I’ve also been thinking about this quite a bit lately.
I also want something like this for a lightweight social media experience. I’ve been off of the big platforms for years now, but really want a way to share life updates and photos with a group of trusted friends and family.
The more hostile the platforms become, the more viable I think something like this will become, because more and more people are frustrated and willing to put in some work to regain some control of their online experience.
The key is to completely disconnect all ad revenue. I'm skeptical people are willing to put in some money to regain control; not in the kind of percentages that means I can move most of my social graph. Network effects are a real issue.
They're different application types - friends + family relationship reinforcement, social commenting (which itself varies across various dimensions, from highlighting usefulness to unapologetically mindless entertainment), social content sharing and distribution (interest group, not necessarily personal, not specifically for profit), social marketing (buy my stuff), and political influence/opinion management.
Meta and X have glommed them all together and made them unworkable with opaque algorithmic control, to the detriment of all of them.
And then you have all of them colonised by ad tech, which distorts their operation.
I also want something like this for a lightweight social media experience. I’ve been off of the big platforms for years now, but really want a way to share life updates and photos with a group of trusted friends and family.
The more hostile the platforms become, the more viable I think something like this will become, because more and more people are frustrated and willing to put in some work to regain some control of their online experience.