6 ms·

I think it might just be that that’s not needed anymore. The social networks of the past were useful as a way to keep in touch with people. MySpace, early Face

I think it might just be that that’s not needed anymore. The social networks of the past were useful as a way to keep in touch with people. MySpace, early Facebook, and the countless others from back then. Now everyone’s online 24/7, and accessible on multiple services all at the same time, all the time. You don’t need social networks to keep in touch with anyone anymore, their original raison d'être is gone. What’s sought after now is meeting -other-, new, like-minded people and content. For that we have twitter, Reddit, TikTok, and whatnot. People want their bubbles. We’re all here on HN for that exact purpose.

thrown_22 4y ago
>What’s sought after now is meeting -other-, new, like-minded people and content. For that we have twitter, Reddit, TikTok, and whatnot. None of those sites are good for that any more. All the interesting people on reddit have been banned. No one sane uses twitter. And finding people to talk to on tiktok is plain impossible.
pasquinelli 4y ago
> What’s sought after now is meeting -other-, new, like-minded people and content. For that we have twitter, Reddit, TikTok, and whatnot. yeah, but meeting people there isn't really meeting people. the friends you have on those aren't real friends. you can stay in touch with a friend on social media, but if your friendship is only there it's only pretend.
- Eupraxias 4y ago
  Reddit is often great for reading nifty content, but the infantile, monoculture avatars turn me off from ever wanting to 'connect' with anyone.
beebmam 4y ago
> People want their bubbles. We’re all here on HN for that exact purpose. 100% disagree. I'm here to find ideas I disagree with and tell people how they're wrong. I'm not looking for an agreeable experience here. I'm also here to learn about new tech.
- mulmen 4y ago
  Bubbles don't need to be harmful. HN is a bubble. There are ideas that are not allowed here. There are other ideas that are explicitly promoted. This is the value proposition of HN. You are free to go elsewhere to get other perspectives or interactions. This is as it should be.
  - tmaly 4y ago
    I try to shake that up from time to time. It is nice to see the other side of the discussion. Groupthink is not something to strive for.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - mulmen 4y ago
      I’m not striving for groupthink. I’m seeking out a trusted (collective) voice.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    It depends on what the bubble is about. If it's for a specific anime who cares but politics is a bubble whose influence exits the bubble
    - mulmen 4y ago
      Honestly I have no interest in discussing politics. It’s the social media of conversation. I prefer to talk to people about what interests them. Sometimes it is interesting. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes I agree with them. Sometimes I don’t. With most people all four are true. I form my own opinions from there. They change frequently. I vote based on my best current mental model.
  - walterbell 4y ago
    > There are ideas that are not allowed here. It would be more accurate to say that some ideas require more work here. The reasons why are open to debate.
wwweston 4y ago
> You don’t need social networks to keep in touch with anyone anymore, their original raison d'être is gone. In what sense? The underlying social motivation/interest is still present. And it's not like fundamental communications capabilities have actually changed. Chat's been around since the 90s and SMS is the new email. And social network applications grew and thrived in those situations because pull-and-scan-social-feed across multiple circles has some distinct effort-reward profiles. I could see the argument that the algorithmic and advertising imposition eventually drive out enough of the value that people opt out, but that's a statement about the business lifecycle of a social network app, not the underlying reason people might use / like them.
- spdionis 4y ago
  Chat has not been around since the 90s, not in the form that is used today.
  - wwweston 4y ago
    Now that I think about it, this is correct on at least one front: I can recall chat systems that existed in the 80s. What's the feature of today's chat systems makes them qualitatively different from those that are 30+ years old?
    - jeremyjh 4y ago
      emojis?
    - pjlegato 4y ago
      Today's chat systems are far more accessible to people with minimal to no technical background. Install an app on your phone and you're good to go. Almost anyone can and does use them. The level of technical knowledge required to connect to IRC or a BBS in the 80s was far higher, which meant that only a tiny fraction of people bothered.
      - Eupraxias 4y ago
subpixel 4y ago
I’d go further - it’s not just that we don’t need a way to ‘connect’ with people on a platform today (you can ping them in myriad ways). It’s that we don’t much want to anymore. The novelty of general-purpose social networking was twofold, in order depending on your circumstances at the time: - a new angle to seeking a mate - wow, a way to see what someone you don’t really know anymore is up to and say hi The former market opportunity is now filled by specialist apps. The latter, while it was fun for a while, and might still hold some prospect for thrills, is nothing to build a business around.
cookiengineer 4y ago
Social networks aren't that important to stay connected. In countries where there's still load shedding or shitty internet, people connect via whatsapp and gmail and you'll see advertising signs and paint on buildings and even cargo ships that just contain a whatsapp number and a gmail address. That's their form of the internet, because everything else won't even load with speeds less than 100kBit/s. Also: Whatsapp somehow works on dumbphones. I don't know how (yet) but there's apps for KaiOS, Samsung Bada and other old phones. I wonder if vendors reverse engineered the APIs and implemented their own clients.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > Also: Whatsapp somehow works on dumbphones. I don't know how (yet) but there's apps for KaiOS, Samsung Bada and other old phones. I wonder if vendors reverse engineered the APIs and implemented their own clients. How "dumb" are those dumbphones? I ask because since around 2002 (prior to smartphones), some phones allowed apps to be downloaded. From around 2005, most phones supported downloadable apps, written by third parties. They were called "midlets", written in Java, and I wrote a few of them myself.
srmarm 4y ago
Agreed, the closest thing to filling that general keeping in touch for me is WhatsApp groups (other group chat apps are available). In my social group that's where pics get shared, things get organised and general life updates go. Groups form quite naturally along lines that mirror real life and groups fall apart and people move on as they do in real life. Facebook had a short lived glory when we were all open with ourselves. But inevitably it wasn't long before the issues came. Someone posts a pic on a night out with some friends and another mutual friend gets upset they weren't invited. That creepy friend of a friend starts liking all your bikini pics. The nice friend of a friend starts posting attention seeking stuff that makes you like them a bit less. Family politics get aired in public. People shared less of their lives and except for a few egotists there isn't much of that old genuine content we all loved. It's all content aggregation filler now. Chat groups allow for keeping in touch but allows us to those groups like the 'No Homers Club'
- vishnugupta 4y ago
  That was exactly my assertion from couple of weeks ago [1] In India WA does an excellent job of being that social graph. There are segregated groups of family, colleagues, collage friends and what not. Messages, memes, updates are shared on those groups. Lot of commercial transactions also take place. So Facebook usage has dropped significantly. Of course WA is owned by FB. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32274785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32274785
lizknope 4y ago
I like my bubbles on reddit because I have a lot of niche interests. Geography, airplanes, retro computers, 1980's toys and cartoons. Reddit is great because there are multiple subreddits for these things. It's great that after 30+ years of never meeting someone who liked maps as much as I do I can share and discuss strange maps and talk about toys from my childhood.

