Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival' (opens in new tab)

If I was the co-founder of one of the top websites in the world that had to pivot from my shitty news organization into what looks like a shitty version of Diaspora, I’m not so sure I’d be thrilled with “thousands.”

You need network effects for social network rivals to take off. That isn’t to say there won’t be a Facebook successor (there almost certainly will be one — the big challenge for Facebook is if it has a piece of that or not), but just as Diaspora, Google+, Peach, Ello, App.net, Gab, Mastadon, and any other number of attempts at this have failed (calling Mastadon a failure is unfair, but its not Twitter and won’t ever be), so will this.

Snap was a threat to Facebook’s core messaging properties (WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram), so Instagram had to blatantly copy Snap to win back momentum. Snap is still a thing, but unless it leans into the fact that it isn’t owned by Facebook (which is ultimately what hurts WA and Instagram), it isn’t ever going to catch-up, especially on a global level. TikTok has the sort of network effect Vine never had, and could be a real contender for the next generation, even with its ownership questions. Twitch and YouTube still have opportunities for growth — and there is still lots of room for innovation in the live video space.

And look, maybe this will be a really nice niche community for a small group of people. I hope it is. I hope the people that signup and pay for it enjoy it. I hope Wales doesn’t get bored when it doesn’t have tons of users and make tons of money.

There is a market for small community social networks. Not everything has to be the scale of Facebook — I’d argue it’s better when things aren’t that size — but let’s not pretend we’re not talking about this because it’s being positioned as something that is “taking on” the giant — when it would be more helpful - but make for a poorer headline/narrative - to say, “rich dude wants to recreate The Well for a generation of users who doesn’t know what The Well was.”

Both sides are in the wrong. Comparing the numbers of the first few days to Facebook suggests either ill intent or willful ignorance, while praising a new start-up as a Facebook rival without baking up that claim with some relatable rationale indicates bias or an agenda.

Facebook aims to cover anyone's every need which could come up in a social interaction or how communication could occur. In other words, FB is a communication, an entertainment and a business platform. WT:Social, on the other hand, seems to be an evolution of the WikiTribune diving into the social market world, yet continuing its focus on reporting and fact-based information sharing. This involves work which isn't all too appealing to the general public.

Seriously. Mastodon started at thousands. People wrote articles insisting it would never go anywhere. It's still growing with thousands of instances for every sort of community three years after the dismissive op-eds started, and it didn't have the benefit of a major profile promoting it.

Yes. At least Jimbo is trying. He might fail, but at least he tried. Network effect is a bitch, as others already noted.

Its not the number which makes me chuckle, its the relative importance the number is given, and the associated tone. A sensible headline would be:

"Wikipedia have launched a social media site, based around sharing news"

I hear you but Facebook, for better or worse, is the social networking site everyone you know is on. It has a tremendous advantage over any upstart for that reason. Lots of geeky folks flocked to Google+ in its early days but that wasn't enough to replace Facebook. Even when they gave everyone who had a Google account of some kind a G+ profile it still wasn't enough. I will definitely check this out but it'll be back to FB when I need to know what my friends are up to.

I agree with everything you said, but I still think "thousands" is way too low for newsworthiness. Social networks need a critical mass before they are good for anything. Surely that number has to be in the millions, right?

You'd think you would need a lot more than "thousands" for it to be called an actual trend worthy of an article.

It's at least around 300,000 as of 9PM EST based on the waiting list page I received.

It's actually hundreds of thousands and they are paying users.

Someone else in the thread is implying it’s closer to 190k. At any rate we are now into “hundreds of thousands”.

Yeah. Thousands is nothing. Hundreds of thousands on the other hand is a strong start (though it will remain to be seen how many of those 160k users remain on there).

I agree. The title should have said "more than half a million people". then it would have sounded better.

So, basically, they're rebelling against Facebook's "real name" initiative that completely changed the internet.

I never thought using your real name on the internet was going to catch on. I was terribly mistaken.

But is that because the world has actually changed, of because they are young? Teens have always been counterculture and rejected the status quo. The real question is whether Facebook will be compelling to them when they grow up.

You might be interested in this related article by the founder of Signal. It touches on the same point.

https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

"The device’s address book is now the social network, so using phone numbers as an identifier has reduced switching costs by putting a user’s social network under their control. In a way, the notification center on a mobile device has become the federation point for all communication apps, similar to how older desktop IM clients unified communication across multiple IM networks."

I’d be interested in listening to that podcast, what’s it called?

I similarly relocated away from family. Turns out that if they know you don't use Facebook they will go out of their way to update you directly. Just believe that you are worth it, and my friend, you are.

