Wikipedia is not a social network, but it definitely does get better as more people use it. Users-editors grow together, and wikipedia is a massive collaborative effort. It takes millions to make a wikipedia.

Define "better". On what metrics are you evaluating Wikipedia? Factuality, writing quality, etc? Wikipedia's process has driven away some of the most knowledgeable subject-matter experts into creating rival publications like Scholarpedia, and pre-Wikipedia incumbents like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy remain stronger imho, despite having fewer (but more qualified) editors.

>A social network is only worthwhile if it gains a critical mass of users such that there are enough friends on it (or sometimes, i.e. Twitter, enough interesting people on it) to make spending time there worthwhile. Massive growth is more important to the survival of a social network than to any other business model.

You can have a place that's worth spending time in without needing "massive" growth.

When the Internet first started to become a cultural force it was still sort of a niche thing. Normal people were on it, but the scattered mess of blogs and online bulletin boards were all over the place. You didn't need to have EVERYONE on every board, you just needed the board for your website to have enough cool people on it to build a community. They rarely got much bigger than a few hundred active members.

You can't make decaf coffee by making regular coffee and taking the caffeine out. You have to prepare the coffee beans in a different way. If you want a social network that doesn't repeat the sins of the current social networks.

For Facebook I don't think their revenue model was their original sin, the revenue model became as invasive and problematic as it was because the company was built by a creepy dude who didn't actually value individual privacy or community very much. If you want a social network that's not dehumanizing and doesn't contribute to atomizing individuals you're going to need to focus on more intimate, community focused interactions.

True that a social media network stands to benefit more from network effect than Wikipedia. But, we already have that for-profit social media network with a huge network effect, and are looking for an alternative. I'd appreciate them trying to find better ways to grow fast while providing an alternative to the creepy mess that is Facebook. Building yet another Facebook for a "good" set of investor this time around is not it.

Don't you think it'd be a better idea to use all that engineering prowess to build a fantastic product that people want to use, run it using a non-profit foundation, and make money for the non-profit foundation by doing exactly what they claim to be their plan now - offering enterprise customised solutions?

Saying that you need investor money to grow exponentially because that's the only way our crowd funded social network will work seems unreasonable/ethically unsustainable to me.

A social network with zero users is worthwhile if I can use it as a blog.

>Massive growth is more important to the survival of a social network than to any other business model.

Growth is. Massive growth is only relevant if you want to compete on the largest, global scale.