thrown_22 4y ago

>What’s sought after now is meeting -other-, new, like-minded people and content. For that we have twitter, Reddit, TikTok, and whatnot. None of those sites are good for that any more. All the interesting people on reddit have been banned. No one sane uses twitter. And finding people to talk to on tiktok is plain impossible.

pasquinelli 4y ago

> What’s sought after now is meeting -other-, new, like-minded people and content. For that we have twitter, Reddit, TikTok, and whatnot. yeah, but meeting people there isn't really meeting people. the friends you have on those aren't real friends. you can stay in touch with a friend on social media, but if your friendship is only there it's only pretend.

Eupraxias 4y ago
Reddit is often great for reading nifty content, but the infantile, monoculture avatars turn me off from ever wanting to 'connect' with anyone.

beebmam 4y ago

> People want their bubbles. We’re all here on HN for that exact purpose. 100% disagree. I'm here to find ideas I disagree with and tell people how they're wrong. I'm not looking for an agreeable experience here. I'm also here to learn about new tech.

mulmen 4y ago
Bubbles don't need to be harmful. HN is a bubble. There are ideas that are not allowed here. There are other ideas that are explicitly promoted. This is the value proposition of HN. You are free to go elsewhere to get other perspectives or interactions. This is as it should be.
- tmaly 4y ago
  I try to shake that up from time to time. It is nice to see the other side of the discussion. Groupthink is not something to strive for.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mulmen 4y ago
    I’m not striving for groupthink. I’m seeking out a trusted (collective) voice.
- themitigating 4y ago
  It depends on what the bubble is about. If it's for a specific anime who cares but politics is a bubble whose influence exits the bubble
  - mulmen 4y ago
    Honestly I have no interest in discussing politics. It’s the social media of conversation. I prefer to talk to people about what interests them. Sometimes it is interesting. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes I agree with them. Sometimes I don’t. With most people all four are true. I form my own opinions from there. They change frequently. I vote based on my best current mental model.
- walterbell 4y ago
  > There are ideas that are not allowed here. It would be more accurate to say that some ideas require more work here. The reasons why are open to debate.

