Focus, Diversity, Memory. How to Design a Better Social Network

That's a Medium post I wrote mainly for you Scuttelbutt people. There's some criticism of mainstream social network, and a simple proposal for a (micro)blogging platform. The ideas are quite old for me - I've been thinking about this stuff for years - but I've only decided to write them down after discussing about the like button and related SBB features.

I enjoyed writing that post: my head feels lighter now :D! And now I want to write more. More criticism, and a description of a platform more suited for discussion, like a sort of extension to SBB.

You write really clearly, nice work!
I like your clarification about channels vs tags.

I feel kinda bad saying this but ... if you put an image near the top of your articles it might make it more welcoming and ....shareable.

I'm suprised you didn't referenced scuttlebutt dynamics more - it seems like this is a concrete space which is revealing some of the dynamics you mention. I think for some users, knowing that what you're saying could be based in some experience might ground it and lend it more credibility than an opnion piece.

I look forward to mulling more on this an re-reading it.

@kas It's interesting to hear about your perspective as a user of multiple social networks. I was on Facebook a few years ago, and I wasn't very active, so good to know my thoughts make sense to someone with real experience

You got the channels/tags distinction right. Also this:

it would be very nice if a channel here on SSB had a pubkey I could subscribe to without having to follow the person who created this channel in his taxonomy of posts. It would be like following a subset of that person

That's what I meant, indeed! In my hypothetical platform you simply can't follow people, you can just follow their channels. You can't even send a direct message to a person! But that's admittedly a very simple, limited platform. It's a thought experiment. Is this a consistent design, one that would stand on its own, perhaps as a complement to other platforms? Or does it need additional features in order to create a meaningful experience?

You're hinting at a combination of my proposal with SBB, and that's of course something I'm thinking about. It would bring in a whole new level of complexity, though. Many parameters to define, a lot of freedom... not easy to justify all choices.

@mixmix Thanks for the kind feedback, I'm happy that my English is clear to a native speaker. And I'll search for an image, good hint

The only reason I didn't even mention SBB, which as you point out is absolutely relevant to my abstract ideas, is that I want to talk about it in a dedicated post - just give me some time

that photo is great !

What is always neglected in the biological analogies ... is that evolution happens not only because of inbreeding, but also necessarily as an effect of isolation. Only populations that are relatively isolated from each other can follow different evolutionary paths.

really really great point!

@lenny abramov your description of topics over users sounds a rather like reddit? is that fair, or how do you see your proposal differing from reddit?

@Dominic It's the same as reddit, but it's like each user had their own reddit: you own www.reddit-dominic.com, I own www.reddit-lenny.com, etc. And only the owner can post.

The advantage is that there's no global taxonomy that has to fit all. The taxonomy of channels is under total control of the owner, who shapes it in accordance to their interests, idiosyncrasies, etc. It's up to the follower to understand it, and to map (a subset of) it to their "followed" channels taxonomy (sort of like a bookmarks folder tree).

Hope that makes sense to you now... In any case I'll edit the post and add a sentence or two to make this point more clear. Or perhaps a drawing.

Wow, that's a cool piece of history you've shared!

You're probably right about private messages. However it depends a lot on the target, the strategy, and other factors. Medium for instance doesn't have private messaging. Or that imaginary platform could be linked to Facebook, and people would discuss there (I wouldn't do that, but you got the idea).

@lenny abramov I think that pinterest also has a dynamic somewhat like this. you have boards which you curate content into (generally photos) and other people can pin your things on to their board (which may have a different name)

@Dominic Yes, Pinterest is not too far from my proposal.

BTW, I've added a picture to the post that should make this channel stuff a bit clearer. Thanks for the feedback!