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[qwertz12345]

With all the controversy surrounding Twitter and Facebook, do you think there is room for a new type of social network site to emerge?

I used to be a pretty big fan of OG MySpace, and never did understand the appeal of Twitter and Facebook.

With that said, what do you like about all the big social network sites? What do you not like about all the big social network sites?

 

[ManaByte]

I think people are freaking out over Twitter and rushing without thinking to an open platform that lets its server admins read their private DMs.

Those same people are the ones who cheerleaded turning Twitter into an echo chamber over the last two years and now that someone is trying to turn that around they’re all pretending to flee the country.

 

[Mistake]

I expect twitter to gain market share, so no, not at the moment. Especially if security improvements happen. We saw how many users whatsapp lost after facebook bought it, so I know I’m not the only one thinking this.

For facebook I’m surprised it is even still relevant, but I suppose it’s called boomer book for a reason. Maybe it’ll die with cable tv

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

I really don't like Twitter's design at all. I find it odd and not useful at all. Facebook to me is confusing and ugly. This is because I use "social media" for information, not personal takes. Thank you very much.

 

[jason10mm]

Twitter will be fine, unless someone comes up with an even hotter hot take system. All the lefties will just virtue signal about quitting until a commonly agreed upon "reason" to continue with twitter is hatched from their overlords, something like "we MUST stay on twitter to counter-balance the hateful alt-righters, we CAN'T LET DEMOCRACY AND FREE SPEECH DIE!!!!....oh, BTW, have you seen a pic of my poodledoodle today and here is a 'deep thought' sent to me by an AIbot sowing discord."

 

[gaming_again]

Twitter’s strength is its mix of people. Currently any new social media site is doomed to fail because it has to be explicitly of one political stripe or another.

There is nothing more dull than a room full of people who agree with each other. And people love to hate-read.

So no, I don’t think so. Not yet.

 

[Fermbiz]

Truth Social

Spoiler

 

[AJUMP23]

There is always room for innovation in the market, but what that innovation is, I don't know.

 

[cormack12]

Facebook became uncool when it stopped being 'facebrag'.

Twitter replaced it when it became 'brag and earn validation'.

Insta is still in the game because essentially it's a form of both.

They're all still using the one-to-many publishing model though. Innovation will be figuring out how to give blend a more diverse conversation from toxic assholes

 

[EverydayBeast]

It’s funny tic tok emerged from vine which emerged from YouTube by todays standards yes a new social media can arrive now you, to last as long as Facebook is hard to do who beat MySpace and tumblr in the great social media war of the 2010s.

 

[Rat Rage]

I would be cool if there were a non-profit social media site made from users for users.

 

[spawn]

I think Tik tok is now the hip thing for younger people. My friends who are in their 30's still use facebook, but they only use it to share funny memes or post pics of their family. I have Twitter, but I barely post on it. I like to scroll through Twitter because my feed is much more interesting than Facebook. Facebook also has way too many ads. Youtube I use to listen to podcasts or for video game content

 

[TrebleShot]

Mastodon is kicking off Apparantly sort of a cross between slack and twitter

 

[thefool]

Always. Young people don’t want to hangout with older people.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I think people are freaking out over Twitter and rushing without thinking to an open platform that lets its server admins read their private DMs.

Those same people are the ones who cheerleaded turning Twitter into an echo chamber over the last two years and now that someone is trying to turn that around they’re all pretending to flee the country.

How many people who threatened to move to Canada in 2016 actually did it?

Yeah.

 

[smokeymicpot]

Of course, just won't be right away. It will be like oh a new site and slowly get big. Just will take time. It will none of the randoms sites people are talking about now though.

 

[WoJ]

We need less social media, not more.

 

[Vicetrailia]

Twitters downfall and the fact that it won’t be replaced because it is hard to make money from it will still probably spawn something new…that has money making potential.

 

[Dark Star]

TikTok is new and is a major success

I think the real next big social media trend will really be a focus on just being yourself instead of trying "flex" or "brag" . That app BeReal is kind of like that.

 

[Tams]

I really don't like Twitter's design at all. I find it odd and not useful at all. Facebook to me is confusing and ugly. This is because I use "social media" for information, not personal takes. Thank you very much.

The UI is shitty.

But it's ultimately a self-promotion and boasting platform.

I know even news organisations use it (too much), but you really shouldn't be using it for most information. Though some will naturally stay on such a service as the people providing the information are trying to boost their image too, even if anonymously like most leakers.

