Ask HN: What features would make you switch to a new social platform? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What features would make you switch to a new social platform?

None

Features are not why people switch

If features were good enough, Google+ would have left Facebook in the dust

If features were good enough, Mastodon would have buried Twitter years ago

Adapting the adage "amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics" - "amateurs talk features, professionals talk problem solving"

"Features" are how bad marketers promote their offerings

Problem solving is how good marketers promote their offerings

You need to solve a problem for me to consider you - a 'feature' has never solved a single problem

Identify problems (real or imagined) that I have that your XYZ solves for me (at all; in a better way than what I am using now; etc), and you have a chance to get me to switch

Try to pitch me on your "features", and I will keep on surfing by

Aren't features solving problems?

From that viewpoint it makes sense to ask "what problems would a new social network have to solve?"

The problem I see is "bad behavior" which has forms like

(1) People who blame their problems on other categories of people

(2) Posts about the outrage of the day

(3) DMs from people who say "Hey!" who are really trying to qualify me for a romance scam

(4) OnlyFans stars who want to me to engage with them. I don't want to engage with them at all, but if I did, I wouldn't want to engage with them on a platform where I also engage with my sister-in-law.

Answers to some of those problems might involve taking features away, for instance (3) could be addressed by just not supporting DMs at all. For other people, (1-2) and (4) might be the whole reason they're there.

I have to wonder what problems you think social media solves at all (I'm inclined to agree "none." Most people just want blogs and email but no one is selling them that.)

I like having a place to share my photos and links similar to what I post to HN [1]

Blog have all sorts of problems:

(1) It takes a huge amount of effort to write, sysadmin, and promote. (Say an equal share to all three)

(2) If I was successful in promoting a blog in the AWS age I'd bankrupt myself, particularly if I was interested in publishing video, which a lot of people are.

(3) Between the shift to static generation and the horrors of content moderation I'd probably not want comments if I had a blog

Even technically savvy people have given up or retreated to Medium/Substack.

[1] https://bsky.app/profile/up-8.bsky.social and https://mastodon.social/@UP8

Github lets you use their CDN with zero admin work for free and if you outgrow Github Netfly lets you do the same for free with zero changes and like 5 minutes of admin work to set up. It's never been cheaper or easier to host a blog than in the AWS age.

EDIT: Didn't see 3) the first time but yeah I don't think comments do most people any good. Like I said blog + email covers what most people want it just isn't sold to them outside of places like substack (and even they really try hard to get people to use "notes" which is essentially orange twitter.)

And have you own domain name?

You don't have your own domain name with social media either. You can bring one if you want or just use xyz.github.io.

Note I do believe in POSSE

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

so if I did get around to blogging again I'd still be posting on social for visibility.

A folder to dump videos and pictures so that no one except close friends and relatives can politely ignore them while enjoying some ethereal sense of connection.

> Aren't features solving problems?

Not necessarily, but they can be.

Features are just checkboxes on a list

"Allows image posting" is a feature

"Creates envy among those who missed a party" is solving a problem

It's not the features but the folks.

It's both. We've come to expect certain things from social media sites, like accounts and privacy settings and moderation, because there are some features beyond our current technology. But if there was a social media website that had better discourse (on all levels) I dare say that would win out.

I dare say that HN but with better comments and commenters would quickly gain traction. Where that's the folks, sure, but the site's features do also affect the folks. eg at one end of the spectrum, a broken login system means no folk around to comment, and so one can imagine the opposite effect, where the perfect set of features raises the quality of comments. What that perfect blend of features are, I can't say. if I knew I would have built that site already

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