Ask HN: How to Make Friendster Great?
66 ca98am79 97 5/21/2025, 4:21:46 PM
I bought the domain friendster.com because I loved the old Friendster and wanted to bring it back. I built a social network on the site and have started to invite people from the waitlist. I'd like to make Friendster great again - do you have ideas on what I should do?
I'd like it to be about connecting with and making new real friends. I'd like it to be positive and do something positive for people. I don't want it to have the addictive behaviors and negativity that are prevalent in current social networks.
It is currently self-funded.
So fix these problems.
1. No followers. Mutual connections only. Put a strict limit of 1000 connections in place to enforce this. No one actually has a mutual connection with more than 1000 people. This only hurts people trying to gain an audience. Heck, make it so if you haven't read someone else's posts in a year, they stop seeing yours. Do whatever it takes to prevent one-to-many connections.
2. No public content. No one wants the whole world to read their conversations with their friends. The only reason you would want that is if you want to build an audience.
3. No likes. No scores of any kind. If you show people a number, they will try to make it go up. No one tracks a score with their friends.
4. No newsfeed. Don't reward people for never shutting up. Maybe a chronological list of *friends* by most recent update and click into that to see all their updates.
5. No algorithm. Give people tools to find what they want to see; don't try to decide for them.
6. No re-post, no share, no forward, etc. Content lives in one place only, the account of the person who posted it, and it is only visible to who they said it should be visible to.
I agree with most of these, but I'm iffy on this one. "No one tracks a score with their friends" is not really true, it makes people feel good to see encouragement and feedback from their friends. There's no reason that encouragement has to be restricted to text comments and messages. Without feedback, you're essentially just screaming into the void knowing someone could be listening.
If the things I'm posting could get feedback but don't, that tells me that the things I'm saying aren't really hitting with any of my friends. That's a valuable thing to know, whether or not you choose to act on it.
Facebook in the early years was for the most part exactly like what you are suggesting, but with likes, and I at least remember it being a pretty enjoyable place for a few years there (I joined at the very end of 2006).
Good :D Let's revalue meaningful nuanced interactions over meaningless single bit signals. Even an emoji response rather than a like makes for better connection.
Friends *can* give non-verbal cues in real life that they are interested (nodding, laughing, etc.), but likes are very much not like those non-verbal cues. Non-verbal cues only work in a very small group. There is no non-verbal cue that works to show interest in the context of "any of your friends" in real life. Emoji reactions in the context of a back-and-forth chat could work as non-verbal cues, but again, those are very different from drive-by likes with no additional engagement.
In this hypothetical social network, if you post something and no one responds to it or engages with it in any way verbally, you would be encouraged to do the same thing you would do in real life if you kept trying to talk about something in a group of friends and no one engaged with it verbally... find something else to talk about (or find a different group for that topic).
The goal is very much to mirror the experience of talking to your friends, but facilitated in a way that makes it more asynchronous and scalable (within the limit of your actual real life connections).
There are a lot of people in my life I would love to stay better connected with, but maintaining a direct chat can be difficult (what to say) and it doesn't always make sense to put people in group chats because the group might only make sense to me (people I used to work with that I actually like, for example). If I could post about what's going on in my life, what I'm working on, what I'm into right now, etc. and have my real-life friends opt-in to an actual conversation about that... well then it's much easier to stay in touch. I have no interest in knowing how many of my friends "like" what I'm sharing. If we aren't mutually talking to each other, we aren't engaging as friends no matter how much they may like it. They're just my audience if they have nothing to say back.
Sorry I didn't have time to make this shorter. My goal isn't to convince anyone of anything, just to share a perspective that might be interesting to you, OP or anyone else building something "social". You might sum it all up with the question: What if social media tried to be as much like real life friendship and as little like "influencing" as possible?
I'm right there with you, but I know a lot of people who very much do want to know how many of their friends "like" their selfies and other posts, and how that compares to how many "likes" their friends are getting. I think they're more common on social media than we are.
I'd be glad to use the system you describe; I just wonder if it would ever draw more than a niche audience without those features that many people seem to find essential to whatever they're getting out of the experience.
Maybe it's a bit pedantic, but surely this is less likely to be true with no other qualifications like what counts as a mutual connection.