 

[Tams]

TikTok is new and is a major success

I think the real next big social media trend will really be a focus on just being yourself instead of trying "flex" or "brag" . That app BeReal is kind of like that.

That's assuming people really want to put their real selves out there in a medium where it's incredibly easy to manipulate how you appear.

Perhaps I'm far too cynical and will be shouting at clouds and telling kids to get off my lawn soon, but I can't help but think that most people want to brag and be validated. It's human nature, but social media is like distilling it down to a more pure form. And any alcoholic alcohol aficionado will tell you distilling too far is dangerous.

I think it's like people who think we can end war. It's idealistic at best, but more likely naïve and ignorant of/in denial about human nature.

 

[Blade2.0]

I think people are freaking out over Twitter and rushing without thinking to an open platform that lets its server admins read their private DMs.

Those same people are the ones who cheerleaded turning Twitter into an echo chamber over the last two years and now that someone is trying to turn that around they’re all pretending to flee the country.

what platform are they rushing to?

 

[ManaByte]

what platform are they rushing to?

Mastodon

 

[LegendOfKage]

With all the controversy surrounding Twitter and Facebook, do you think there is room for a new type of social network site to emerge?

No, which is exactly why Twitter has value. Any similar services made afterward will be instantly polarized due to how they handle speech. Thankfully, Twitter has a chance to avoid this. More censorious platforms may gain in popularity and some may move there. On the other hand, others already left for services like Truth social, which also kind of benefits Twitter.

For people who only want to be around others who think like they do, they have other services they can move to. For the rest of us who want to avoid censorship of ideas and options but also avoid an "anything goes" moderation free service, Twitter can hopefully become a middle ground, and that's only possible due to the fact that it already exists.

I used to be a pretty big fan of OG MySpace, and never did understand the appeal of Twitter and Facebook.

With that said, what do you like about all the big social network sites? What do you not like about all the big social network sites?

I like that they give everyone a voice. I don't like that they've basically monetized anger and division.

 

[chromhound]

Tiktok : young kids
Instagram: 20-38
Twitter: 28-50
Facebook: boomers

 

[V1LÆM]

of course there is.

i have a twitter but don't post on it. i only use it to follow local news, football clubs, bands, game studios, celebs, etc. the whole musk situation doesn't bother me. i think he will turn it around. i know people are going to mastodon and i wouldn't mind giving it a shot.

other than that i don't use any other social media. well i suppose forums can be considered social media. i do have a reddit account but again don't post on that and use it mostly to look at stupid photos videos and read about tv shows moves or games.

i mean i don't use facebook, instagram, tiktok, etc. meta can go take a fuck to themselves i absolutely refuse to go near anything they own and i hope zuck drives the entire company into the ground. seeing their stock tanking warms me up inside. i've tried tiktok out of curiosity and it was addictive flicking through short videos but i ended up deleting it. i'm too old for it and don't really understand it and its a bit creepy considering who the target audience is and it's run by china so yeah no thanks!

social media platforms will keep evolving. i remember the days of myspace and bebo lol. facebook killed that. twitter has always kinda been its own thing. instagram and tiktok i suppose are the biggest ones now. i'm not on instagram but seems like people are getting pissed off at that too. i think/hope facebook and instagram will fade away. i think twitter will stick around but it could be replaced with mastodon or something else. don't see tiktok going away any time soon.

 

[HoodWinked]

i remember when imgur was still a pretty good site, lots of memes and based opinions now its literally just leftist propaganda. but during that time i remember couple videos here and there you'd see a really lame staged video of chinese people with chinese watermark on them. anyways that ended up being tiktok slowly creeping in and in a couple years far surpassed imgur.

so really its likely only a matter of time until something new supplants the current social media networks.

 

[Vicetrailia]

TikTok is new and is a major success

I think the real next big social media trend will really be a focus on just being yourself instead of trying "flex" or "brag" . That app BeReal is kind of like that.

I wish. Honestly your real life friends on social media probably are BeReal level, but then you have the consumerism/capitalism side which is more dominant.

 

[pramod]

The last thing this world needs is more social media.

 

[StueyDuck]

Social media in general should all die, it's made humanity worse and kids stupid.

but the scary part is the one left standing is TikTok and oh boy is it waaaaaaay worse then the other two. People are quick to forget who owns TikTok

 

[Vicetrailia]

For the rest of us who want to avoid censorship of ideas and options but also avoid an "anything goes" moderation free service, Twitter can hopefully become a middle ground, and that's only possible due to the fact that it already exists.

Twitter was the middle ground considering it’s size. Things won’t be leaning any way that Elon thinks, and then still have a twitter level business.

