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What are you trying to say? That because they have a lot of VC money riding on it, they have to do "growth hacking" in order to justify the funds and grow quic

What are you trying to say? That because they have a lot of VC money riding on it, they have to do "growth hacking" in order to justify the funds and grow quickly enough to satisfy the investors? Well, I guess I have to agree.

skinnymuch 6y ago
I assumed the OP saying successful social apps as in successful to the point of being known by at least some average people. Metafilter and Hacker News are both very niche and tiny. Hacker News doesn’t have the same business model as others either. It’s to help the namesake incubator. It succeeds with that. Getting contacts etc wouldn’t benefit Hacker News. Hacker News could lose a decent amount of money yearly without any prospect of breaking even and still be run. Most other apps of any kind can’t be run that way, including Reddit and Metafilter.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Perhaps it is just a fact that we have to accept that large (1M+? 10M+? 100M+?) social networks cannot remain sustainable without abusing their users. That would mean we can benefit from building smaller, sustainable communities for ourselves and those we care about. I'm surprised it's not happening already, to be honest. With today's technology, you can spin up a community website for, e.g. your family or your organization for the price of basic Web hosting and have all the perks of connecting without the downsides of e.g. your data being harvested and reviewed by anyone at CompanyX. Sure, you have to do your own security, but the big social networks aren't impervious either. And you gain the advantage of not having your account randomly disabled or spamfiltered or shadowbanned. It won't protect you from NSA or FBI, but I don't think most people care about that. On the other hand, people I've spoken with are aware and do care about snooping by CompanyX employees. The more I think about it, even as writing this comment, the more I can see that we are very close to rapid disruption in the social network space.
  - skinnymuch 6y ago
    Perhaps it is my family being minority immigrants with other caveats. Snooping by employees is rarely done. It most likely isn't going to mess you up too badly either. On the other hand, the number of people I know who are either deathly afraid or just normally afraid of the government and its agencies like the ones you mentioned is high. This is definitely going to be a minority of people. My family and extended family aren't common cases. I don't see either as big deals though. Not enough to have people not stick with bigger apps that have network appeal. I don't believe disruption of anything but more of the same in different clothing happening. I'm a pessimist though.

skinnymuch 6y ago

I assumed the OP saying successful social apps as in successful to the point of being known by at least some average people. Metafilter and Hacker News are both very niche and tiny. Hacker News doesn’t have the same business model as others either. It’s to help the namesake incubator. It succeeds with that. Getting contacts etc wouldn’t benefit Hacker News. Hacker News could lose a decent amount of money yearly without any prospect of breaking even and still be run. Most other apps of any kind can’t be run that way, including Reddit and Metafilter.

forgotmypw17 6y ago
Perhaps it is just a fact that we have to accept that large (1M+? 10M+? 100M+?) social networks cannot remain sustainable without abusing their users. That would mean we can benefit from building smaller, sustainable communities for ourselves and those we care about. I'm surprised it's not happening already, to be honest. With today's technology, you can spin up a community website for, e.g. your family or your organization for the price of basic Web hosting and have all the perks of connecting without the downsides of e.g. your data being harvested and reviewed by anyone at CompanyX. Sure, you have to do your own security, but the big social networks aren't impervious either. And you gain the advantage of not having your account randomly disabled or spamfiltered or shadowbanned. It won't protect you from NSA or FBI, but I don't think most people care about that. On the other hand, people I've spoken with are aware and do care about snooping by CompanyX employees. The more I think about it, even as writing this comment, the more I can see that we are very close to rapid disruption in the social network space.
- skinnymuch 6y ago
  Perhaps it is my family being minority immigrants with other caveats. Snooping by employees is rarely done. It most likely isn't going to mess you up too badly either. On the other hand, the number of people I know who are either deathly afraid or just normally afraid of the government and its agencies like the ones you mentioned is high. This is definitely going to be a minority of people. My family and extended family aren't common cases. I don't see either as big deals though. Not enough to have people not stick with bigger apps that have network appeal. I don't believe disruption of anything but more of the same in different clothing happening. I'm a pessimist though.