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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."
"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."
- 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
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
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.
... or the UK or Japan or Australia or Germany. https://www.theguardian.com/us...
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.
Jan
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.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
No need to thank me. Just use Diaspora*, open, distributed, optionally self hosted Facebook alternative
At best, this is an historical sidebar. At worst, a ploy to take us off topic. I'll respond once and then drop out.
I agree the 2nd Amendment was there originally to protect the others, or worst case it was "the reset button on the constitution". Reading the letters and essays by Federalists and Anti-Federalists makes clear this was the intent. Military technology at the time made it sensible.
However, successful rebellion means "We won", not "We killed a lot of people and then we were killed". For a rebellion, you are putting yourself on the line, not some proxy nation/tribe/oppressed people. "Our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor" et al. The Gatling gun (Civil War), the Maxim (WW I), the tank (WW II), the Apache attack helicopter (Vietnam), and the AI-controlled drone (Middle East) pretty much obliterated the value of rifles (automatic or not) for purposes of successful rebellion against the US Govt. Furthermore, for urban rebellion, guns make enough noise to be triangulated, and any human holding one will be caught on video and identified. Any serious rebel is thinking Cambridge Analytica-style Big Data, weaponized drone swarms, and infowar campaigns to convince a few million peiople to risk death for the cause. [Ohhh, so that is what the Koch brothers and Mercers are up to... :-)]
It becomes pretty clear that informed (not mal-informed) voting is vastly more efficient than guns for changing the nation's path. For that we need a sense of community, not wedge issues like gun control. Which brings us back to the need for a non-commercial free-as-in-speech social media mechanism.
So, while I reload carefully enough to shoot "ragged clover leafs" with my rifle, and can watch the rechamber with my pistol, all my energy these days goes into makerspaces, meetups, and playing music. "Make love not war".
The Second Amendment is there to defend the First.
Really?
Any idea why it didn't work?
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.
LOL, considering that part of that agreement was that the USD was used as a reserve currency, thereby guaranteeing the US endless supplies of debt, which contrary to popular belief does not really need to be paid back as long as the status quo is retained, which is what US policy is all about.
Seriously, you must have rocks in your head if you think the US did all of this out of altruism. Next, you will be saying that the US sent soldiers to Europe ww1 & 2 out of your love of fellow man, rather than that US national interests were under threat. (ww1 was affecting trade, ww2 worried the US that the Russkies would roll over the top of Germany all the way to the Atlantic, creating a massive Soviet state)
Don't get me wrong, I don't particularly like the US or its political system and materialistic culture, but I have plenty of American friends and I don't abuse Americans in the streets either. But I also don't feel any need to thank you.
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.
See what I mean? Nothing but vile abuse. This is the thanks we get for giving Europeans peace for 75 years and enabling them to spend their money on a welfare state instead of wasting it on defending themselves.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
First, this is a reactionary action. If someone wanted to supplant Facebook during the height of social unrest about it, they would have needed to start several the development years ago.
Second, what makes Facebook attractive to most is the critical mass of users. It's the ubiquity that if you use it, it's the most likely venue to find your friends also on it. I can shift and try any number of new social networks, but if the people i want to reach are not there, it's a non-starter.
Third, social site success is achieved via a mixture of timing, fantastical luck and hitting the sweet spot of user interest. Creating a Facebook alternative is comparatively easy. Achieving success is surprisingly difficult.
Forth, balkanization of the social media market won't help anyone achieve critical mass. Launching 7 efforts at supplanting Facebook seems like a good idea. "Surely one of them will be successful". But in reality the more there are, the more fragmented the audience becomes, making it even more difficult for one of them to achieve dominant success.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
I'm sure the Vietnamese wold like to hear your thoughts on how American guaranteed their security too!
june 2015: "This week, the United States and Vietnam deepened their defense ties during a three-day trip by U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to the Southeast Asian state. Most notably, Carter and his counterpart, Vietnamese Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh, inked a Joint Vision Statement on Defense Relations. The statement itself, which comes as both sides celebrate the 20th anniversary of the normalization of their ties, is not wholly new. It builds on a 2011 memorandum of understanding ..."
https://thediplomat.com/2015/0...
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.
And other European states (ex Switzerland) show that civilian access to firearms, even semiautomatic firearms, is not a problem. Of course criminal and mental background checks, safety training, and secure storage help.
Bullshit the majority of European countries DO NOT have free speech. All the countries listed in the article DO NOT have free speech and have passed laws making it illegal to offend someone.
The EU is just ass backwards on free speech, it is hilarious that they also try to claim some kind of historical significance related to free speech, when the US had free speech, the majority of the countries were still ruled by monarchs, aka dictators.
Semiautomatic? The Swiss militia (basically, everyone, though I think they're sexist enough to not include their women) requires members to keep FULLY automatic weapons, plus lots of ammo for same, on hand.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"