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A comment on Ask HN: Facebook alternative - would you start one?.

Re:Ask HN: Facebook alternative - would you start one? by richardw on Monday May 03, 2010 @03:41PM (#1315854)
To murder any competitor, Facebook only has to change their privacy (or other natives) "enough" - whatever prevents enough people from leaving. While you have to create a new model from scratch, get funding, find users, build up a platinum-standard brand...Facebook has to...jiggle the privacy settings a bit? I'd suggest that you'd need a seriously different model to succeed. Not "Facebook with a few changes", but "something Facebook can't get to without breaking their model".

The network effects of having every friend and family member you have on a website is very hard to beat. Google is trying. Yes it can possibly be done, but a couple of privacy tweaks won't do it.

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Re:Ask HN: Facebook alternative - would you start one? by spitfire on Monday May 03, 2010 @04:39PM (#1316003)
Have you ever been in a relationship? Once trust is gone you can never get it back. No mater how hard you try.

Once Mark Zuckerberg loses people's trust - which it seems he is doing so now, he can never regain it.

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Re:Ask HN: Facebook alternative - would you start one? by richardw on Tuesday May 04, 2010 @12:54AM (#1317115)
Agreed it's a huge risk, but FB users have been getting shafted for ages in terms of privacy, and have hardly blinked. Geeks and privacy-oriented people yes, but most just want to share pics, see what their friends are doing and play games. It's easier to tweak their privacy settings than move to a place where they can't as easily (or automatically) share pics, have to build up their friend network from scratch, and there aren't as many games.
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Re:Ask HN: Facebook alternative - would you start one? by neurotech1 on Monday May 03, 2010 @04:01PM (#1315914)
I agree that I'd need a seriously different business model.

My plan so far, for social networking, is a medical/health site, probably using BuddyPress on top of WordPress. I realize that BuddyPress may not scale, nor compete with FB but work be a good first step for a minimally viable network.

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Re:Ask HN: Facebook alternative - would you start one? by richardw on Monday May 03, 2010 @04:36PM (#1315995)
That's not a bad idea, because you're focusing on a segment that FB can't really aim at because it's just too small. That way, you can fulfil your customers' needs better than FB could. The risk is that an app could leverage the FB environment to replicate what you're doing, or an existing health site could pop some Facebook Connect or other social aspect onto their offering...but no reason not to try. Good luck!
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