by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
The recent news about Cambridge Analytica coming out of Great Britain lays bare the fundamental flaw the Facebook business plan — it doesn’t really have customers. The data of people who use it is where it makes money and as such that data can go to the highest bidder.
I have long proposed a new social media service that would be a Twitter Killer, but the concepts associated with it could very well be used on a Facebook Killer as well. But the key issue is — and here’s the rub — is you would have to apply the old Google slogan of “Don’t Be Evil.”
And that might be pretty difficult.
It might be difficult because, well, people won’t pay for a social media service. A social media service grows because of its viral nature and zero friction to adaptation. Even if you had to pay $1 a month, 99% of your user base would scoff.
It’s just not going to happen.
But having said that, we may have reached an inflection point whereby people might be willing to ditch Facebook if they were given assurances that there personal data wouldn’t be abused. Now, I don’t know how you could do that if couldn’t charge. And, yet, it seems as though if you could find a really wealthy liberal angel investor to fund a startup devoted to fixing the problems with Facebook (and Twitter) that it might be more successful than one might think.
Of course, you would have to bring something new to the table. You couldn’t just copy Facebook. You would have to be innovative. I still think that the concepts of Usenet, a service that was popular 20 years ago, would do the trick. It’s an established, tested method of social media that has, for the most part, been lost to the mists of time. Yes, Reddit exists, but I find it’s application of Usenet concepts ham-handed at best. I want a service that leans heavily, and directly on the Usenet I used 20 years ago.
Now, I’m aware that Google+, in a way, did just that, but that was designed by data nerds who didn’t understand basic human interaction. I guess what I’m saying is there has got to be a better way than Facebook and maybe someone with a liberal bent — and a lot of money — should step up to the plate.
