person.
  - befictious 7y ago
    you just described facebook's feed algorithm
  - pro-duct 7y ago
    If I want to person A as a close friend, and they're not active on the platform, that should be allowed. Maximizing interactions isn't the goal, or else we wouldn't limit the feed in the first place
evanweaver 7y ago
Private/restricted social networks do not work as businesses. They are antagonistic to both viral growth and hit content. Many, many have tried.
throwaway1777 7y ago
This is exactly what Path tried to do.
instauser 7y ago
I've kind of achieved this for my Instagram feed. I simply "mute" anyone I don't care to see again. My account still follows them, so they are none the wiser. I think most social networks provide a similar "publicly follow but mute" feature. It takes some time to mute everyone I want muted, but it only took a couple days to mute the more post-happy folks. I discovered that most of my network hardly post. Instagram is so much more enjoyable now. 2 minutes a day, rarely more.
Alex3917 7y ago
> I've had an idea I've mulled around for a couple of years now about a new social network. One which limits your 'feed' to 25 friends and that is it. C.f. https://cocoon.com/ https://cocoon.com/
Budabellly 7y ago
Dunbar's number seems relevant for this line of thinking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
- ckosidows 7y ago
  Thanks for this. I'd never heard of it.
erikw 7y ago
That reminds me of Google Buzz. I used it with a group of maybe 5-6 other people, and it felt like Google had built this product just for us- deep integration into Google Chat and Gmail, everything was solid, and no one else was using it, so it felt like our own private ghost-town.
romwell 7y ago
>there are only a handful of people who you should really care to keep tabs on I don't consider myself an extreme socialite, but as someone who has lived in 3 states in the US and whose friends are scattered around the world after getting a degree here, this sounds really, really, really perverse. That said, most of my use of Facebook is not to keep tabs on the people I care about (a lot of them don't use Facebook much, if at all). The product that the OP described already exists: it's called a chat room (IRC channel, Skype group chat, Telegram channel, Whatsapp group chat, etc).
- jborden13 7y ago
  Reminds me of Google+ circles
  - Corrado 7y ago
    I really liked the idea of Google+ circles. Creating "containerized" groups of people (things?) that I could act on in a complete unique way was really cool. I could say something in my "friends" circle that I couldn't (or would be misunderstood) in my "family" circle. I could also keep track of technology (Linux, Tesla, etc.) in another, completely separate, area. I wish that a "social" network would bring back the idea of Circles.
davefp 7y ago
I think this gets pretty close to what you're after: https://runyourown.social/ https://runyourown.social/
danfang 7y ago
This is exactly what I'm aiming to do with Thread - an alternative social network that focuses on tight-knit groups and building more intimate relationships, for the purpose of improving our mental health. One important thing to note is that it will be monetized through a subscription, not by selling consumer data or driving sales of targeted ads. Check it out @ https://get.thread-app.com/ https://get.thread-app.com/
LudwigNagasena 7y ago
I don’t know about Facebook, but in its Russian analogue it is possible to remove your friends (and groups) from your feed.
kevinflo 7y ago
You can easily do this today, just start a mastodon instance and restrict the signups. I run a > 100 user instance on just a $10 digital ocean VPS. I'm seeing small tight-knit community instances popping up all over the place. You can tweak the settings or or even add customizations from forks that cater more to a siloed instance.
herval 7y ago
Path?

jbigelow76 7y ago

One which limits your 'feed' to 25 friends and that is it. An ex-Googler (that never played defense![1]) tried that with the social network Path. I think the limit was 50 friends though. It failed. Edit: [1] Quote attribution: "I don’t use a ring of any kind on my phone. This is so that I am always on offense and never defense." - Dave Morin

freehunter 7y ago
To be fair, almost every non-Facebook social network has failed. I wouldn’t consider that to be proof that a limited social network can’t succeed but rather that social networking sites are difficult to produce.
- ckosidows 7y ago
  That's why this has remained an idea for me rather than anything I would consider attempting. Social networks have an enormous bar to entry. This is why I think this would most feasibly be applied as a restriction to Facebook/Instagram and it's probably something they will never implement unless forced.
  - throwaway1777 7y ago
    Facebook and Instagram have the concept of “close friends”. A lot of people use it pretty close to how you’re envisioning.
- jbigelow76 7y ago
  No disagreement here. I just recall that guy being comically pompous (see also his penchant for carrying both a "day iphone" and a "night iphone") at the time Path launched.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    Wow, what is it with anti-social people starting social networks? I long ago lost track of my collection of ridiculous quotes from the Friendster guy. But I still remember him being outraged that people were using it wrong by creating profiles for abstract things they loved (cities, parks, stores, brands) and then friending them. Like, buddy, when your users find new ways to use your product, run with it. Instead, he just got big mad and banned a lot of people. Looking back, Friendster strikes me as the single biggest missed opportunity of that decade. He had a two-year lead on Facebook. In a network-effect business! But through careful focus and diligent effort, he managed to blow it.
    - swyx 7y ago
      wasnt inability to scale a part of it tho? we didnt know how to architect for eagerly connected graphs then.
    - cyborgx7 7y ago
1337biz 7y ago
Have we ever seen social networks succeed that were not primarily driven by highschool kids? (except work oriented ones, e.g. LinkedIn/tech communities and pre-www communities)

busymom0 7y ago

Can’t that be achieved by simply Facebook offering an option for feeds of manually created group by you? Like you create a group called closefriends where you add your close friends and family upto 25 members. Then a feed for those people only shows up? Almost similar to where each user is a subreddit and you create a multireddit.

bhl 7y ago
Isn’t that the premise of twitter?
ckosidows 7y ago
I do this right now on Facebook; you can unfollow anyone. I'm not following anyone and I have no feed. But the problem is people aren't going to voluntarily do this, and it's a big pain to unfollow hundreds of people. This needs to be baked-in to have any real impact.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
VLM 7y ago
Facebook is a video game where you honor the groupthink for max followers and upvotes; something like the 25 followers can be emulated but if you're the only person playing the new game, its not going to be a fun game because everyone else will have higher scores due to no made up limitations.

pbourke 7y ago

> We need a new social media focused on personal, tight-knit groups of people and interests Group chat: text/Messages/WhatsApp. The fewer frills, the better.

