I keep seeing complaints about this, but usage rarely changes. A lot of past attempts at “better” social networks seem to stall despite good intentions.
I am curious how people here think about this:
Would a small, paid social network focused on existing relationships have any realistic chance of adoption, or do network effects and user behavior make this fundamentally unworkable?
If you think it fails, what tends to be the real blocker: pricing, lack of novelty, switching costs, or something else?
I am looking for reasons this does not work, not encouragement.
- What is the business model? Subscriptions will not pay for the initial OpEx / CapEx investment. How will investors make a profit?
- How will your company lure people away from the other big platforms that all their friends and coworkers are on? What are the incentives beyond promises of no data collection? Most people no longer accept good-faith promises any more as greedy people have emptied that bucket.
Good luck!
Semi-private social apps that are invite only (like a company's Slack channels) or require discovery (like a game's Discord) have made lots of money and neither of those companies uses ads.
I think subscriptions could work, people pay not to have ads in other media they consume, ive built a prototype platform, that allows users to curate their life in it, part social network, part journal, part support. i want to also build in safety features for children so parents feel safe letting their children online. would love some feedback on the premise.
How would you handle the ever changing online safety act in the UK and Australia now that there is now needed regulation in place for social networks with more countries to follow?
If those user types haven’t moved en masse off twitter to <insert some replacement> then what would compel people to move, and pay for something they don’t pay for with money?
If by existing relationships you mean only like 2 degrees of separation then its implied that there is no global posting, no viral capability and probably no businesses or politicians on it (all amazing features I would love). Basically a family and friends network. A huge difficulty would be how to price it, one time fee for a family tree? The largest costs are going to be bandwidth and storage. If you go no video/images then what pulls people in?
Company structure might be key too. If it’s built as employee owned and operated with a small profit goal, it might take longer to grow but odds are enshitification or corrupt management can be avoided.
I can however see this for niches and small groups. Something more akin to old school bulletin board forums. In a sense Metafilter works a bit that way already.
If you assume the unit of value is a pre-existing group rather than an individual user, do you think paid access becomes viable earlier, or does it introduce different failure modes?
I’m interested in whether group-first adoption meaningfully changes the cold start problem, or simply moves it?
I don't pay for X or any other social network.
Perhaps donations could work instead?