On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 10:16 PM, Nathan <[email protected]> wrote: > If you've got an open decentralized social network.. then why would you need > to invite anybody? to where exactly? and why a 'big bang', I can see why if > you're 'just another silo' trying to play catch up with twitter, facebook et > al - but not for this - unless of course, I completely misunderstand what > everybodies thinking & talking about. > > Regardless though, virality (?sp), is completely built in - make good, > useful tools, where the user controls their own destiny+data, and you're > done - build it well and the masses will come, build it badly and.. well no > loss in the scheme of things because other will build good things :)
I'm sorry but I don't think this holds true. To «switch» and start to use a new service you really need a good incentive. Being decentralized and caring about your data and privacy is *not enough on it's own*. You won't just magically switch thereto. I had a few friends switch to identi.ca when it came out. Identi.ca had a very good point in being released, Twitter was having really big back pains because it didn't scale; so suddenly there was a mass of users. However, it didn't grow good enough, and most everyone non-technical I know left identica because everyone was on twitter. I will use a distributed social network (and probably make my own node, my website is my profile etc); but it will be a hard challenge to actually make it fun and usable. It's not that fun and usable if I haven't got a whole lot of friends that I can share stuff with etc. I can strongarm a few in, but from there, they're friends has to come as well. If not they will not use it because «there's so few I can friend» and then they will go back to Facebook. When I will be able to put my mother into my «family» group, then this has succeeded. That will take a long time... (She's been on Facebook a year now, and loving it like nothing else). Many of us want a change in the whole society, and then it's not just enough that we can use it. We need a big bang if we are going to both get our non-technical friends over, but also to keep them because they need their friends etc. -- Beste helsing, Odin Hørthe Omdal <[email protected]> http://velmont.no
