Really, asking "what should replace Facebook" is putting things the wrong way around.
A more interesting way to ask the question is, "what did Facebook replace."
People used to build their own websites. People used to have blogs. People used USENET which was truly distributed and un-censorable.
Facebook and Google took the open internet and open standards and monetized and made everything crappy. Enough of that. Nothing should replace Facebook, it's done, stick a fork in it.
@hhardy01 Most of the people who now use Facebook to communicate did not, in fact, do those things. They still need to communicate online. They need a Facebook replacement.
I don't exactly know why FB became so popular.
For me it was the world wide reach, illusion of private space, and pointy clicky illusion of ease of use. Even though no real control and everything obfuscated.
It is hard for me as I'm leaving now because I have 2000 peeps and so many artists, musicians, writers, intellectuals, thinkers, internet OGs, models, rebels cool people. But if they are real they will come to me here if not let them go.
@Hascobe @ajroach42 @LogicalDash
The way I remember it, there was USENET and FIDONET before the www was a thing.
@hhardy01 @Hascobe @ajroach42 @LogicalDash dial-up BBSes too
@salixlucida @LogicalDash @Hascobe @hhardy01 (Fidonet was the network that connected BBSs together.)
@ajroach42 @salixlucida @LogicalDash @Hascobe @hhardy01 (one of, and arguably the largest, although there were many other incompatible yet functionally similar BBS networks besides fidonet)
@ajroach42 @hhardy01 @Hascobe @LogicalDash yes, but not all BBSes were FidoNet
I used to have an account with a local Free-Net, which was sponsored by the city and had telnet and dial-up access. It did allow access to external WWW (Lynx browser only), gopher, and ftp, in addition to typical local BBS stuff, but no FidoNet.
@salixlucida @Hascobe @ajroach42 @LogicalDash
mars hotel, nyx, simtel20 at wsmr, prep.ai.mit.edu
@hhardy01 @Hascobe @ajroach42 @LogicalDash There were all those things, but they were small. Facebook works for all those people that don't get "the internet" in all its complexity and variety. Same as Apple's iDevices work for many that couldn't get a grip on all that computer stuff before.
Both are massive enablers, but they come at a hidden cost. Only those users that are being enabled are the least well equipped to understand the costs, because they don't understand the ecosystem.
@hhardy01 @ajroach42 @LogicalDash The way I remember it, Facebook was the first to pierce that membrane between offline and online life and do it well. Bebo sort of did it, but only for teens.