Silicon Valley Investors Wants to Fund a 'Good For Society' Facebook Replacement (calacanis.com)

Silicon Valley angel investor Jason Calacanis just announced the "Openbook Challenge," a competition to create a replacement for Facebook.

"Over the next three months, 20 finalists will compete for seven $100,000 incubator grants," explains long-time Slashdot reader reifman. "Their goal is to find startups with a sustainable business model e.g. subscriptions, reasonable advertising, cryptocurrency. etc. And they want it to be 'good for society.'"

Jason Calacanis writes: All community and social products on the internet have had their era, from AOL to MySpace, and typically they're not shut down by the government -- they're slowly replaced by better products. So, let's start the process of replacing Facebook... We already have two dozen quality teams cranking on projects and we hope to get to 100...

This is not an idea or business plan competition. We're looking for teams that can actually build a better social network, and we'll be judging teams primarily based upon their ability to execute... Keep in mind, that while ideas really matter, Zuckerberg has shown us, execution matters more.
Calacanis has even created a discussion group for the competition...on Facebook. And his announcement includes a famous quote from Mark Zuckerberg.

"Don't be too proud to copy."

Comments

This is how it's going to go down

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

- Openbook will run out of money (yes, it costs money to run servers for hundreds of millions of users)
- Openbook will sell ads to fund themselves
- Openbook will realize it's even more profitable to collect data and sell it to the highest bidder
- Openbook will get a "think of the children" or "Uuh! Terrorism!" injunction from some court or governmental agency, and will share their data with them
- Openbook = Facebook

Re: This is how it's going to go down

[DNS-and-BIND]

Unlikely, as with SJW enforcement built in from the ground up, it's going to end up banning most users and will be a far left echo chamber.

Re: Partisanship and Censorship From the Ground Up

[DNS-and-BIND]

The Second Amendment is there to defend the First. If they fall, then the Fourth and the Fifth fall shortly thereafter. And then the dark times.

Funny how Trump got people to care about privacy

[Jarwulf]

and accountability to users and all the other things Facebook is screwing up. Or more accurately anger that trump supposedly benefited finally got people to care about all these things, when they couldn't have given a rat's arse that their electronic lives were being bought and sold six ways from sunday just a few months prior. You got to give him credit for this amazing awakening.

Fundamental Misunderstanding of Human Nature

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if its willful or blind idiocy, but everything humans have created has been used for evil by someone. The more detached from others they are, the worse it has gotten. Facebook got huge and couldn't see the trees for the forest. Whatever any of these people come up with... will eventually be sold to a corporation that won't see the users as anything but a profit center and begin to exploit it.

Maybe next time instead of our data, its our computer's data. Maybes it not our browsing habits, but our usage habits. They'll try to abstract and wind up right back in the exact same place.

Because the fastest way to grow is to give your product away, and the fastest way to profit is to throw your morals out the window.

Facebook got huge the same way Google got huge... by creating a lure to get your eyes on ads, then selling you to advertisers. The only huge corporation that gives it away and stays free is Twitter, and they are on the auction block to anyone who can figure out how to monetize them (hint, it will be ads).

The entire point of social media is attention. YOUR attention. To keep your eyes glued to a screen and show you ads. That is ALL it is for. Yes you get benefits from it, if you didn't, you would not stay and see those ads, and the platform would die like so many others. The idea of making a social network that somehow avoids this forever and ever is just an ignorant rant from someone who doesn't understand how business works. Users will not pay subscription fees to join a social network, not when they can get it somewhere else for free. Oh they are running from Facebook in droves you say? And ask them where they are going, or who they are still using. Google +, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. These companies are no different, they just have yet to get caught doing the same shit Facebook was caught doing. And it is inevitable they will be caught at it. And the users will flock to the next free thing because being social SHOULD be free... but as long as hardware and software on a centralized platform is required, it never will be.

Re: Partisanship and Censorship From the Ground Up

[tempmpi]

The Second Amendment is there to defend the First. If they fall, then the Fourth and the Fifth fall shortly thereafter. And then the dark times.

It's easy to see that this is not true. Plenty of European states without something comparable to the 2nd amendment, but with constitutional rules comparable to 1th, 4th and 5th Amendment.

Re: Partisanship and Censorship From the Ground Up

[DNS-and-BIND]

That's because America has been guaranteeing their security for free for 75 years. What has long enabled that free world to exist is the post-WWII American security over watch which allowed countries of all sizes to escape fear. The Americans outlawed war among the participating members of the international system, and for the first time in world history imposed security upon the global commons so that anyone could purchase any resource from anywhere as well as export any product (most notably to the open, ravenous U.S. market).

And we get precisely zero thanks for this, and vile mistreatment. I haven't heard a kind word for years and years and years. Americans on holiday will lie and say they're Canadian just to avoid being verbally abused.

Re:Diaspora* is already here

[Joce640k]

+1

If the people proposing this aren't aware that it already exists (kinda) then you have to suspect they're simply after some venture capital.

Translation

[GrumpySteen]

Silicon Valley Investors want to capitalize on the current wave of hate for Facebook to create a replacement that will make a lot of money.

Also, we should all trust that the investors will be happy with small returns on their investment and won't make demands later on which would force the replacement to perform the same Orwellian profit-seeking behavior that Facebook is hated for.

Re:Diaspora* is already here

[fustakrakich]

The problem is that it's open, distributed, optionally self hosted. How do the authorities control the content and access on/to such a service? To them, those kind of liberties are not 'Good For Society'. The reasons why seem self evident to me.