Small Social Networks: 5 Better Alternatives to Facebook
Remember when Facebook was about connecting with your friends and maybe a few family members? When it launched in 2004, Facebook was only open to a small subset of the population, and tight networks made it hard to see info about people who weren’t close to you. There were silly groups with ten people in them based on inside jokes, a few photos, and maybe a couple cousins you really liked and wanted to keep in touch with.
And then things changed.
Nowadays, if you’re still using Facebook, you’re probably friends with your grandma, some coworkers, fellow members of a professional organization or two, and any number of other people who are within your circle of acquaintances but not peers in your intimate circle of trust. It’s caused issues. The site has had notorious privacy issues, and the sheer volume of connections most of us have there makes it very hard to feel any sort of intimacy. Then, when you factor in all the sponsored ads that pop up in your feed, the updates from the brands and pages you follow, and the suggested content from Facebook itself, you end up with an awful lot of noise to sift through.
At a basic level, Facebook, like most other forms of social media, runs on doublespeak: advertising connection but creating isolation; promising happiness but inculcating dread. - Jia Tolentino
It’s safe to say that, after more than 15 years of operation, Facebook is no longer primarily about connecting with the people who matter most to you. Newsfeeds are full of news, ads, branding, and quizzes. Casino experts have teamed up with Facebook to make the site as addicting as possible, urging you to keep scrolling and refreshing for hours on end, even if you’re not having any meaningful conversations.
The internet, though, is ever-changing, and Facebook isn’t the only social network out there. There are the other major sites, of course, like Instagram (owned by Facebook), Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and so forth, but there are also a lot of smaller social networking sites that focus on more intimate, high-quality connections. Is this the future? Can we ditch Facebook for not fulfilling its promise of connection?
Here’s an overview of some other networks we’ve seen lately.
Fabriq. Fabriq is an app that’s designed to help foster meaningful connections between people by reminding them to reach out to each other. This avoids one of the big problems of sites like Facebook: you scroll through your news feed and get updates from your friends, but you never actually talk to them. That means you only get the information they choose to put out there (usually a highlight reel), can’t provide support when they need it, and don’t give your friendship the nurturing interaction it needs to stay strong. Fabriq helps fix that problem by encouraging two-way interactions, not passive information consumption.
Cocoon. Cocoon is focused on nurturing family ties. It’s a nanonetwork specifically designed to help family members keep in touch, share photos, send invitations, and so forth. It’s also meant to be nondisruptive (notifications don’t flash, ping, or vibrate), which we love for when we’re trying to do more intense work and don’t want constant distractions.
Dex. Dex is a subscription-based service that uses classic customer relationship management tools to transform how we nurture our friendships. It centers on the idea that relationships require nurturing, and so it encourages its members to meet up in the offline world and connect in person. Dex also promises not to sell member information, which is why it’s funded by subscriptions, not ad sales.
Quorum. Quorum is a hybrid of chat services like WhatsApp and the basic elements of many social media sites. One of its most interesting features is that it allows for in-chat payment transfers, so that if you’re organizing a group outing and somebody is buying tickets or food for everybody, money can be sent right in the chat instead of having to change to another app like Venmo or CashApp. It would be especially useful as a nanonetwork for local clubs, community organizations, professional groups, and so forth.
Getting DIY with it. This isn’t a link to any particular platform, but we came across an interesting article about people who are just designing their own small social networks and running them on personal servers. While this option is probably only feasible for the most tech-savvy among us, it’s an intriguing idea and one that we’d like to hear more about.
We know that Facebook plays a major role in many of our lives, but does it play the role you joined up for? While we don’t necessarily predict the fall of Facebook anytime soon, we need better platforms to fulfill the promise of digital connection and digital intimacy - if that’s even possible.
Have you ditched Facebook for another platform? How did it go? Leave us a comment!
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