4 ms·

Maybe there won't be one big Facebook killer, but a thousand "niche" social networks, each with an average of a million active users, each hyper-serving its com

• te_chris 14y ago
  People seem to miss this. Eventually people will supplement different niche activities on a monolith for something else, and then suddenly they don't need the main thing that much anymore. A gourmet supermarket just opened near where I live, between that, the local fruit shop and local butcher (with the odd trip to an asian supermarket to top up on that type of thing), my visits to the supermarket (which is also close to me) are probably down to a 3rd of what they once were. Without me realising it or doing anything conscious to reduce my patronage, the amount of money I give the supermarket has drastically plummeted through small, cumulative changes in behaviour.
• mseebach 14y ago
  But those (or similar) communities existed long before Facebook did - they serve a vertical of common interests, rather than a horizontal of people you know. Some of them might be replaced by Facebook groups, but plenty of them will and can continue to exist outside of Facebook. For any kind of specialized discussion on computer stuff and startups, I'll take a bunch of perfect strangers on HN over friends on Facebook any day. On the other hand, posting pics of my new apartment or from my holiday would be (let's say) underappreciated here. On the other hand, people I share friendship or family ties with cares about this stuff, even if we have no interests relevant to the matter in common.