Advertisers, those morherfuckers who have huge sway in how much money Elon makes do not want their ads running next to controversial content.

You may think that people should be exposed to your happy place for “ideas and options”, and that you should not get consequences for it.

But that does not fly with advertisers on this kind of stage. Advertisers are the reason why twitters TOS/content moderation policies are what they are.

Elon doesn’t drive shit unless he departs from the advertisers. But I’m actually concerned about this mass delusion thing going on.

Despite what Elon said, twitters moderation policy is unclear, their staffing situation is unpredictable, and they are smothered with negative news. Of course advertisers will break away so hard it’ll fuck twitter up, because the ads that they pay for will not work.

I know Elon is already publicly blaming the “woke” for it, and culture war fanatics will troll about it as always, but in reality he is just a fuckup.

 

[Melon Husk]

Always. Every 10 years or so. Genrally speaking, young people discover new networks and old people stay in their old ones.

P.S. Twitter is unusable without Tweetdeck to me.

 

[-Minsc-]

Always. Every 10 years or so. Genrally speaking, young people discover new networks and old people stay in their old ones.

When I reflect, I honestly believe the internet discussion forum is my platform of choice. That is where I gravitated out of high school. I only went to Facebook because it seemed like a way to locally connect with people and it does that job today.

In my own fantasy land I'd like to see all the locals switch over to a forum. Since I hate the advertising model the forum would be required to have some sort of paid service. Getting them there would be the hard part.

 

[LegendOfKage]

Twitter was the middle ground considering it’s size. Things won’t be leaning any way that Elon thinks, and then still have a twitter level business.

I think that will depend entirely on what he can do with the business. If he can grow the number of users and their engagement, advertisers will happily return to the platform. It's going to largely depend on if he can incentivize creators to join.

But even if none of this advertiser situation happened, I never really thought Musk would be making big changes to how moderation already works. It's more a matter of the edge cases that even the original Twitter CEO felt uncomfortable about.

 

[Porcile]

My idea for a social media site is an experimental one with no like button, no comments, no reposts, no mentions or tagging others, and you can follow someone but the person cant see who is following them. Would be interesting to see what would happen when you take out the dopamine hit aspect out of social media.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

When I reflect, I honestly believe the internet discussion forum is my platform of choice. That is where I gravitated out of high school. I only went to Facebook because it seemed like a way to locally connect with people and it does that job today.

In my own fantasy land I'd like to see all the locals switch over to a forum. Since I hate the advertising model the forum would be required to have some sort of paid service. Getting them there would be the hard part.

Interestingly enough NeoGAF has some functionalities like likes, replies, follows, but you don’t see this resulting in users making clickbait and shocking posts to boost engagement.

I guess we are just too fucking old.

 

[Maiden Voyage]

Interestingly enough NeoGAF has some functionalities like likes, replies, follows, but you don’t see this resulting in users making clickbait and shocking posts to boost engagement.

 

[YCoCg]

Nothing can ever be too popular to NOT be replaced down the line, people thought specific forums would be the go to, then Social Media showed up, people thought MySpace was too big to fail, then Facebook practically nuked it, then people thought nothing could replace Facebook, but then we got the branch off. Hell we even went through an era of Facebook just buying whatever was betting more popular.

 

[ReBurn]

In the case of Twitter I just find it interesting that the people who so boldly proclaimed that a "private" company can do whoever they want to while Twitter was handing out wrongthink bans and shaping political discourse through censorship are so upset now that Twitter is actually a private company. Overnight the thing they said was a good thing is now a bad thing.

Personally I hope all of the social media apps that give idiots a public platform die. I hope there's no next big thing. The world was a better place without them.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Serious question - do you think social media just tapped into inherent narcissism of a generation brought up via helicopter parenting thinking they are all unique and their opinion is valuable?

 

[AJUMP23]

Serious question - do you think social media just tapped into inherent narcissism of a generation brought up via helicopter parenting thinking they are all unique and their opinion is valuable?

And people over valuing their own importance.

 

[gaming_again]

Serious question - do you think social media just tapped into inherent narcissism of a generation brought up via helicopter parenting thinking they are all unique and their opinion is valuable?

Nah. If you somehow transported starlink and a million phones with infinite battery power to ancient Egypt, Celopatra would have ended up doing duck face to the camera during a leaked sex tape.

No single generation is powerful enough to change human nature.

 

[Maiden Voyage]

Serious question - do you think social media just tapped into inherent narcissism of a generation brought up via helicopter parenting thinking they are all unique and their opinion is valuable?

