Yes, these are social networks. Arguably even a vBulletin forum is a social network and I’ve met some of my best friends in life on those when I was a young lad

Yes, these are social networks. Arguably even a vBulletin forum is a social network and I’ve met some of my best friends in life on those when I was a young lad. If you can post somewhere as a person, build a reputation or identity there, interact with a community and build relationships: congrats, you have a social network. The mechanics of me replying to you on HN, sending an iMessage to a girl, sending a Slack message to my boss or posting to a group in Discord are nearly identical but the people and the intricacies of the software differ. This is one of the reasons I’ve never been a fan of the “Facebook is a social media monopoly” line of thinking, at least in America. Just doesn’t work if you sit down and think about it, it’s just another website that does a few things better than some others and they are massively successful because of what they’ve chosen to be good at. HN is a lot like /., Digg or very early Reddit to me, and it makes sense because it was started with a lot of the same ideas towards the end of that era, but with a purpose to serve Y Combinator’s needs.