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I think the flaw in your question is the assumption that a social network needs a business model. It's like asking what the business model is for SMTP. It shoul

by zrm 6y ago

I think the flaw in your question is the assumption that a social network needs a business model. It's like asking what the business model is for SMTP. It shouldn't be under the control of a single entity so it shouldn't need a single specific business model. Then you have a market for providers even though it's still all the same network.

Nextgrid 6y ago
The business model of SMTP is that e-mail providers leverage their compliance with SMTP to draw users in but then derive value some other way (either by luring users into their ad-powered ecosystem like most consumer e-mail providers or making them pay like business e-mail providers). A protocol by itself indeed doesn't need a business model but clients for the protocol do need one.
- zrm 6y ago
  > A protocol by itself indeed doesn't need a business model but clients for the protocol do need one. They still don't need one, there can be many. Even if most people still end up with the gmail model, it's meaningfully different, because the switching cost is lower. You don't have to convince everybody you know to switch too. Now suppose you're trying to solve the original problem. You've got feeds from a hundred users and you want a way to filter them yourself. If any service exists that provides this, using any business model, you can use it even if hardly anybody else does. You can also develop your own client that does this or commission someone to add the feature to an existing client. More than that, if this is a feature many people want, now the ad-supported providers will need it too, because now they have to compete for users with the providers who are treating you as the customer instead of being insulated from competition by the network effect when they own the entire network.
marcus_holmes 6y ago
True. You could create an open standard for this, and then people can self-host their own social servers. I don't think that's what the gp was proposing, though. And that's not going to be the norm. Most people don't want to self-host their email server, or even pay for it. They're happy trading their privacy for free gmail, and most don't even realise that this is a problem. So as Nextgrid pointed out: that shifts the problem one step down the ladder. A commercial social client requires someone to pay for it.

by zrm 6y ago

Nextgrid 6y ago

The business model of SMTP is that e-mail providers leverage their compliance with SMTP to draw users in but then derive value some other way (either by luring users into their ad-powered ecosystem like most consumer e-mail providers or making them pay like business e-mail providers). A protocol by itself indeed doesn't need a business model but clients for the protocol do need one.

zrm 6y ago
> A protocol by itself indeed doesn't need a business model but clients for the protocol do need one. They still don't need one, there can be many. Even if most people still end up with the gmail model, it's meaningfully different, because the switching cost is lower. You don't have to convince everybody you know to switch too. Now suppose you're trying to solve the original problem. You've got feeds from a hundred users and you want a way to filter them yourself. If any service exists that provides this, using any business model, you can use it even if hardly anybody else does. You can also develop your own client that does this or commission someone to add the feature to an existing client. More than that, if this is a feature many people want, now the ad-supported providers will need it too, because now they have to compete for users with the providers who are treating you as the customer instead of being insulated from competition by the network effect when they own the entire network.

marcus_holmes 6y ago

True. You could create an open standard for this, and then people can self-host their own social servers. I don't think that's what the gp was proposing, though. And that's not going to be the norm. Most people don't want to self-host their email server, or even pay for it. They're happy trading their privacy for free gmail, and most don't even realise that this is a problem. So as Nextgrid pointed out: that shifts the problem one step down the ladder. A commercial social client requires someone to pay for it.