Alternatives to Facebook

Orange Julia

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I am becoming increasingly disillusioned with Facebook and the issues with privacy (I am set pretty private but it seems that if my friends comment on something, all of their friends see it, etc) and while it has served well to keep me in touch with people, and back in touch with people I've lost, it also is keeping friendships that should have died a natural death alive artificially. I'd like to be able to post vacation pics and status updates to my friends and family only and short of emailing daily missives, which i suspect would get old quickly for everyone, I am not really sure what is still out there.
 
I used LinkedIn for professional stuff, and I would still need to keep my work facebook page because it is useful for work, and I enjoy twitter for its brevity and news aggregation, maybe time to try Google Circles again? Has it improved or gotten more user friendly?
 
 
 

Oil Can Dan

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Can't you set up a group on FB that consists of only family & friends (but not acquaintances), and then have your updates and whatnot only seen by them? Or are you saying that if one of them comments on a post of yours then all their friends see it too and you want to avoid that?
 

townleyt

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We use 23 Snaps for pictures of the kids. You have to invite people and we saw it as a good way for them to opt in, rather than us flooding everyone's news feed with cuteness (although we still do that sometimes). It seems more geared for parents of younger kids but it might serve your purposes....
 

86spike

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canderson said:
Instagram.
this
 
I killed my facebook profile after having to reset my privacy settings for the 67th time to keep snooping people out of my shit.  Instagram can be controlled much more easily and since it's photo-based, you  don't tend to get as much political shit, chain-mail messaging and garbage.  Ads are less intrusive as well.
 

smastroyin

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No, Instagram sucks for high volumes of pics (as in, more than like 2 of the same event).  Please don't fucking suggest to someone that they put up their 143 pictures from their vacation on Instagram.  I mean, it would suck for the user (you can only post one pic at a time), and it would suck for everyone in their feed when they got the 77th picture of Mauna Loa from the same person taking up their entire feed.
 

Orange Julia

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I like instagram, but you can only upload one photo at a time, right?  And I am not exactly sure what I want, but I am almost sure that Facebook isn't it. The issue with the stand alone messenger which is a resource hog on my phone and tablet, and the fact that I cannot get a "recent" toggle to work correctly--I get four or five stories that are from the last hour and then it jumps back to Sunday's stories for some reason, I suspect it has to do with someone in my "friends" list "liking" or "replying" to something from sunday bumps it back into my stream but the inability to filter content better just has me at my last good nerve.
 
I suppose I could create a facebook group, invite only--that allows people to comment without their comments ending up in their friends' streams, right?
 
But I guess the larger question is, how come there isn't a very good alternative to facebook?
 

smastroyin

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The reason an alternative doesn't exist is that every single shitty thing that Facebook has done to make the experience worse has been to better monetize the usage.  The cool facebook that we all liked wasn't ever going to make any money, so re-creating that is impossible without a pay service, and people have pretty consistently (and aggressively) said that they don't want to pay directly for the service.  This is also why your mobile experience is now dictated to be "top stories" only instead of even getting the option of "recent" so that they get better eyes and therefore more money from people promoting posts or otherwise advertising.  Therefore, creating the alternative that you like is very hard because you can't find the money in it, and you don't have the install base.
 
I suspect Facebook will get worse.  Much of the talent is jumping ship after getting their payout from the IPO.
 
Most kids aren't using facebook anymore, instead going to other things like snapchat.  But I'm not sure a service exists that does exactly what you are describing.
 

derekson

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I would say just use Twitter and post things like vacation photos on Flickr or something else similar.
 

jayhoz

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Yup.  We use flickr for photo sharing.  We can lock it down to only those we want to share with.
 

86spike

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smastroyin said:
No, Instagram sucks for high volumes of pics (as in, more than like 2 of the same event).  Please don't fucking suggest to someone that they put up their 143 pictures from their vacation on Instagram.  I mean, it would suck for the user (you can only post one pic at a time), and it would suck for everyone in their feed when they got the 77th picture of Mauna Loa from the same person taking up their entire feed.
 
the answer to that is: no one really wants to see more than one or two of your pics anyway... so edit yourself.
 

FelixMantilla

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86spike said:
 
the answer to that is: no one really wants to see more than one or two of your pics anyway... so edit yourself.
 
Speak for yourself spike. I love Steve's house pictures. (and no, I'm not kidding).
 

crystalline

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I use instagram with only close friends and family in my friend set.  
 
86spike said:
 
the answer to that is: no one really wants to see more than one or two of your pics anyway... so edit yourself.
 
Yes.  Forcing me to select the best one or two pictures from a set leads to a better experience for everyone.  
 

smastroyin

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That's a pretty odd use of Instagram, to me, but I guess whatever.
 
I think the issue is that you guys want a free platform to share stuff while having complete control over everything that you see and everyone that sees yours and you want it for free.
 
IMO the best solution for the use case mentioned is just start a blog and have people follow it, make it private, and link it to a private flickr gallery.  Or start your own website.
 