wwweston 4y ago

> You don’t need social networks to keep in touch with anyone anymore, their original raison d'être is gone. In what sense? The underlying social motivation/interest is still present. And it's not like fundamental communications capabilities have actually changed. Chat's been around since the 90s and SMS is the new email. And social network applications grew and thrived in those situations because pull-and-scan-social-feed across multiple circles has some distinct effort-reward profiles. I could see the argument that the algorithmic and advertising imposition eventually drive out enough of the value that people opt out, but that's a statement about the business lifecycle of a social network app, not the underlying reason people might use / like them.

spdionis 4y ago
Chat has not been around since the 90s, not in the form that is used today.
- wwweston 4y ago
  Now that I think about it, this is correct on at least one front: I can recall chat systems that existed in the 80s. What's the feature of today's chat systems makes them qualitatively different from those that are 30+ years old?
  - jeremyjh 4y ago
    emojis?
  - pjlegato 4y ago
    Today's chat systems are far more accessible to people with minimal to no technical background. Install an app on your phone and you're good to go. Almost anyone can and does use them. The level of technical knowledge required to connect to IRC or a BBS in the 80s was far higher, which meant that only a tiny fraction of people bothered.
    - Eupraxias 4y ago

subpixel 4y ago

I’d go further - it’s not just that we don’t need a way to ‘connect’ with people on a platform today (you can ping them in myriad ways). It’s that we don’t much want to anymore. The novelty of general-purpose social networking was twofold, in order depending on your circumstances at the time: - a new angle to seeking a mate - wow, a way to see what someone you don’t really know anymore is up to and say hi The former market opportunity is now filled by specialist apps. The latter, while it was fun for a while, and might still hold some prospect for thrills, is nothing to build a business around.

cookiengineer 4y ago

Social networks aren't that important to stay connected. In countries where there's still load shedding or shitty internet, people connect via whatsapp and gmail and you'll see advertising signs and paint on buildings and even cargo ships that just contain a whatsapp number and a gmail address. That's their form of the internet, because everything else won't even load with speeds less than 100kBit/s. Also: Whatsapp somehow works on dumbphones. I don't know how (yet) but there's apps for KaiOS, Samsung Bada and other old phones. I wonder if vendors reverse engineered the APIs and implemented their own clients.

lelanthran 4y ago
> Also: Whatsapp somehow works on dumbphones. I don't know how (yet) but there's apps for KaiOS, Samsung Bada and other old phones. I wonder if vendors reverse engineered the APIs and implemented their own clients. How "dumb" are those dumbphones? I ask because since around 2002 (prior to smartphones), some phones allowed apps to be downloaded. From around 2005, most phones supported downloadable apps, written by third parties. They were called "midlets", written in Java, and I wrote a few of them myself.

srmarm 4y ago

Agreed, the closest thing to filling that general keeping in touch for me is WhatsApp groups (other group chat apps are available). In my social group that's where pics get shared, things get organised and general life updates go. Groups form quite naturally along lines that mirror real life and groups fall apart and people move on as they do in real life. Facebook had a short lived glory when we were all open with ourselves. But inevitably it wasn't long before the issues came. Someone posts a pic on a night out with some friends and another mutual friend gets upset they weren't invited. That creepy friend of a friend starts liking all your bikini pics. The nice friend of a friend starts posting attention seeking stuff that makes you like them a bit less. Family politics get aired in public. People shared less of their lives and except for a few egotists there isn't much of that old genuine content we all loved. It's all content aggregation filler now. Chat groups allow for keeping in touch but allows us to those groups like the 'No Homers Club'

vishnugupta 4y ago
That was exactly my assertion from couple of weeks ago [1] In India WA does an excellent job of being that social graph. There are segregated groups of family, colleagues, collage friends and what not. Messages, memes, updates are shared on those groups. Lot of commercial transactions also take place. So Facebook usage has dropped significantly. Of course WA is owned by FB. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32274785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32274785

lizknope 4y ago

I like my bubbles on reddit because I have a lot of niche interests. Geography, airplanes, retro computers, 1980's toys and cartoons. Reddit is great because there are multiple subreddits for these things. It's great that after 30+ years of never meeting someone who liked maps as much as I do I can share and discuss strange maps and talk about toys from my childhood.