I fantasize about a product like that sometimes. A private, pay social site geared towards families. Your family pays a yearly subscription. Photo/video sharing. Event planning. Family news timeline. Everything purely linear. No manipulation to maximize engagement. No ads. Just real information about your family that you care about.

One side of my family has about 30 people that are all willing to travel to meet somewhere every few years. Compared to that expense, it would be trivial for us to share the cost of such a service, even if it were a few hundreds dollars a year.

My extended family uses this: https://spokt.com/

There was some talk years ago about switching to Facebook but I and a few others refused to participate on that platform and we wound up staying on Spokt.

The service is ok, nothing special, but it does serve the purpose of ongoing communication away from the spying and trash and noise and dark patterns of Facebook without having to set something custom up.

Facebook's greatest threat is from Nextdoor, and I can't wait until it happens.

>From my understanding, this is a social news site with fact checking.

That makes sense, I don't think a social network and privacy advocating (WikiPedia donating, HN type) go hand in hand. I like the premise of WT.Social.

Facebook is where it is because it cracked 'real identity' when others were encouraging dog/cat names for profiles.

My experience is that if you don't participate in social media, people call / message you personally, or meet in person. I don't think communicating with family or friends by broadcasting into an abyss and fighting for their attention is an improvement on one-to-one dialogue.

Be the unreasonable minority that you wish to see in the world. https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins-dictatorship...

> I use Facebook to post pictures of my vacations for my family

I use Facebook as a perpetually correct address book. People change address, phone number and sometimes email, but never their Facebook account. That single property of Facebook (which is something my generation attributed to Facebook, instead of it being directly coded as a feature) is why I could basically never leave.

I've tried to get my family off of Whatsapp, and utterly failed there. I strongly doubt my entire social circle would ever spontaneously move to something better than Facebook.

Facebook somewhat like linkedin is also used for socially acceptable bragging and puffery. So for example it's ok to post things that others would be jealous of (or think you are bragging) if done another way. That is definitely some of the appeal of those platforms.

And the best part is nobody even knows if the people reading are turned off or think you are bragging that never gets echoed back in any way.

People are so quick to label new apps/sites as Facebook/Instagram/Twitter rivals, but in really they are not. As you mentioned, just because you can friend someone, it's not a Facebook rival, or else, Imgur would be a Instagram rival because you can post pics...

I get the impression that for many people their main experience of Facebook is as a source of media with mixed social and commercial promotion. In this regard, Wales' social network is a rival.

Google+ only had that many users because many other Google properties (YouTube being the biggest) were lumped in together. I bet the majority of Google+ "users" weren't even aware that the platform existed.

How many users do you think HN has? No matter how many, I think I would call HN mostly a success (currently/temporary?). Seems that to have a good social network, it's less about quantity of content and more about quality. Most of Twitter is shit, but it contains some average content too, and a small amount of gold nuggets. HN feels to have much better signal/noise ratio and judging by myself and others who hang around here, it's way better here than what other "critical mass" social networks have.

Anecdotally, Google+ failed for me because I got stuck in an authentication loop for a business page. It wanted to verify the business, but the link to do so always errored out, which made it impossible to ever change the page content beyond what I initially put in. I stopped using both sides of it at that point, and it wouldn’t surprise me if others ran into similar rough edges. In true Google style, there was absolutely no route to support either.

From my experience on Scuttlebutt and other decentralized/alternative social medias, thousands will try something out just to kick the tires; it's staying, contributing and utilizing the tool for things it wasn't intended for that really matters.

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

That's because Google tried to be the network for everyone. There are a lot of people.. several billion, and if that's your market, then 300m doesn't cut it. (They also forced it onto everyone.. there was little community there.)

On the other hand, being the social network for a smaller audience is very do-able. Even Facebook started locally at Zuckerbergs college, then expanded to other colleges, before eventually opening up. Being the social network for a single school only requires a few thousand people.. then you're the social network everyone (in that school) wants to be on to discuss events relevant to the school... and you've created your foothold.

Google was never interested in a creating a foothold in a small niche. They said "We're google.. basic marketing rules don't apply" and they learned they were wrong.

But G+ users didn’t choose it (by and large) it just happened TO them.

In this case at least the users had agency and actually signed up.

Still a small number in the grand scheme, but G+ was a bit of a different beast due to how Google launched it.

>Mere "thousands" doesn't seem like enough to get critical mass on a social network.

It's kind of like running for president of the United States and bragging that you got "hundreds" of votes.

