I don't think the Facebook-killer will be an app for individual communities. I think open sourcing dev.to is a great idea, but there are already Reddit and phpBB for people who want to start communities. (It might kill Medium though, as its design seems to encourage writing articles, not just posts.) It seems to me that Facebook's bread and butter is that it's a way to keep in touch with your family and old friends. That's not a "community" in the online sense, it's something else.
The other thing about trying to kill Facebook is that whoever wants to do it shouldn't take VC money. The VC model encourages explosive growth at the expense of stability or ethics. And if you grow big enough to threaten Facebook, either you become the new Facebook (with all the bad that entails) or you get acquired by Facebook.
What's the alternative? A centralized nonprofit, like Wikimedia but for social? Mumble mumble blockchain like Steemit? I don't know. Maybe something built upon e-mail, because everybody already has it, but then you have to compete with GMail.
I think you're pretty on point. I think there is nuanced ways I could counter a bit of what you said, but I don't think that's necessary. Our outlook is that we're building something useful regardless of how you consume it and a business that can either grow big or stay small-to-medium and have each path be perfectly fine.
Of course, thanks for being a continued reader of the great stuff the community is producing Dustin.
I don't think the Facebook-killer will be an app for individual communities. I think open sourcing dev.to is a great idea, but there are already Reddit and phpBB for people who want to start communities. (It might kill Medium though, as its design seems to encourage writing articles, not just posts.) It seems to me that Facebook's bread and butter is that it's a way to keep in touch with your family and old friends. That's not a "community" in the online sense, it's something else.
The other thing about trying to kill Facebook is that whoever wants to do it shouldn't take VC money. The VC model encourages explosive growth at the expense of stability or ethics. And if you grow big enough to threaten Facebook, either you become the new Facebook (with all the bad that entails) or you get acquired by Facebook.
What's the alternative? A centralized nonprofit, like Wikimedia but for social? Mumble mumble blockchain like Steemit? I don't know. Maybe something built upon e-mail, because everybody already has it, but then you have to compete with GMail.
I should add that I mainly consume dev.to through twitter, so I could have a completely skewed view of its social features.
I think you're pretty on point. I think there is nuanced ways I could counter a bit of what you said, but I don't think that's necessary. Our outlook is that we're building something useful regardless of how you consume it and a business that can either grow big or stay small-to-medium and have each path be perfectly fine.
Of course, thanks for being a continued reader of the great stuff the community is producing Dustin.
Sorry if that was too negative. To be fair, nobody knew Facebook was going to be the MySpace-killer.