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Do you think there's potential to compete with Facebook?

RASA911216

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Given the current trends, the giant keeps growing but I'm thinking of the potential at entering the market using a blockchain based descentralized site. Making it focus on promoting growth and businesses like LinkedIn but with focus on organizations rather than individuals.
Only other similar attempt I've found was https://www.minds.com/ but it seems its not very big yet and there's an increase on free-speech blockchain based sites such as Discussions/ so it seems there's potential for the market to start opening on these niches. Do you think it'd be possible or its a dead end/overcrowded market? So far besides Minds and Discussions.App I haven't seen any potential competitors.

Thoughts?
 
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lowtek

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No. Facebook is an NSA / DoD project disguised as "free enterprise".

Any true competitor will be deplatformed and its owners shamed by the media, for crimes real or invented, to keep the sheep herded into one place.
 

Nick perry01

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No. Facebook is an NSA / DoD project disguised as "free enterprise".

Any true competitor will be deplatformed and its owners shamed by the media, for crimes real or invented, to keep the sheep herded into one place.
Damn the herders....LOL
 
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WillHurtDontCare

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No. Facebook is an NSA / DoD project disguised as "free enterprise".

Any true competitor will be deplatformed and its owners shamed by the media, for crimes real or invented, to keep the sheep herded into one place.

One of the more interesting posts on this forum.

Somebody pointed out to me a while ago that a major skill of the various alphabet organizations was their ability to find and finance companies who did the work for them (like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc).

It let the talented people do the work, and keep them far enough away for "plausible deniability."

P.S. I just bought your "Natural Language Processing From First Principles" Udemy course - looking forward to it.
 

MJ DeMarco

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No, unless a lot of things change.

Attempting to kill one head of the snake, just leaves the other two to kill you.

This was posted in another thread...

 

RASA911216

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RASA911216

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What problem do you plan to solve with blockchain technology? There are better ways to build a decentralized/unfederated social network, since there's no need for all metadata to be available to everyone when we aren't talking about monetary transactions. Look at ActivityPub - and look at what can be improved with the current solutions, like the Fediverse!
Just thought it may be useful to trade tokens like Discussions is doing and get users to enter trading markets so it could be like a second layer of the social network dedicated to business transactions between organizations.

Also the blockchain helps prevent issues like post deletion so it could be an attractive solution to people so worried about censorship. Nonetheless Discussions uses a semi-anonymous focus on account creation so I thought there is a niche for people that want to make real legal trade in their profiles (which would also discourage illegal activities as everything of that would be public both on the blockchain and in the site so all legal issues would go to the person rather than the company) and not have to contend with configuration issues.

People already make their life public on Facebook and Tik Tok, and they're not even directly paid to do so. So I wondered if adding more direct payment channels would be an attractive option to make them join too.

As much as I like the Fediverse, given the issues Gab had means it can still be easily controlled and I wouldn't want my project just being taken over or blocked from the network. So thought maybe decentralizing it would solve that pain point too.

Mind you I'm not an expert on social networks, just wondered if it was possible to compete with the big alphabet corps even if on a niche.
 
G

GuestUser4aMPs1

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No. Facebook is an NSA / DoD project disguised as "free enterprise".
Now THIS is something I wanna learn about. I'll grab the popcorn...!

Do You Think There's Potential To Compete With Facebook?

Only thing I see turning the tide is actually going smaller...more P2P messaging apps running decentralized and securely, out of prying eyes and censorship. Old school shit like going BACK to forums and chat rooms.

The only "Social Media" I use nowadays can be described as 'micro social' which, back to our human nature, seems to align more. Meaning, small text groups based on local things or topics of interests i.e. Discord/WhatsApp/Telegram Groups on HiveIndex, with each group's individual culture and standards.

Hundreds of Facebook "Friends" dilutes any sense of community and is a big turnoff...

...Which is also an opportunity!

Things are, at least, starting to go that way.
 
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Saavedra

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From what I last heard 2019sh Facebook was even starting to consider banning even Whisky groups so there is definitely parts of the market that are being left untapped there. Anything remotely controversial/adult/manly/political (if right or conservative or if left only if anti-globalism) will eventually be cut off, and that is a lof of people, people that have always existed and will always exist as long as we are still humans.

Here you have several competitors so you can check their approach

Tried steemit for a while and it did have some Internet pre 2010 feeling, seeing content from literally you neighboor next door (but on the other side of the world) every now and then. Like Gab used to be when you checked the global unfiltered feed back in 2019?.
 
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OverByte

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The value of a social network is directly proportional to the size of the network. Facebook's network is huge and this results in a sort of gravity where new users will continue to collect on that network.

Keeping in mind what I said about the value of a network, for a network to be worth billions it needs to have mass appeal. 99% of users don't care what tech stack the apps they use are based on. So a blockchain based site is at best going to appeal to niche interest (likely going after the more hardcore anti-censorship crowd). Maybe that's still a viable segment but the chances of it usurping facebook are basically 0. Keep in mind Facebook's revenue is ad dollars, ad dollars flow to where the users are, making FB richer/more powerful/less likely to be overcome since it will continue to garner more users than niche sites with little traction (in a perpetual cycle). Winner takes all is a natural consequence of digital products without boundaries.
 
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Guest-5ty5s4

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No. Facebook is an NSA / DoD project disguised as "free enterprise".

Any true competitor will be deplatformed and its owners shamed by the media, for crimes real or invented, to keep the sheep herded into one place.
Only recently learned about this, the DARPA Lifelog program...

Of course it's immediately dismissed as conspiracy, and it probably is, but a lot of things line up on the timeline and whatnot.