After a brief recitation of facts it ends on a critical note, on par with the title:

> Social media consultant Zoe Cairns said she thought the network would have to grow its numbers quickly in order to prove itself to be a viable alternative to the giants.

> "It's going to need a lot of money ploughed into it," she said.

> "People are so used to social media being free. I think businesses might pay for it, but people are so used to having news at their fingertips for free."

> doesn't seem like enough to get critical mass on a social network.

I'm not sure it matters for this social network. It's positioning as a news-based platform doesn't require people you know personally to use the site in order for it to have value.

Perhaps conversely, too many people on a social network may be detrimental to these aims, as ever more narrow-minded echo chambers or factions can achieve critical mass.

Mere thousands are nowhere enough, but even Facebook also should have a very small number of high revenue customers. As long as this new network can draw a good enough amount of those users, they will be fine and will also impact Facebook's bottom line.

The size of the network didn’t doom Google+. It was the product management

And Facebook had something like a college dorm, and did get traction.

That faint praise will transform into real praise once millions of BBC readers feel compelled to join those thousands already in Wikipedia's version of facebook.

Google+ users only had to make a gmail account to be signed up for Google+, the amount of people actually actively using Google+ was far lower than 300 million.

I think there’s an uptick at the moment of paid online services. We’re getting four models:

1. Free commercial services supported by advertising.

2. Ad-free commercial services supported by subscriptions.

3. Open-source distributed services.

Arguably there’s a fourth category: free, ad-free commercial services supported by VC money to grow until reaches critical mass and pivots into a paid/advertising model.

The second option caters to a smaller crowd who are willing to pay for a better experience, but a “smaller crowd” defies conventional wisdom about social network effects. It’s an interesting experiment though. There are now dozens of news aggregators, streaming media services, gaming platforms, etc., competing for our monthly disposable income, so it may be a tough sell.

The NYT covered the shift towards subscription services recently: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/13/magazine/inte...

I'd like a non-evil social network, but there is already too many "only £10 a month" for the sake of arranging my pixels in amusing ways.

If it was a traditional company I'd agree, but it's a not-for-profit that also runs Wikipedia so I see it as a donation toward that. WT.social is just a perk.

Yeah, way to expensive. A "pay-what-you-want" model with a minium of 2$-4$ a month would be much more successfull, I feel.

Reddit certainly rivals Facebook for my attention.

Obligatory plug for https://ieddit.com/ - there is quite a bit of ideological overlap in terms of what is trying to be achieved and why.

it's the old saying: "if you're not paying for using a product or you're not being paid to use a product, that means that you're the product".

Deciding to pass on a service that asks you money to offer you a service is completely fine, as long as you don't later complain about "privacy issues" and "massive surveillance".

Also, on the surface, it looks like a replacement for reddit/HN than a fb replacement. Am I missing something?

Procrastinating is a weird word to use?

Two of the largest social networks is not "a life without social media".

Almost everyone young has switched from FB to IG. I don't think you can claim that is a life "without social media."

A bit tangent, but as a non-native English speaker, I always get frustrated that single W is pronounced "double you" and single Y is "why". In my non-native English tongue I would pronounced the name as something like "Weh-Teh Social"

I kinda thought it might be a play on WTF, so, "what the social".

"WikiTribune Social" or "W.T. Social."

White Trash Social. Although that wouldnt be politically correct.

It's pronounced "The wikipedia guy social network" :)

dubtee social

I didn’t even share it, just loaded my own share link and it let me in

Why spam a friend for this? Just grab the URL and create another dummy account.

Social media sites are data-vampires, not entities deserving any kind of respect.

Someone sent one as soon as I got in and there's no way to reject. Now there's a big "pending requests" box on every page and an easy to misclick Accept button.

selects are best

They need to provide tribute-hailing buttons on other websites otherwise it won't become pervasive enough.

Aside from the fact that wales' software is supposed to be free and open source and thus will not require its users to trust the founder as much as they are forced to with fb, how is Wales not more trustworthy than Zuck? One guy has a string of abuses and apologies spanning almost two decades as the founder, CEO and majority shareholder of a company that helped the Russian gov't steal the 2016 election and helped bring back eradicated diseases, and the other created a non-profit encyclopedia and gave away the source code?

> It doesn't sound like this actually federates with anything else.

I think it's for the people who consider that a feature.

I'm still considering signing up. I would do it in a heartbeat if, with my subscription, I could "gift" a subscription to a couple people of my choosing

It's 160.000

hundreds of thousands at the moment

Wow, this just spammed my entire friend list and added a bunch of "friends" without any prompt.