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A protocol that can change the future of Social Networks (b-mc2.com)

19 points by jdubray ↗ HN
I designed a simple protocol, which can help develop a world of interest-centric activity based social networks.

2013, might well be the end of the "Social Utility" model.

Disclosure: This is a rewrite of a post that generated some interest last week-end, but addressed some of the concerns people had about it.

11 comments

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bitdiddle
I haven't really thought this out, but superficially I read things like this and wonder how any investor can hold Facebook stock.
lmm
I was close to the Google+ launch. Nothing has made me more confident in Facebook's future.
gbog
This post seem convoluted but heading in the right direction. Social interaction should be like emails: a client you choose and a protocol to communicate with other clients.
csmatt
I think he's correct in some of his predictions. I don't care to interact virtually with acquaintances and would rather make new real-world friends. I started building SociaLocale for this exact reason. It's an interest and location based social tool. It's in super-duper alpha at the moment, but can be found at http://socialocale.appspot.com . Will eventually do a Show HN once I'm confident it'll handle the load :)
kamjam
I think he makes very little sense to be honest. I have a Google+ account which I never use or post anything to because the majority of my friends are on Facebook. All the people I have added on Facebook I have met in real life and are real world friends either present or past (people I used to go to school with) and certainly all people I would like to meet up for a beer with again. I have maybe 150 people on my friends list, just don't be a douche and add every single person you ever meet in the street and you should be ok!

I have a LinkedIn and Twitter account, which are strictly used for professional purposes. No bitching, no moaning, very little swearing (if any). Separation of concerns. I think the fact that Facebook is a Social network would have given that away. I like the fact it is closed, I don't have followers and groups now allow me to target some of my posts. (The only thing FB is missing is Circles, that would allow me to truly separate out different groups of people).

a) it’s too easy to build: technologies or how easy something is to build plays no part in it's popularity, the end user really doesn't care and your average user doesn't know what that .php, .aspx or .js extension really actually means.

b) it has no (large scale) viable business model: It has a viable business model, possibly just not as large as the one the market has put on it, 2 different things in my opinion.

c) this is not what people want: clearly it is otherwise there wouldn't be a billion people using it. I want everything in one place, it's one of the reasons I visit HN, I don't want to go to several different specialist sites to keep up to date with my friends. It's also the same reason I don't use Google+, because I have 7 friends on there and even they hardly ever post anything. If I wanted somethinf very specialist then I would join a specialist forum. Only time I think this could be useful is when I am trying to meet new like minded people local to me - so I think your app nicely fills this gap.

csmatt
You make some very valid points.
awef
I don't agree, to me he makes a lot of sense. I'd love for the social web to be more focused on the future and activities rather than that of an old photo album capturing the highlights of everyones oh so interesting lives.

I think your response to c) is somewhat over simplified, facebook is definitely not what I want but i still use it until what i actually want comes along and people start using that instead.

sammyo
Just like feature films, the overriding consensus about success or failure is "nobody know anything". Clearly protocols have changed the world, the Gopher protocol was pretty good but HTTP just wiped it out. X.25 was an expensive, molasses slow, networking technology but until quite recently the only asynchronous network that could be found literally anywhere in the world. (Likely you've never heard of it but there were/(are?) mission critical applications run over it).

Probably a good bet that something will come along that wipes up Facebook and parts of Google within the next 20 years, but just like betting it all on one horse, doesn't matter how good your insider knowledge if she breaks a leg in that one big race.

A non- proprietary distributed fault tolerant, respectful of each users sense of privacy, easy to implement, robust, fast, easily searched, resistant to corporate and governmental abuse, social protocol... seems like a good idea to me.

erick23
I think the owner of this post was given money with Google to make it this post, he is praising Google+ and debunking facebook, everything he posted does not make sense to me
jdubray
Actually, not a penny. I am big Apple fan boy and don't like Android that much ... That being said, I have tried to analyze the space as objectively as I could.
erick23
I just think it's cool in Google+ are the communities it there and then if that is your concern with your protocol for Google+ is joining closer friends in the real world now knows that the Chinese social network called WeChat with over 200 million users has a revolutionary feature that lets you connect to your closest friends in reality or in the real world takes this link and read what functionality does: http://www.wechatapp.com/pt/#features.htmlaround