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>Actually I wonder if there’s a market for an actual social network that is restricted to only being social. There's a huge market for them. They're called pri

>Actually I wonder if there’s a market for an actual social network that is restricted to only being social. There's a huge market for them. They're called private group chats, and they're popular everywhere. The problem is that you can't make much money off of that, precisely because they're socially valuable (i.e., they're strictly socially-driven, so there's no opportunity for in-line advertising, or recommending "new connections").

cvwright 3y ago
Group chats are such a poor substitute though. On 00’s Facebook you could post once for all of your friends to see, and they didn’t have to all know each other.
- daemonologist 3y ago
  I find group chats to be a pretty excellent solution, though I am less gregarious than average. Occasionally I post something in multiple groups or create a new "temporary" group in order to share it with people from different circles; this creates some detritus but not often to the point of being much of a downside. The problem I most often experience with group chats is that not everyone's on the same platform (excepting SMS) but old fashioned social media has that issue too. They also don't scale super well to large clubs or organizations, where I think having topic-oriented posts or threads as the default becomes valuable.
- aembleton 3y ago
  On 00s Facebook your friends had to visit your timeline to see your post as there was no feed.
- the_snooze 3y ago
  > On 00’s Facebook you could post once for all of your friends to see, and they didn’t have to all know each other. I consider the inability to do this a feature, not a bug. Group chats are socially segmented, with friction between those segments. That crazy uncle who loves conspiracy theories will be confined to just the group chats you have in common. You don't get insufferable loudmouths at scale, amplified by social media reward structures and algorithms.

cvwright 3y ago

Group chats are such a poor substitute though. On 00’s Facebook you could post once for all of your friends to see, and they didn’t have to all know each other.

daemonologist 3y ago
I find group chats to be a pretty excellent solution, though I am less gregarious than average. Occasionally I post something in multiple groups or create a new "temporary" group in order to share it with people from different circles; this creates some detritus but not often to the point of being much of a downside. The problem I most often experience with group chats is that not everyone's on the same platform (excepting SMS) but old fashioned social media has that issue too. They also don't scale super well to large clubs or organizations, where I think having topic-oriented posts or threads as the default becomes valuable.
aembleton 3y ago
On 00s Facebook your friends had to visit your timeline to see your post as there was no feed.
the_snooze 3y ago
> On 00’s Facebook you could post once for all of your friends to see, and they didn’t have to all know each other. I consider the inability to do this a feature, not a bug. Group chats are socially segmented, with friction between those segments. That crazy uncle who loves conspiracy theories will be confined to just the group chats you have in common. You don't get insufferable loudmouths at scale, amplified by social media reward structures and algorithms.