[civilized]

Facebook stays big because nobody else seems to have the magic combination of (1) a more compelling product vision for a social network, (2) capacity to execute and scale that vision.

Come on, can't anyone make a product that connects friends better than FB? I'm sure it's technically amazing, but from a product perspective, my god, look at the thing, it's an absolute garbage fire. You can tell from the notifications it sends that it wants you to watch shitty videos and read shitty news articles alone, not connect you with your friends.

Make a social network that feels like an actual social space and not an ad-infested media shithole, and I'll sign up, my friends will sign up, everyone will sign up, and FB will be toast in a couple months.

[wintermutestwin]

I agree with you, but queue the responses implying that without adtech stalkerware there is no way to pay for it.

My response to that tired theme: you don't need a mega $B valuation to pay for a simple social network for sharing baby pics with friends and family. A non-profit or a benefit corp structure would be just fine.

[civilized]

Check out RStudio PBC. Incredible tech company. Doing just fine.

And people pay $10/mo for Netflix, why wouldn't they pay a few bucks a month for an actually good social network? Heck, make it free for a month or six, no credit card needed, and when people see how good it is they won't leave. I pay for Disney+ just to let my kids watch Disney movies BECAUSE THEY'RE GOOD.

[ziml77]

You need a lot of people using the service for people to find it worth paying for. I saw this with Pillowfort; intended to be a place for the people who had been forced off of Tumblr to go. They require a one-time $5 payment to create an account because they don't want to bring in investors and be forced to exploit their users to maximize earnings. This payment stopped a lot of people from joining. They are used to being able to share their art and socialize online for free. And they had no guarantee that others would join and stick with the site.

[wccrawford]

People subscribe to Netflix (and its competition) because there's no legal way to get that service for free, and it doesn't matter if their friends are also using that same service.

People won't subscribe to a non-free Facebook competitor because Facebook is free and none of their friends are on the non-free competitor... And most of their friends never will be.

[civilized]

I get the idea, but I feel FB sucks so badly that eventually a much better product will figure out a way through the gauntlet. There's a lot of money sloshing around out there with nothing to do.

Most likely the product will be free for a while and switch to paid. It kind of sucks but for a really good product it could work.

[yellowapple]

That, or it remains free to use, but offers optional paid features. Seems to work well enough for free-to-play video games; Fortnite is presumably a decent enough money maker for Epic Games, for example.

This is almost Reddit's model (with Reddit Gold, and now the various other comment/post awards added recently), except Reddit also sells ads; it'd be interesting to see if the awards alone are enough to keep the lights on absent a need to appease investors.