Dear Alt-Twitter Designers: It’s about the network!
“Overcrowding” dynamic within networks. More users and more content mean that you need to bring in features like search, algorithmic feeds, curation tools, and a plethora of other tools to manage this. If you don’t solve this problem, then users will start to leave, potentially preferring competitive products that are smaller but more curated.
Andrew Chen • The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects
A last possible asymptote relates to my general sense that massive networks like Facebook and Instagram will, at some point, require more structured interactions and content units (for example, a list is a structured content unit, as is a check-in) to continue scaling.
Eugene Wei • Invisible Asymptotes
Like every human endeavour, every social network is there for a limited duration and will be useful to a limited niche of people. That niche may grow to the point of being huge, like Facebook and WhatsApp. But, to this day, there are more people in the world without an account on Facebook than people with one. Every single social network is only re... See more
Stop Trying to Make Social Networks Succeed
A social network like Path attempted to limit your social graph size to the Dunbar number, capping your social capital accumulation potential and capping the distribution of your posts. The exchange, they hoped, was some greater transparency, more genuine self-expression. The anti-Facebook. Unfortunately, as social capital theory might predict, Pat... See more