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How will this new company make money? If its funded by the government it could work.

by rtx 6y ago

anthropodie 6y ago
Check out Okuna https://youtu.be/tGrP80GVkW4 https://youtu.be/tGrP80GVkW4 It is from Europe.
- xtracto 6y ago
  Reminded me of Disapora, the other project that was going to kill Facebook. How many of them have come and go over the years?
- dewey 6y ago
  The website that's linked in the video description seems to be down (http://open-book.org http://open-book.org) and there's no mention of "Okuna". Seems like yet another app.net, diaspora,...
  - anthropodie 6y ago
    That video seems old. It was open-book first but then FB decided to sue them. So they changed to https://okuna.io https://okuna.io
pjc50 6y ago
Advertising to Europeans?
gamegoblin 6y ago
1/4 of the US pays $13 per month for netflix. I have a hard time believing people wouldn't pay say, $5/mo for a social network that was ad-free and didn't do questionable things with their data. And I'm sure you could work out some kind of subsidy scheme for truly impoverished people who legitimately can't afford that. The problem is network effects and getting people to switch. But if you regulate any company not adopting this model out of existence, it could work. That said, I do acknowledge that the nature of social networks strongly leads to a natural monopoly situation more akin to a utility. It's not an easy problem. But I think paying for it isn't the hard part.
- nickff 6y ago
  The problem with network effects business is that the difference between having 1/4 and 3/4 of the population involved is a 9x change in value to the user. If Facebook is currently worth $5/month to the average user, this competitor would only be worth $0.56. edit: I see you added a statement saying that Facebook is a natural monopoly, and I really don't understand how that can be true. From the late 90s until now we have had many people running multiple IM clients, and we currently have many people running multiple social networks simultaneously.
  - gamegoblin 6y ago
    At the peak of IM I personally had at least 5 IM clients running simultaneously (or, when I became savvy enough, a single client that unified them all), so I definitely hear you. I think two critical differences between the manner IM was used historically and social networks are used now is the (mainly) 1-to-1 nature of chat content (as opposed to mainly 1-to-N nature of social network content) and the usage of persistent state. Without any actual data, my intuition is that the main use case of chat for most people is ephemeral, mostly-synchronous 1-to-1 communication. I only rarely went back through chat history, usually to find some obscure link or something. And because most people's main use of chat is 1-on-1 communication, there is no need to curate persisted content for external viewing. A key component of Facebook is curated and formatted personal content that their connections can asynchronously view. Most people do not want to maintain duplicate photo albums on several platforms, post the same thoughts or essays or rants on multiple platforms, etc.
    - nickff 6y ago
      I would definitely agree that IM clients are not a perfect analogy to social networks, and I only used them as an example because they've been around longer than 'modern' social networking apps/websites. I agree that Facebook could theoretically be a natural monopoly, but in practice there appear to be many social networks operating in parallel. This may be an unstable equilibrium, but I view LinkedIn, Instagram (before the takeover), and to a lesser extent TikTok, SnapChat, Reddit, Youtube, and Twitter as Facebook competitors. It seems like there are many people who use more these networks in parallel, which means that there is no natural monopoly. On the other hand, I do believe that Facebook has a so-called 'moat', though it may not be as strong as some others believe.

How will this new company make money? If its funded by the government it could work.

by rtx 6y ago

How will this new company make money? If its funded by the government it could work.

anthropodie 6y ago

Check out Okuna https://youtu.be/tGrP80GVkW4 https://youtu.be/tGrP80GVkW4 It is from Europe.

xtracto 6y ago
Reminded me of Disapora, the other project that was going to kill Facebook. How many of them have come and go over the years?
dewey 6y ago
The website that's linked in the video description seems to be down (http://open-book.org http://open-book.org) and there's no mention of "Okuna". Seems like yet another app.net, diaspora,...
- anthropodie 6y ago
  That video seems old. It was open-book first but then FB decided to sue them. So they changed to https://okuna.io https://okuna.io

pjc50 6y ago

Advertising to Europeans?

gamegoblin 6y ago

1/4 of the US pays $13 per month for netflix. I have a hard time believing people wouldn't pay say, $5/mo for a social network that was ad-free and didn't do questionable things with their data. And I'm sure you could work out some kind of subsidy scheme for truly impoverished people who legitimately can't afford that. The problem is network effects and getting people to switch. But if you regulate any company not adopting this model out of existence, it could work. That said, I do acknowledge that the nature of social networks strongly leads to a natural monopoly situation more akin to a utility. It's not an easy problem. But I think paying for it isn't the hard part.

nickff 6y ago
The problem with network effects business is that the difference between having 1/4 and 3/4 of the population involved is a 9x change in value to the user. If Facebook is currently worth $5/month to the average user, this competitor would only be worth $0.56. edit: I see you added a statement saying that Facebook is a natural monopoly, and I really don't understand how that can be true. From the late 90s until now we have had many people running multiple IM clients, and we currently have many people running multiple social networks simultaneously.
- gamegoblin 6y ago
  At the peak of IM I personally had at least 5 IM clients running simultaneously (or, when I became savvy enough, a single client that unified them all), so I definitely hear you. I think two critical differences between the manner IM was used historically and social networks are used now is the (mainly) 1-to-1 nature of chat content (as opposed to mainly 1-to-N nature of social network content) and the usage of persistent state. Without any actual data, my intuition is that the main use case of chat for most people is ephemeral, mostly-synchronous 1-to-1 communication. I only rarely went back through chat history, usually to find some obscure link or something. And because most people's main use of chat is 1-on-1 communication, there is no need to curate persisted content for external viewing. A key component of Facebook is curated and formatted personal content that their connections can asynchronously view. Most people do not want to maintain duplicate photo albums on several platforms, post the same thoughts or essays or rants on multiple platforms, etc.
  - nickff 6y ago
    I would definitely agree that IM clients are not a perfect analogy to social networks, and I only used them as an example because they've been around longer than 'modern' social networking apps/websites. I agree that Facebook could theoretically be a natural monopoly, but in practice there appear to be many social networks operating in parallel. This may be an unstable equilibrium, but I view LinkedIn, Instagram (before the takeover), and to a lesser extent TikTok, SnapChat, Reddit, Youtube, and Twitter as Facebook competitors. It seems like there are many people who use more these networks in parallel, which means that there is no natural monopoly. On the other hand, I do believe that Facebook has a so-called 'moat', though it may not be as strong as some others believe.