All it would take is 50 people that I'm acquainted with who also know 20 people I've never met, which seem like very plausible numbers.
Now, whether I would want to establish any kind of connection with those people on the basis we both know someone in common is a different question
But if I could see the occasional (low frequency) update on things in their life or interesting to them... I could maybe see an opportunity to reach out for a real conversation about something of mutual interest.
Imagine you're suddenly teleported to a party with a hundred people you know and like but aren't super close to. How do you join a conversation? I mean, if it was people you were really close to, you'd just go up and talk to someone. That's group chat / SMS. But if it's more aquaintence level... one of two things probably happens: You overhear something that you're interested in and connect on that, or you randomly drop in various conversations at a surface level until something clicks.
That's what I'm after. Conversation that naturally flows from a spark. You don't need that with your closest friends, but you don't need a social network to keep up with your closest friends either. I imagine social networking as the tool to provide ongoing sparks for real direct interactive conversations on an occasional but ongoing basis with people you aren't close enough to to just call/text.
"hey cousin, it's been a while! i was just thinking of you the other day, how've you been? what's new? miss you, hope to talk to you soon!"
Re. #4/5: I want a chronological feed of my friends' posts, no algorithm. If I feel my friend is posting too much garbage, then I want to be able to "unfollow" them but still be "friends". I want to see what's going on in my friends' lives, not read or see politics/animals/etc.
Re. #6: STRONG AGREEMENT.
Anyhoo, this will be a tough climb for you. Ello captured a lot of what you are going for, at least for users who were willing to part with Google+. Vine still rules for short-form video, Dodgeball still wins for mobile-first, there's Meerkat and Justin.TV for streaming, SixDegrees is still at it, and (let's be honest) most of us are still on AIM. I hear good things about Path too, they have an inspiring CEO and a unique product. Niches are the future; there's even a startup trying to help Harvard nerds get laid. I wish you the best!
Use AI to help arrange meetups, or propose group opportunities. Imagine having something like facebook groups where AI is there to help you actually hang out and do things. Schedule meetups, rekindle lost connections, find activities, develop relationships, develop new business ideas, activate civic engagements.
You just have to design so the bot's aren't relevant. The problem with Twitter, Facebook, and friends, is that they push the bot content at you, even if you don't follow them.
Require a fee to post.
I still don't think it would work now though. People don't trust social networks like they trusted Facebook in the olden days, and they never will again.
2. No ads. See #1
3. Ensure the user is a real person by mailing them a one-time code on a postcard in the US mail, like Nextdoor used to do.
4. NO ALGORITHMIC FEED, unless you explicitly offer that on a separate tab.
Make it a Mastodon server!
First we need universal health care.
Second we need to raise the minimum wage to $25.
Third we need to cut the military spending by at least 50% and redirect that into electric-powered public transportation. Street cars, light rail, etc.
Fourth we need a moon shot of building housing in urban centers near public transportation. Three over one is the bare minimum.
The rest are fine, except that raising the minimum wage without some sort of government mandated price fixing on necessities is going to be a losing battle.
I never understood why we have to remove one thing to do something else. Sometimes you just need a redirection right?
I mean sure, GPS was meant for missile guidance, but now we use it to go to our friends place for game night or taking the family on a road trip.
The internet wasn't made for memes, but here we are. And we play online games together too.
We spend like 1-2 trillion on medicaid and medicare.
My personal vision (which may differ obviously from others) is for America to be the best nation to ever exist, in terms of what it offers to its citizens, and to the broader community at large. And for me that includes the best military power (gotta keep the insane crazy countries and terry's in check), the best social quality of life (healthcare, housing, safety), and the best outcomes for everyone who is here (pursuit of happiness).
I find it fascinating that this country has gone through hell and back (civil war, civil rights, world wars, etc.) and held it together, and it is one of the primary reasons I admire the country so much even though it has its issues (which country doesn't?) and aspires for something greater.
For someone like me, Europe can be a very racist place and I know from first hand accounts from others like me how they're treated as an eternal outsider, not to mention their imperialist history and bloodshed... Where I'm from is a 3rd world developing country that was set back by invaders and imperialists for centuries.
America offers a balance that is really hard to find in the world, it is a true melting pot and I love it here.