But you're going to be horrified by the way you kids treat this stuff, or even your younger colleagues.  Social media seems to be the first thing in technology where the Gen Xer's are saying "whoa I'm not sure about what the kids are doing these days."  Beginning of the end, may as well start digging our graves.  (Of course you won't see what they are doing because they are Snapchatting or using a Tumblr under a pseudonym that you can't find or whatever else)
 

teddykgb

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It's not practical anyway --- even if you make a move from Facebook, you have to convince the rest of your social group to jump as well and inevitably there will be one or two holdouts.  Facebook has such gravity now that it's realistically use it or use nothing.  As smas has been saying, there's very little hope for an alternative that can make money, so once google failed (and they're far creepier) it sort of closes the door on a lot of alternatives here that all your friends will just flock to.
 

The Gray Eagle

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Is there a free, open source non-profit version of Facebook? Seems like someone should set up a site that doesn't mine your data and lets you keep things private. 
 
After some looking around, I see there is something like that:
https://diasporafoundation.org/
 
But what's the deal with the pods? Seems complicated.
 
And the name is horrible, they needed to choose a name that everyone can easily read and spell and pronounce. "Hey check out that new social network, dee-spore-ia I think it's called." "Die-uh-spore-uh?" "I think that's it. Something like that. Not sure how to spell it." Yeah people will figure it out, if they bother to, but why make it any harder than it already is for people to find it and join and use?
 
Anyway, looks like people have pretty much given up on it
 
Too bad, because a site like that is exactly what's needed. Maybe someone can come up with a simpler setup and a better name and make a go of it this time. 
 

brs3

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I've shared photos with family and limited it to just the group I created for family. There's the initial time suck of creating a list of people, but when you post, you can remove the option of sharing it with all of your friends. My acquaintances list is coworkers, Facebook Friends only, and parents of friends that don't see everything if I don't want them to.  
 
I think the real alternative is just quitting Facebook and emailing/calling people. Eventually the tide will turn that way, or something better than Facebook will take over. 
 

jercra

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Foulkey Reese said:
Nobody is on Google+.
 
Twitter is where it's at.
I sort of get this but everyone has a gmail account and that's all you need to see people's pics on G+ and G+ solves all of OJ's original concerns.  It has a nice image interface and you can share with only who you want to share with and comments remain within the share group.  So what's the issue?  Maybe there's better but that's certainly an option.
 

cardiacs

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smastroyin said:
The reason an alternative doesn't exist is that every single shitty thing that Facebook has done to make the experience worse has been to better monetize the usage.  The cool facebook that we all liked wasn't ever going to make any money, so re-creating that is impossible without a pay service, and people have pretty consistently (and aggressively) said that they don't want to pay directly for the service.  This is also why your mobile experience is now dictated to be "top stories" only instead of even getting the option of "recent" so that they get better eyes and therefore more money from people promoting posts or otherwise advertising.  Therefore, creating the alternative that you like is very hard because you can't find the money in it, and you don't have the install base.
 
I suspect Facebook will get worse.  Much of the talent is jumping ship after getting their payout from the IPO.
 
Most kids aren't using facebook anymore, instead going to other things like snapchat.  But I'm not sure a service exists that does exactly what you are describing.
 
This is spot-on, IMO. 
The terms "top stories" and "trending" are such bullshit. 
 
When I think of something actually trending, I think of Youtube before Google bought it. You used to be able to search basis most views per day and almost every day there was some event being discussed that was getting millions of hits from some random place in the world,oftentimes getting no mention in mainstream media. 
 

cardiacs

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Oh, and I use Facebook because I kind of need to in order to stay in touch with my family but I fucking hate everything about it. Myspace was much more fun. Even Friendster was more enjoyable - social media platforms were fresh back then. 
 
Facebook is the AOL of Social Networking Platforms. Sooner or later, a challenger will come with a more simplified (or more fun) design and suddenly people will jump ship en masse. I am counting the days. 
 

Harry Hooper

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OK, LinkedIn users, I see today there's a guy listed as a new connection for me dating back about 7 days. How did this guy {whom I don't know at all} connect with me without me accepting his invite?
 

theapportioner

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Update: looks like they're slammed and have temporarily halted invites. Once they resume them, I'll be happy to share.
 
Edit: as of around 4:50 PM EST, invites are back. So request away.
 

theapportioner

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Just PM me with your email addresses, foos. Or you could also ask the 5 other SoSHers who now have accounts. They might have invites too.
 

dirtynine

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I have a couple now thanks to the excellent (and aptly named) theapportioner.  Happy to help out via PM. 
 

theapportioner

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I like it. My biggest gripe with Facebook isn't the privacy issues or the ads, but the bloat. That, and expanding it beyond the Ivy Leagues to all you unwashed philistines. I prefer minimalism.

I have about a dozen invites left. First come, first serve with your email address. Unless you want to send me a thousand Bitcoins.
 

Caspir

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I have a few as well (thanks apportioner!) so PM your email address if you want one.