99% of the value of Twitter or Facebook or Instagram is reach. Posting 140 characters is not much of technical challenge. Getting 400M people to sign up and giv

99% of the value of Twitter or Facebook or Instagram is reach. Posting 140 characters is not much of technical challenge. Getting 400M people to sign up and giving people a platform to build an audience is really, really hard. In terms of creating narrower social platforms, I think we have 100 good options. HN is already a pretty good platform, reddit has a nice balance of broad and niche topics, and if I want to go smaller I'll find a special-interest group that has a standalone forum, Discord or Slack channel. There's a fundamental difference between platforms built around truly personal social networking. Following people you know personally or within a few degrees of separation. The other is the much debated "Global Town Square" which Twitter has been the de facto best option for and is the hardest to replicate or improve upon.