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"As Snapchat alienates its users and fades further into irrelevance, it has begun to feel, as many failing social platforms do near the end, like a place to access the uselessness and unimportance, the sense of yelling into the void that the internet once offered before what we did here mattered."
That's taken from here...
https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/18/17366528/snapchat-decline-internet-ghost-towns
And it's not just about Snapchat, with Live Journal getting plenty of mention as well.
I think problems arise with social networks when they start to be used for reasons other than what their users thought they were for. Live Journal didn't have advertising, but then it was introduced and so the rot set in. (Dreamwidth on the other hand is just not living up to expectations, with development now at a snail's pace. A few competent and enthusiastic developers could move it forward again though.)
And it's not just those with control of the platform that can taint them, as users who try to use them to leverage their careers also can cause harm.
I've recently noticed: https://www.bigo.tv/ It's focus is live streaming games and its users, (Showbiz!), and appears to be gaining those users at a prodigious rate. It can be and is designed to be useful to the users, with the talented ones being able to make money from their audiences. Lots of it's totally visible without signing up, (which I haven't done), and where once it would've been strangers chatting with their keyboards, they're now doing so with streaming video. Still, it does seem to have the vibe of the social networks of old though. At least if you move down the country lists a bit. (It's divided up by country in the Showbiz section.) And maybe, by allowing the users to make money from their content, it'll stay that way because it won't need any drastic changes to stay afloat. This is coming out of Singapore, and I'm picking it'll be the first Asian-based social network to make it big in the West.
That's taken from here...
https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/18/17366528/snapchat-decline-internet-ghost-towns
And it's not just about Snapchat, with Live Journal getting plenty of mention as well.
I think problems arise with social networks when they start to be used for reasons other than what their users thought they were for. Live Journal didn't have advertising, but then it was introduced and so the rot set in. (Dreamwidth on the other hand is just not living up to expectations, with development now at a snail's pace. A few competent and enthusiastic developers could move it forward again though.)
And it's not just those with control of the platform that can taint them, as users who try to use them to leverage their careers also can cause harm.
I've recently noticed: https://www.bigo.tv/ It's focus is live streaming games and its users, (Showbiz!), and appears to be gaining those users at a prodigious rate. It can be and is designed to be useful to the users, with the talented ones being able to make money from their audiences. Lots of it's totally visible without signing up, (which I haven't done), and where once it would've been strangers chatting with their keyboards, they're now doing so with streaming video. Still, it does seem to have the vibe of the social networks of old though. At least if you move down the country lists a bit. (It's divided up by country in the Showbiz section.) And maybe, by allowing the users to make money from their content, it'll stay that way because it won't need any drastic changes to stay afloat. This is coming out of Singapore, and I'm picking it'll be the first Asian-based social network to make it big in the West.
