Ask HN: What comes after social media?

Opinion: small group threads. With the burnout from social media, I see people in my circles reverting to messaging smaller groups they know. Group text threads and single person chats are way up.

The excitement of getting home from work or school and actually phoning a friend, a colleague or a loved one and having a good old fashion conversation.

Though in its infancy, human to human interaction could lead the race towards a better future.

The world would look and feel wonderful again.

The answer is: small-size groupchats and they are already here. It depends on the location and your interests, but WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and Discord groups became prevalent in the previous few years (I don't know about Asia though). I'm personally a member of like 5-6 similar communities. There is virtually no overlap between these, separate groups of friends and people who share the same hobbies. Between 3 and 8 members per group. Usually async communication, but random audio/videocalls are also happening.

The actual platform/app is not really relevant outside of core functionality (chat, audio call, video call, attachments), the main motivational factors seem to be: - private: yes to inside jokes, no to unknown people - real: yes to random, realistic, sometimes ugly stuff; no to the empty and fake nature of social media as we know it - dynamic: spontaneous calls, random pictures about things we see, hear, experience - prefer actual reality more than virtual reality: groupchats work more like an augmentation than a replacement of real-life communication and gatherings