"They were not built based on how we live our lives or the way we interact with people and the world around us." I think you're going about this wrong and I th

"They were not built based on how we live our lives or the way we interact with people and the world around us." I think you're going about this wrong and I think this belief is why. I have very little social media (pretty much just HN). These companies have no real power over your life. Facebook is just a website... no more significant than dig or slashdot. They have no power to force you to do anything. You can leave any time you want. So the question is, why do people use these services? For the exact opposite of your sentence above: because they ARE built around how people live their lives. People aren't on LinkedIn just because it exists; they're there to create a network to find work. That's a function that existed before LinkedIn... starting with either your first job or during university; or through friends and family. Or take WhatsApp, which enables sending small messages. Examples of sending small messages: carrier pigeons; telegrams (average length: 12 characters); walkie-talkies; pagers; SMS... and then more recently: chat apps and Twitter. So the behavior already existed before chat existed. So why did people move to WhatsApp when SMS already existed and was so similar? Because when WhatsApp started, SMS was $0.10/message and WhatsApp was free. So whatever function you decide to start with, I think you need to understand the underlying reason people use that service... and what the current platform is delivering that the users find valuable. If you stop viewing it as something being shoved down your throat, you'll see all of these platforms are enabling something of value. Additionally I would caution you against just duplicating something that already exists. What you're really doing is duplicating a specific solution to an already solved problem. And then the question arises: why would would people pay switching costs for no gain? And the answer is they won't. Many of the disgruntled former users of these platforms--disgruntled because they're deprived of the value the platform was delivering--are exactly the type of users you do not want on your platform. But these are the users that will be open to using your platform, because they have the lowest switching costs. There can be an opening for a duplicate when a platform (like reddit or twitter) starts destroying some of their value.. and if you're positioned as a prominent alternative at the time that happens, users may start switching over. But it's easier for the existing platform to restore the value they removed than it is for millions of users to switch to your platform. So I'd argue this strategy is essentially the same as buying a lottery ticket... hoping they f up big enough and long enough for you to win.