Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

I have never used Snapchat so I might be off here but if I understand correctly, its main distinguishing feature is the ephemeral nature of content shared with it.

I find the concept of imposing artificial constraints on apps/interactions fascinating. Twitter was arguably the one to popularise the idea with its 140 character limit (perhaps by accident, the limit was initially there to support SMS) and now Snapchat (ephemeral posts). Are there any other apps that play on this theme?

Makes me wonder if there are other apps out there waiting to be "constrained". Here's some dumb ideas off the top of my head. What about a social network where you can only have 10 friends? What about an email inbox where you are limited to receiving X emails/hour (perhaps senders could bid on delivery priority?). What about a HN where you are only allowed to comment once a week? What about a continuous delivery system where you are blocked from releasing after you reach a quota of defects (I heard Google uses such a quota system internally)? What about a package repository which rejects packages with over 150 lines of code or some other quality metrics?

Instagram has restrictions on the aspect ratio of pictures.

Sometimes I like to consider an analogy between social networks/apps and bars. Just like a bar has a certain decor or a unique beverage or some other quirk that gives it its charm, each popular social network has some different constraints that give it it's unique feel.

> Instagram has restrictions on the aspect ratio of pictures.

I definitely think this is one of the reasons Instagram is so popular, together with the low resolution. It lowers the bar for when a picture is as good as it gets which makes people more prone of posting it.

wasn't Path, the restricted social network?

The Atlantic has a one-link-a-day social network, http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/08/this-why-atlantic-media-is-...

> What about a social network where you can only have 10 friends?

Path (https://path.com/) originally started as a social network where you could only have 150 friends

The limit was originally 50, then they changed it to 150 (and then 500?) and then removed totally.

That's unfortunate, I quite liked the concept of limiting the size of your social graph to one you can actually manage.

Seems like good idea in theory, but what if you have 50 friends and you want to add a new one? The network will force you to delete one friend.

Might just mean that you need to reclassify how close people are before you think of them as friends. I know lots of people, but I don't really want to interact with them on a regular basis.

It was a concept that techies seemed to like, but restricted its viral growth by design. In reality, not many people care enough about their "social graph" to curate and restrict. It's sort of why Google+ really diminished its "Circles" concept - a large percentage of people made a few circles and just lumped everyone in those, rather than multiple heterogeneous circles.

Reminds me of Slashdot's mod system where you were only given five mod points at a time at (IIRC) random intervals.

How about a video recording app that punishes you for shooting vertical.

I think it is mainly to catalyze the certain interaction among users.

What's the next big thing in social networks? Are there new social networks apps that are trending right now?

My younger girl cousin told me it's still Snapchat for her and WhatsApp is so 2013. The artificial restriction to one device bothers her (no website version).

A friend lost his WhatsApp chat conversions as someone stole his phone.

The next frontier in this respect is in the recruiting field.

Hello LinkedIn ;)

Oh yes please. Linkedin has been feature creeped to hell and hardly a minimization in purpose at all.

Imagine linkedin stripped down to a singular perfect professional profile? Instead of a maze of categorizations, all vaguely similar and meaningless.

Unfortunately, as is the case with all social networks, the functionality is secondary. Ubiquity is the game and sometimes that momentum is established just by being first.

I'm unsure if I'm doing it right but I've never used LinkedIn to secure an interview or job for that matter. I haven't met anyone who had done the same either and my Facebook LinkedIn friends list is basically 1:1.

I wonder what it would take for a MySpace Facebook migration for LinkedIn.

A significantly better product and/or at a lower price point that has enough marketing and buzz to spur a mass exodus.

There's a tipping point wherein there's enough momentum among a competitor to at least induce someone into signing up, if not fully converting.

In this respect, the feature would even be to hide the profile.

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