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by galdosdi 3017 days ago
To solve this chicken and egg problem, you could build a social network that interoperates with Facebook -- use a combination of public (and undocumented browser to server) APIs to proxy communications back and forth. Then anyone who wants to use Competitorbook can still talk to people on Facebook through it, allowing competing social networks to naturally grow without network effect problems.

This would threaten FB and immediately lead to an API blocking arms race, to be followed by a legal challenge. If you're well funded and win the legal challenge (which hey, IANAL at all, but the comparison between FB today and Bell in its time is not crazy) you win.
1 comments
toomuchtodo 3017 days ago
What if it piggybacked off of Signal instead?

After the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, I’ve told all of my Facebook Messenger contacts that I’ll only chat on Signal from now on. With Signal providing identity management (and backed by a foundation with $50 million in the bank), that might reduce the bootstrapping necessary.

Start with profiles, then groups, then events, and grow from there.

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