Topic: You are given unlimited funds and a fabulous team of programmers and told to create your own social networking platform.Tell us all about your ideal, fictional social media site.
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Let’s face it, if you need to stay in contact with people, and you’re not a phone person, Facebook is probably your go-to means of contact. You can get it on your phone, tablet, desktop, laptop, and of course ‘everyone’ is on there.
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Therein lies the problem. Now that ‘everyone’ including kids that are impulsive, ridiculous, and too young to have an account, plus ill-informed or not tech savvy people who will forward/share just about ANYTHING and tag 2 people on it. Which shares it with all their friends. In case you weren’t aware, that’s what a private message is for, people! 😉
Facebook used to be about connecting with friends (and BRANDS! BLOGS! INFO!) that pertained to you. There were no ads. It did NOT suggest that you like Coke because you mentioned Santa Claus. It did NOT ask you to like a nude magazine because your relative did (nasty, and that did happen to me this morning)… It showed you want you wanted when you wanted it (RIGHT NOW!) — It did not hide statuses from your favorite brands, it showed you every single one in ORDER. It did not rearrange itself every 5 seconds on a whim to show you ‘what’s popular’… if I was popular Facebook, I’d have more friends. And it didn’t claim that your reach was ‘unnatural’ if you shared something from your blog on your own blog page. That’s what it’s for morons! All of these changes that have taken place are to make Facebook a money making machine. That’s all. The problem of course is that 99% of small places can’t afford to promote themselves, and their Facebook presence will slowly die as fewer and fewer people are ‘shown’– so much for ‘organic’ when you HIDE everything people– what you enjoy.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for hiding ‘100%conservativewmunabroad’ or whatever political ads that people share. But if it’s something that I physically ‘liked’ for a giveaway entry, to get their statuses, etc. Then let me see it!
I guess I would enjoy something that has a messenger, is pinterest, twitter, and facebook combined, without any apps. That way you can send direct info, have chats with special interest groups, keep special information in a ‘file’ and of course keep in touch with what is going on in the world at once. Fake news sites would be terminated. Political ads not allowed. Before you share something, you’d be reminded you could send it in a direct message instead of having it go to everyone, and remind you if you are posting publicly, because, wow annoying. Perhaps, except for ACTUAL pages, then ‘regular’ users couldn’t post publicly. That would fix a lot of issues. The user would be in control over who sees their content, and it would not ever be sold, shown to people as an advertisement, or tied in with your internet searches (shudder) to try and make you buy things.
Well.. that’s how I feel about it anyway! What would you do if you had a chance to have a social media platform built?
