[nailer]

Nobody was on Facebook. Everyone already has a MySpace profile so what’s the point.

Nobody was on Instagram. They got all their traffic from people posting photos on Twitter.

Nobody was on TikTok. They got all their traffic from people reposting TikToks on Instagram stories.

I’m not saying this project will succeed but it’s absolutely possible to build a new business social network.

[itchyouch]

Each one was supplanted by the next gen for "coolness".

The next thing after TikTok is going to be whatever gen A/B/C decide are the "cool" platforms. It could be a new 4th or they might recycle an old platform, the way that Adidas and Reekbok and Fila came back for sneakers for a bit.

For corporate social networking, the inertia of "cool" doesn't necessarily have an uncool factor that needs to be overcome in a similar way.

Will be interesting to see how the space plays out though.

[fragmede]

Facebook had the cachet of being for college grads from Harvard and MIT. TikTok had the pandemic to help it along. (Not sure about Instagram.) There was also the mass migration from Digg to Reddit because of an unpopular redesign of the former. Is it possible? Absolutely, yes. But there needs to be a catalyst to make it happen that I don't think that can be caused with money.

[nailer]

That's true, but Facebook also had innovations: it was one the first popular websites to ask what people's actual first and last name was, then use that as their handle. It used AJAX relatively early. It had a better design than MySpace.

Likewise, I suspect Reddit got more growth through innovation - allowing people to create arbitrary subreddits - than through the Digg v4 mess.

Having a design that encourages trust (with a clean UI video content) is a good innovation over LinkedIn.

Is it enough? Probably not.

Is LinkedIn weak in other areas? Yes, fraud is huge. People lie about job titles and work dates and even entire roles. Tying in with Rippling etc, could defeat that. There's catalysts like you mention too: Reid Hoffman has also been accused of funding political violence via the recent ActBlue scandal in which 7 board members resigned.

[BigGreenJorts]

Also inclined to agree with the innovation angle on TikTok. Was already growing and I think rather than Instagram, their in-flow was from Snapchat where Gen z/alpha were already trained on exploring filters and tools and TikTok expanded on that with extensive video editing tools and being feed first, creation later (default open mode on Snapchat remains the camera view).

[Zak]

Instagram caught the smartphone wave.

[arkh]

Also you don't have to eat the big fish: a better, smaller network aimed at a specific niche adding functionalities needed for said niche should be able to generate some profit. You may not get your 3 commas exit but setting up a business generating money is already a better result than most.

[bjt]

I think this is an important take. You don't have to be Tinder replacing match.com. You can be JDate.