Darkphibre 7y ago
IRC is still kicking in some communities!

worldsayshi 7y ago

We need to separate the data layer from the app layer to allow free competition again. I don't think that Facebook will be replaced with something so similar. I think what we need is an open data-platform that can contain (in a controlled way) social media data along with other kinds of data and then allow building social media apps on top of it. Otherwise we'll always be stuck using whatever the biggest supplier builds for us.

throwaway1777 7y ago
Nah, this is what Facebook built and it caused Cambridge analytica.
- worldsayshi 7y ago
  "controlled" is a key word here

_gx8n 7y ago

I can already see it, imagine people who have their list full, removing people and replacing them would be a public passive aggressive "thing" people would do and the such drama that would follow. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I think this would actually be a selling point of the platform, however could possibly turn into a negative part of the social culture.

cooperadymas 7y ago
So Myspace top 8 list? That's exactly what it was. Weade a game out of adding and removing friends from our top 8. Some of those friends didn't realize it was a game.
8ytecoder 7y ago
I think it can built so the "Feed" is restricted to "Close Friends". You can still go checkout the other friend's profiles individually. I'd also like it to be set to filter out news articles and other crap like what photos they liked ...etc.
petrocrat 7y ago
What if it automatically populated the list of your "close friends" by some algorithm that ranks your overall interaction with them. So you can't arbitrarily add or remove the friends. You could "game" it but only by actually interacting with the person. If they include sentiment analysis on the interactions, then you couldn't "game" it by spamming or being a cyber bully either. You'd actually have to be friendly towards that person.
- befictious 7y ago
  you just described facebook's feed algorithm
- pro-duct 7y ago
  If I want to person A as a close friend, and they're not active on the platform, that should be allowed. Maximizing interactions isn't the goal, or else we wouldn't limit the feed in the first place

evanweaver 7y ago

Private/restricted social networks do not work as businesses. They are antagonistic to both viral growth and hit content. Many, many have tried.

throwaway1777 7y ago

This is exactly what Path tried to do.

instauser 7y ago

I've kind of achieved this for my Instagram feed. I simply "mute" anyone I don't care to see again. My account still follows them, so they are none the wiser. I think most social networks provide a similar "publicly follow but mute" feature. It takes some time to mute everyone I want muted, but it only took a couple days to mute the more post-happy folks. I discovered that most of my network hardly post. Instagram is so much more enjoyable now. 2 minutes a day, rarely more.

Alex3917 7y ago

> I've had an idea I've mulled around for a couple of years now about a new social network. One which limits your 'feed' to 25 friends and that is it. C.f. https://cocoon.com/ https://cocoon.com/

Budabellly 7y ago

Dunbar's number seems relevant for this line of thinking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

ckosidows 7y ago
Thanks for this. I'd never heard of it.

erikw 7y ago

That reminds me of Google Buzz. I used it with a group of maybe 5-6 other people, and it felt like Google had built this product just for us- deep integration into Google Chat and Gmail, everything was solid, and no one else was using it, so it felt like our own private ghost-town.

romwell 7y ago

>there are only a handful of people who you should really care to keep tabs on I don't consider myself an extreme socialite, but as someone who has lived in 3 states in the US and whose friends are scattered around the world after getting a degree here, this sounds really, really, really perverse. That said, most of my use of Facebook is not to keep tabs on the people I care about (a lot of them don't use Facebook much, if at all). The product that the OP described already exists: it's called a chat room (IRC channel, Skype group chat, Telegram channel, Whatsapp group chat, etc).

jborden13 7y ago
Reminds me of Google+ circles
- Corrado 7y ago
  I really liked the idea of Google+ circles. Creating "containerized" groups of people (things?) that I could act on in a complete unique way was really cool. I could say something in my "friends" circle that I couldn't (or would be misunderstood) in my "family" circle. I could also keep track of technology (Linux, Tesla, etc.) in another, completely separate, area. I wish that a "social" network would bring back the idea of Circles.

davefp 7y ago

I think this gets pretty close to what you're after: https://runyourown.social/ https://runyourown.social/

danfang 7y ago

This is exactly what I'm aiming to do with Thread - an alternative social network that focuses on tight-knit groups and building more intimate relationships, for the purpose of improving our mental health. One important thing to note is that it will be monetized through a subscription, not by selling consumer data or driving sales of targeted ads. Check it out @ https://get.thread-app.com/ https://get.thread-app.com/

LudwigNagasena 7y ago

I don’t know about Facebook, but in its Russian analogue it is possible to remove your friends (and groups) from your feed.

kevinflo 7y ago

You can easily do this today, just start a mastodon instance and restrict the signups. I run a > 100 user instance on just a $10 digital ocean VPS. I'm seeing small tight-knit community instances popping up all over the place. You can tweak the settings or or even add customizations from forks that cater more to a siloed instance.

herval 7y ago

Path?