Facebook Bans Links to Competing Social Network | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Bans Links to Competing Social Network

ksat.com

19 pointsKinnard12 comments

This is rather interesting, and the second case of FB using its spam filter as an excuse to ban an unfavorable site or article this month, as mentioned here on HN.

I went to the competing site and found it quite interesting, actually and signed up. I think there is compelling opportunity for people to use it. After all, if you are actually compensated for the quality of what you share, that could be a significant disruption to how social networks operate. I'm optimistic so far.

This definitely feels like they're advertising using through Streisand effect. Especially as it looks like it's pretty simple for them to get unbanned - don't have a function that allows users to post to both at the same time

> Facebook says it will unblock Tsu if it changes just one thing: Tsu users shouldn't be able to simultaneously post to Tsu and Facebook.

Apparently I signed up to this site at some point in October last year and have since completely forgotten about it. I actually thought there was something dodgy going on at first when my email address was in the login field!

As for the site itself, I think the adverts are a bit much and can definitely see why Facebook sees it as spammy. Don't get me wrong the adverts aren't terrible, but there are at least 4 of them on every page I browsed to - all of which were animated images. I was also unable to reproduce it but there was also a "Sponsored" post under my one single post on my profile which was also animated, excessively so even. I wouldn't go as far as to say it needed an epilepsy warning before it started but it wasn't far off!

I think the problem is that there's money involved. The more people see your post, the more you earn. The more people you invite in, the more people see your post. That's definitely an easy-bake recipe for spam.

Having a browse round (indirectly via Google searches as I somehow signed up without joining a network) I couldn't find any profiles that were there for any other reason than solely to make money on their posts. From what I can see this isn't really a social network, it's a get rich quick scheme..

> The other half of your earned revenue on tsū comes from the growth and activity of your personal social network. One third of all users’ content-generated revenue is passed up to the person that directly invited them to join tsū. A third of the remaining shared revenue will then go to the person that invited that user, and so on.

..if not pyramid scheme.

The irony is that the publicity generated from the mass banning might actually be helping tsu

Anybody trying to compete with Facebook now is setting themselves up for failure. Even Google could not make a dent. We need to wait for fb to make a blunder. Right now, they are at the top of their game.

I disagree; it just takes a good idea, and anything can be disrupted. That FB is actually censoring mentions of the site does show to some extent that FB is a bit worried.

Google's social networks didn't really take off for a lot of reasons, mainly because they weren't really offering anything new that people would find preferable over what they were already using, which was FB or Twitter.

While it's a nice thought that 'it just takes a good idea' but that's patently false. Social networks are heavily effected by network effects (what a surprise?). Additionally, while I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but an idea without execution is beyond worthless. Social networks are extra difficult because there isn't much to drive most people off of one unless all their friends also move.

I still disagree, I think we've just seen the beginning of what social networks will do in this century. Facebook is barely scratching the surface, and there is ample room for disruption. It is inevitable that new ideas will emerge, and they will be embraced.

You are moving the goal posts here quite a bit. Do I think that facebook will forever be a giant, without question? Of course not. What I disagree with is that all it takes is a good idea.

I believe that the more likely course of action, as others have stated, is facebook will make mistakes which will be capitalized upon. Large organizations gain cruft, slow down, choose the wrong direction. Many things can happen.

I agree that good execution is required, but I usually assume, perhaps mistakenly, that this is implied.

If you ever do consulting, you will run into your fair share of 'great social networking' ideas :)

I've heard quite a few, but none I'd consider "great" by any means.

IMHO the problem with many competing social networks (Tsu, Ello, Diaspora, etc) is that they try to be exactly like Facebook. So in practice they become crappy subsets of Facebook. Then nobody has much interest in using them because Facebook is a much better Facebook.

The more interesting competitors tend to pick a narrower use case (say, sending secret pictures) and become really good at it.

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