[squarefoot]

Any alternative wouldn't be that different from today's Facebook because when common users looks for social media platform they will always go to the one with the higher users base, most of them at least will do. Number often win on quality in that context, especially when money can buy well crafted PR campaigns. Pay a thousand handsome guys/girls to appear there, get some popular actors/bands on board, create controversial content and channels where people can fight each other and users will flock in.

We already have the technology and part of the infrastructure to build a decentralized alternative for people wanting more, they're called Usenet and p2p. I believe the NNTP protocol could be extended to exchange data using binary only compressed and encrypted blobs for text and small binaries. Should an user upload a bigger binary, it could be automatically diverted to a p2p trackerless environment (torrent+magnet for example) and its corresponding link (magnet link) added to the post so that followers can download at their will or choose to opt out. This could be either left to the server or the client, which of course need to be modified anyway to reflect the protocol changes. NNTP clients UIs could be updated to become more modern (discussion centered) not that different from the Geary email client (plus some gfx) for example.

I'm not expert in either of these platforms, that's just an idea that came to mind some months ago. Would it be feasible to invest in a NNTP resurrection rather than starting over?

[PeOe]

The higher user base is important that´s right. But pay them to join might not be the best way. I would say, you need to analyze Facebook and their weaknesses. Then aim to solve those weaknesses with your product and use such failures of Facebook like last weak to convince Facebook user to join your product.