With the way Facebook is being pummeled for the way it handles it’s users privacy, one would think there would be an opening for a competitor.
Does FB-like things…messages, posts, pictures, groups.
But completely private - your activity is never sold or given away.
All communication encrypted.
Subscription-based – no ads.
I’d pay $10/month for something like this.
So why hasn’t anyone tried?
The problem is social media platforms (and to a lesser extent, digital distribution platforms) tend towards monopoly very easily because people need to be where… well… the content and their friends are. And nobody wants to maintain 3 nearly identical accounts. It’s not impossible for competitors to emerge. Facebook beat out Myspace, obviously. Mastadon has gotten a little ground, largely among leftists and queer people, from Twitter. But any alternate platform gaining any speed is not a horse you should bet on.
It’s a risky proposition because social media needs a lot of resources to scale well, and you always get into the problem that even with a subscription fee the lure of ad revenue is too lucrative. This is exacerbated by web and tech’s extreme reliance on venture capital money, which trades any ethical responsibility and long term growth for any monetization scheme that gives short term exponential return on investmentIt’s part of why so many startups fail, their investors basically economically strip mine the company and don’t see it as a business with employees that need a steady gig and long term care, but rather a quick buck they can turn around and abandon.
Not to mention it’s legitimately difficult to launch any product that has a feature set that can compete with a decade old iteratively refined service. You can copy the broad strokes, of course, but a lot of the usability features people take for granted can’t be crafted before the service goes live unless you’re eager to run out of money before launching.
Note that I’m using “monopoly” somewhat loosely here. You can argue (perhaps successfully) that despite fulfilling very different niches, Twitter and Facebook are both competitors in the “social media” sphere. I’m mostly talking about social media platforms with roughly the same content sharing paradigm.
Very few people would pay $10/month for something like this, particularly when they can only chat/share/converse with other people willing to pay $10/month.
Vero.
When first announced, they said the first 1 million members would be free for life, but it hasn’t grown as fast as they hoped, and it’s still free for now.
It’s an app only, no Web site, and you can’t post text, only photos, music, etc., like Instagram. If you go to the Play Store or App Store, you’ll see people’s comments on its pros and cons.
I, too, am unhappy with Facebook, and found Vero while looking for an alternative, like the OP. I haven’t signed up yet, so no first-hand experience to relate. It would be nice if something like this took off (and remained true to its values).