I don't hate myself enough to ever try to build a platform that could compete in the social networking space. But if I DID, I would definitely focus on getting

I don't hate myself enough to ever try to build a platform that could compete in the social networking space. But if I DID, I would definitely focus on getting niche communities in there I need to be able to convince the social choice theory community,[0] banana growing hobbyists,[1] permaculturists,[2] etc why they should switch. Perhaps I could focus on fractured communities like all the drug forums[3][4][5][6] and have strong privacy protections. Or perhaps I could focus on up-and-coming communities like the different subcommunities in the generative art/cellular automata scenes. Or maybe even reviving communities in decline like the demoscene community. Once you've become THE platform for one of these niches, you will already have a stable base. Serve them well! You just need to expand from there. Niche communities are the pillars of "alt" social networks The other big part is definitely optimizing for SEO with tiny load times the way Reddit and HN have done [0] https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/ https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/ [1] http://www.bananas.org/ http://www.bananas.org/ [2] https://permies.com/ https://permies.com/ [3] https://bluelight.org/xf/ https://bluelight.org/xf/ [4] https://www.shroomery.org/ https://www.shroomery.org/ [5] https://drugs-forum.com/ https://drugs-forum.com/ [6] https://www.erowid.org/ https://www.erowid.org/