These sorts of sites should really be called Content Sharing sites or something.

I care about a social networking site because my social network is on it, not because some third party goes through effort to post content. I want content from sites like hackernews because it is interesting in and of itself. I want posts of my parents’ dog because I care about my parents.

These are two totally different use cases and I don’t see what we gain from conflating them.

This is why Facebook sucks (it combines the two), while Reddit was good for a long time (of course Reddit has gone downhill in implementation, but the concept is solid).

I've pretty much always had this problem when making niche social networks. Get 30-50 people sign up, it gets some very mild interaction in the first month (by typically only a few of the people who signed up), and then dies. (Maybe happened in 5-6 different groups over the years people have started.)

I've taken this to mean the individuals in the group just don't really need another social platform. But I do wonder if there is a better way to get small communities like this to engage so it is more spread out.

That's slightly different from my experience, in which I built a niche social network for music explorers, but it also has bookmarking features.

I noticed a sustained usage from very few people (perhaps 10-20 users), even after a year.

So clearly there's some value other than the social aspect of the site. Not sure what to make of it though.

The way other platforms did it is by either being the first and getting rapid growth that way, or by being exclusive and building your appeal. Facebook did the latter - first Harvard only, then a couple more uni's, and by that time they had the critical mass to sustain a proper platform.

> They get more valuable the more people are on it. Imagine a platform with 100 people on it. Nobody's going to put effort into putting content on that.

Self-hosting and network size are independent. What matters is how many people use the protocol.

If Alice has her own instance and she's the only one on it, she should still be able to go to any other instance and seamlessly make a post as alice@aliceserver . Then she (i.e. her server) gets notified if the people there reply to it, anyone there can follow her and have her posts from her own server show up in their feed etc.

If the protocol was popular then your self-hosted server that only five people use would be in a network with a billion people. See email.

> They get more valuable the more people are on it.

That depends on your definition of value. I am craving for a small easy-to-use platform for people who are maybe all interested in a certain activity, talk about it, know each other, and support each other. Hopefully, that platform would stay so small that it would not be worth it to flood it with crap content made just as an advertising vehicle, fake reviews, narcissists trying to get attention, and all that crap that comes with the size.

Also, let me question a bit your claim that eyeballs are on X, etc. - I kind of agree, but only if we are talking about people who already have an audience. If you start on Twitter now, nobody will hear you. It's like shouting into emptiness. You have to scream really loud to get attention... and not everybody wants to be a screamer.

Am I wrong? Is it still possible to build an audience by being authentic, without things like commenting not because you have something to say but because you want to get noticed? Or YouTube... is it still possible to be seen without chasing retention and all the things Mr Beast talks about?

I miss those days of small internet when you could start a blog just for fun, about something that you simply liked, and people would somehow find you without the need to stuff your content with SEO words, do social media, link-building, and god knows what else people have to do these days.

Or maybe... am I turning into a "good old days" old dude?

I'm still operating a vBulletin that started out as a PhpBB 20+ years ago, and I think we still have regulars in the hundreds - though it used to be the thousands. Ostensibly, it's a community around Nine Inch Nails, but realistically it's always been community first, band fandom second. It's just the band was the impetus to get the people into the proverbial room.

> Nobody's going to put effort into putting content on that.

Why not? Most people just want to show stuff to their friends, they don't care about being influencers and so on.

If people just want to show things to friends, then they just need a file host. Social networks "just for friends" are a dime a dozen now.

Since most simple "just for friends"-quality platforms aren't thriving, we can assume this assumption is wrong.

The concept is thriving though, it's group texts, dm groups, emails, chat apps.

There is just no reason to go onto an app for it

I agree. But those are not social media platforms. Which I'll reiterate my point: People do not use social media platforms just to share things with friends. You don't need a social media platform to text your friends. There exists other motivations for people to use social media platforms. Without those other motivations being satisfied, the platform is no better than email/group chat/etc, which are all easy to swap to or from, making it useless.

The fact that people both use social media and have off-platform group chats should indicate that they serve different purposes.

> The fact that people both use social media and have off-platform group chats should indicate that they serve different purposes.

Do you mean that social media platforms are distinctively for exploring content outside the people you know? Leaving aside the technical side, it seems to always come down to a social spectrum of public/private. From open web to social media like FB and Twitter to private group chats to private one-to-one chats. Another spectrum seems to be the one between topic/content-focused on one side and people/social-focused on the other, and everything in between.

I think this is something more akin to a small WhatsApp group. And people definitely post on those.

Since I stopped using Facebook, my "Family" Whatsapp group is almost the only way I have to keep in touch with my extended family. Several of us post regularly, exactly because we only want our relatives to see our posts.

Most effort is spent in local group chats of around 100 people. The thing is they are local, and occasionally people meet in real life.

Yup. Weird internet never went anywhere. You’ve always been able to find bespoke, organic, locally owned, premium grade A hipster indie stuff online.

It’s just not as popular to as many people.

Disagree with that statement. Social media started it's decline when they became platforms. That's the thing ruining it. Facebook was fun-ish when it was just friends posting party pics and became bad when it started to become a one directional platform for non personal accounts.

So social networks are great except for all the damn people on it?

The people who joined before you are the cool people, those who joined after you are the ones ruining everything.

How did you get that from my comment?

I said all the non-personal accounts. Accounts using it as a platform. Celebrity brands, business accounts, influencer, anything that's one directional. Maybe technically they are "people" but they're using it in a one directional way

Ah yes I see what you're saying now.

What I meant by "platform" is that it's a meeting place for many people and it only has value because there's a lot of people already there.

You are so wrong, check out Subreply.

An exclusive golf club for billionaires is also a platform. Of around 100 people. That most people would kill to penetrate.

True. The quality of a platform is also based on the quality of the people. And your example is more of the same: perceived opportunities for money or power.

The quality of the content, at least. Reddit grew by having the co-founders use sockpuppet accounts to cross-post things from other link aggregator sites.

I think most of the ordinary people, myself included, wouldn't know what to tell them. What am I going to do with them? Ask them for money? Convince to invest in my idea?

Discuss golf?