Pretty fascinating stuff - even just the fact that the government had the separate program to begin with!! :O
 

StrikingViper69

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Everyone complains about it... but everyone is also there (like @OverByte said in his post).

A few have come along that are actually better than Facebook, have nicer interfaces etc, but couldn't get the users to move over, so they died.

Vero, MeWe have all tried, and as far as I can tell they haven't made a dent in Facebook.

But we all thought that about MySpace and that had a rather tragic ending... so who's to say someone won't eventually put Facebook out of business?
 

RASA911216

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Hundreds of Facebook "Friends" dilutes any sense of community and is a big turnoff...
I see that too, like maybe if a method to form closer relationships forms, maybe even something like Tinder but more efficient and relationship based (friendships or business alliances). Could also compete with LinkedIn.
From what I last heard 2019sh Facebook was even starting to consider banning even Whisky groups so there is definitely parts of the market that are being left untapped there. Anything remotely controversial/adult/manly/political (if right or conservative or if left only if anti-globalism) will eventually be cut off, and that is a lof of people, people that have always existed and will always exist as long as we are still humans.

Here you have several competitors so you can check their approach

Tried steemit for a while and it did have some Internet pre 2010 feeling, seeing content from literally you neighboor next door (but on the other side of the world) every now and then. Like Gab used to when you checked the global unfiltered fee back in 2019?.
Thanks a lot for the link! Will check them out, the more I look at it, the more it seems like a descentralized (not necessarily blockchain based) approach might work.

As others have mentioned no way to compete with Facebook resources but if they keep banning stuff then the market will also start shrinking and looking for alternatives. And these are not too controversial topics, like what's so bad about whisky?
 
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RASA911216

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Everyone complains about it... but everyone is also there (like @OverByte said in his post).

A few have come along that are actually better than Facebook, have nicer interfaces etc, but couldn't get the users to move over, so they died.

Vero, MeWe have all tried, and as far as I can tell they haven't made a dent in Facebook.

But we all thought that about MySpace and that had a rather tragic ending... so who's to say someone won't eventually put Facebook out of business?
To be fair it seems people are also moving towards video like formats, if Tik Tok is any reference to go by they are moving to that form of media. Although that one seems more complicated to compete against, since its more on the alley of LBRY/Odysee. And they're already doing quite well to fill that niche, I'm impressed by the amount of videos and growth they've had as descentralized alt to YouTube are.
 

Bekit

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Given the current trends, the giant keeps growing but I'm thinking of the potential at entering the market using a blockchain based descentralized site. Making it focus on promoting growth and businesses like LinkedIn but with focus on organizations rather than individuals.
Only other similar attempt I've found was https://www.minds.com/ but it seems its not very big yet and there's an increase on free-speech blockchain based sites such as Discussions/ so it seems there's potential for the market to start opening on these niches. Do you think it'd be possible or its a dead end/overcrowded market? So far besides Minds and Discussions.App I haven't seen any potential competitors.

Thoughts?
Have you checked out Bitclout? It's a blockchain-based social media platform similar to Twitter that also allows creators to mint and sell NFTs. It has gathered a fair amount of traction.

From the BitClout Guide,

BitClout is a new type of social network that mixes speculation and social media, and it’s built from the ground up as its own custom blockchain. Its architecture is similar to Bitcoin, only it can support complex social network data like posts, profiles, follows, speculation features, and much more at significantly higher throughput and scale. Like Bitcoin, BitClout is a fully open-source project and there is no company behind it-- it’s just coins and code.

The inspiration for BitClout hinges on one key insight: If you can properly mix monetary speculation with social media, you not only end up with a novel product that creates innovative ways for creators to monetize, but you also end up with a totally new business model that solves these problems, and that isn't based on ads.

The BitClout blockchain has its own native cryptocurrency, called BitClout, that you can use to do all kinds of things on the platform, including buy a new type of asset called “creator coins,” discussed below.

What are Creator Coins?
Everyone Has a Coin
Every profile on the platform gets its own coin that anybody can buy and sell. We call these coins “creator coins,” and you can have your own coin too simply by creating a profile. The price of each coin goes up when people buy and goes down when people sell.
You Can Buy Your Favorite Person’s Coin
To buy someone’s coin, you simply navigate to their profile and hit “Buy.”

What Are Creator Coins Useful For?
Creator coins are a new type of asset class that is tied to the reputation of an individual, rather than to a company or commodity. They are truly the first tool we have as a society to trade “social clout” as an asset. If people understand this, then the value of someone’s coin should be correlated to that person’s standing in society. For example, if Elon Musk succeeds in landing the first person on Mars, his coin price should theoretically go up. And if, in contrast, he makes a racial slur during a press conference, his coin price should theoretically go down. Thus, people who believe in someone’s potential can buy their coin and succeed with them financially when that person realizes their potential. And traders can make money buying and selling the ups and downs.
 

RASA911216

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Have you checked out Bitclout? It's a blockchain-based social media platform similar to Twitter that also allows creators to mint and sell NFTs. It has gathered a fair amount of traction.

From the BitClout Guide,
Didn't know of it but will check it out. Seems there's more competitors than I thought.
 
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MJ DeMarco

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mr4ffe

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RASA911216

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fearo

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But why? Is blockchain bogus?

Blockchain is most definitely NOT bogus. I believe Blockchain is a serious game changer......I'm not talking about Crypto currency here I'm talking about distributed apps & the fundamental changes to the way we all do business. To me Blockchain is an inevitable shift ......look out if you are a traditional intermediary today, your business model is about to get seriously undermined.
 

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