I think the narcissism is inherent in everyone, regardless of the conditions of upbringing. Whether we want to admit it or not, humans are susceptible to doing terrible things to others. Social media is an unchecked psychological experiment. It's quite clear that it brings no value to any one's life. It's just another delivery method for advertising and it allows influencers & celebrities alike to target people. NFTs & shitcoins are a great example of why that's a terrible thing.

Burn the whole thing down, I say.

 

[qthaumaturge]

TikTok is new and is a major success

It's success only because of zero ads.
Now they have more ads.
The moment that it has same amounts of ads as facebook it gonna die.

 

[lachesis]

There always will be a new and up-and-coming SNS sites. Things rise and fall down - just in different speeds.
Like snapchat (for a while it was pretty hot thing, but I haven't seen it mentioned for a while at all - is it still around?) - I think facebook and other stuff will follow the path of myspace, etc.
Instagram seems to be pretty popular and the most mainstream - but I think it will also go down as people move onto newer up and coming ones.
Kids, don't want to be associated with adults - so that's probably one of the reason...

 

[IDKFA]

Yes, but it'll be an echo chamber.

I know we can't talk politics here, but it's impossible to have this conversation without addressing politics. We can't talk about a schism within Twitter without discussing the political reasons behind it.

God, I miss having serious, mature political conversations on GAF.

 

[-Minsc-]

Social Media VS Social Network.

Over the weekend my mind sorted out an error in thinking I was blinded to. Perhaps, not an error but a different way of viewing. For some reason my mind used the term "social media" and had misplace the term "social network". Maybe they are interchangeable terms in the grand scheme. In my own head, "media" is what we consume and "network" is the structure which conveys the media. When I say media I'm referring to entertainment. Social media is about putting on a show. It's where people show off their fake lives, show off how much fun they are having or to find something to distract themselves. No wonder the Facebook news feed is over half filled with click bait sponsored articles.

I've been wondering how to use Facebook and whether it has value to keep in my life. This past week I found the value by posting a question about this thing I needed. As a result I connected with someone who is providing me with more than I wanted (maybe) for a cheaper price than if I went to a larger store. My mind went on to think of the importance of networking with local people and how the Facebook network allowed me to do so. Used correctly, Facebook is definitely a powerful took make connections and network with people.

With this connection in my mind I realized I had forgotten about the term "social network". Over a decade ago, "social network" was the term. Perhaps in some circles it still is, in the mainstream it is definitely "social media". Blinded by all the entertainment.

To network, I believe it's less important to care about which platform is "king" and more important to use the different tools available to make connections with people.

 

[Lasha]

Social media in general should all die, it's made humanity worse and kids stupid.

but the scary part is the one left standing is TikTok and oh boy is it waaaaaaay worse then the other two. People are quick to forget who owns TikTok

TikTok is social medias logical conclusion. An endless scroll of content algorithmically tailored to maximize your engagement. No literacy required because it's a visual medium. Low barrier to entry since filters, music, and effects are all provided. America may ban TikTok but the TikTok model will endure.

 

[-Minsc-]

I might as well network between two similar, yet different threads.

New platforms are formed all the time. Will they become used and popular? That is beyond me.

Today I'm thinking, instead of looking at the packaged service as a whole, we should break down and look at the various components which make up the service. I'll start with the user content.

Presented information

- Text
- Images
- Video

Stored information

- Text
- Images
- Video

Created information

- Text
- Images
- Video

For the most part, bodies of text is the only aspect I create, store and present on the platform. On Facebook, I typically take a picture or video and upload it later. These are stored and presented. On NeoGAF I have to option to externally link to outside storage for images and video. If I were one to post a large amount of pictures I would not use the image attachment feature.

In my view a new service should focus on the presentation of the information and allow easy connection to third party storage services. Here on GAF (XenForo?) we typically embed a YouTube video but it does not have to be YouTube.

Obviously, decentralizing is not a one size fits all solution. A centralized platform an be a little more hands off. Set it and forget it. The price is advertising. Decentralizing would require paying out of ones pocket.

The right balance between centralization and decentralization is a good topic to put thought into. Or even the right balance between paid and free-advertised services.

Hopefully my thoughts have come together in a somewhat coherent matter.

 

[Griffon]

The issue with twitter is that it's a mess of vastly different uses.

People use it for professional networking, other for self-promo, for press and news, others for memes, porn, and others for political hot takes and virtue signaling.
It's a complete mess of vastly different usecases and everything overlapping is making it an horrible eldritch nightmare.