Bonfire – working to build safer, more open federated tools and communities

Re:Bonfire – working to build safer, more open federated too... by seanhunter on Friday October 14, 2022 @01:09AM (#33199867)

There were multiple mistakes other than that, but for example initially you needed an invite to Google+ and they artificially limited the number of invites. This worked great for them with gmail, creating an inflation of demand and a fomo effect but with Google+ it just meant if you were on Google+ noone you knew (who didn't actually work for Google) was on there and if you weren't on Google+ you couldn't get on unless you knew someone who worked for Google or was one step removed.

They built a business model that relies on network effects and then deliberately killed the network effect during the adoption phase.

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Re:Bonfire – working to build safer, more open federated too... by seti0Cha on Friday October 14, 2022 @09:48AM (#33203437)

Good point. I totally forgot about that dynamic. I now recall that by the time I got an invite I was already kind of sour on them. Not that I was actually excited to join, I just didn't like them inducing in me a feeling of being not one of the cool kids.

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Re:Bonfire – working to build safer, more open federated too... by seanhunter on Friday October 14, 2022 @10:10AM (#33203725)

Yeah. Exactly the same for me. It was a serious misstep because by all accounts some of the functionality (circles in particular) would have been a significant step forward for social media in general. By the time they realised their mistake and started pushing it (heavily) the ship had sailed.

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