I don't use social media outside of old.reddit if that counts but would strongly consider something like this. It would be easy to describe to friends; my friends/family over 30 are nostalgic and those under 30, especially those living on their own now, are curious about alternatives to the current state of things.
Friendster was early to the game but it died, and it died for a reason. Let it rest.
Maybe you could help facilitate activities like this on the new Friendster?
On the same tack, maybe a simplified LinkedIn. Keep track of good work connections without being tied to work emails. LinkedIn is unusable...
FB - incredibly local first market.
Instagram, YouTube & TikTok - key tech insight that photos / video were the dominant medium of their time, combined with great timing and user experience.
iMessage - built in distribution, and the good fortune that no product manager thought it was a social network for at least a few years.
BlueSky - basically just great timing and willingness to fully copy Twitter.
I think it's too early on VR social, and the giants are too focused on it. I do think that hyper-private photo sharing is interesting. I want to send photos of my kids to my parents daily, grandparents monthly, and in laws every couple weeks. The current set up for messaging is a little clunky.
Don't think it is just a copy. It is same UX that keep the familiarity factor to Twitter but then you can also run your own PDS and own your data. There is a lot more curated feeds and that makes it even more interesting.
“Negative” is something else that can be addressed directly. To make a fact-checking machine you have to make a god, but to detect outrage and negativity you just need ModernBERT, BiLSTM and maybe 20,000 training examples. It is true that outrage engages people but take that away and you will find there are wholesome things like cat photos that go viral. How you suppress negativity is up to you, and people will always say that their negativity is their free speech, but detecting negativity in 2005 is mostly a matter of making the training set.
It would seem on first glance that you can't set up a social network called Friendster just because you bought Friendster.com domain.
Also, if you ever end up hiring engineers, I might be interested!
The worst thing about running a content hosting platform is moderation. You will fail at it, and that failure will hurt people. Even worse, you replace success with victory.
The first move is to let your users help, by giving them the power to moderate their own spaces. Of course, as every web forum (and subreddit) has proven, this isn't a perfect solution. Even the best moderation can never be enough. Moderated spaces become echo chambers that war with one another. That's because power will always be abused for rent seeking. In the case of moderation, that means moderators abusing their authority to monopolize engagement; and narrative converging into dualist team-speak.
So what if we eliminate the hierarchy? Instead of letting a moderator decide what content shouldn't be seen, let users collaboratively decide what content they want to see.
Every published interaction is an attestation. It can be the presence of content itself, or it can be something about content. That might be a category, a logical assertion, an opinion, whatever. By providing a subjective attestation about some content, we can empower users to use boundaries to find content that is interesting, and avoid content that is undesirable. Users could choose the curated lists they trust, and collaborate on consensus.
Objective truth does not exist. Everything written is subjected to a specific perspective. By using boundaries instead of rules, we can accommodate this reality as a first class feature of the system. Friends aren't journalists anyway, so the goal of interaction was never objectivity to begin with.
By reframing interaction this way, we can have conversations instead of debates; and even if you do want to debate, you can leverage attestations to actually argue constructively.
First: What are your real goals?
I think you should look at governance; your incentives; and the incentives that you provide to your users. The incentives should ultimately bring you (and your users) to your goals.
Personally, I'm disappointed with the "for profit" model of social networks. I think they should behave differently, either like democracies, community centers, or like a church. Specifically, decisions about "what the product is" need a lot more control from the users themselves.
Nested comments in the style of reddit/HN are great for facilitating conversations. Part of why I left Facebook was they seem to be actively trying to hinder discussion.
Favor facts and reality over sensationalism and conspiracy BS.
No bigotry.
Groups with voting like Reddit. Sub groups like Discord. Friend feeds like old Facebook. IM like Discord. A disappearing posts feature like Instagram/Snapchat. Events and things to do in certain areas like S'More. A revamped phpBB forum style in groups. Etc.
And good monetization practices, e.g. selling ad space on groups or on keyword searches.
I've used Bumble For Friends since 2020 and have met 10 to 15 dudes for regular platonic friendship but 12.5 wanted more (sex, dating). So only 2.5 were looking for regular platonic male friendship ... the half one was with a guy who was bi and he never crossed the line until he did (year & half later) and that was that.
Luckily last year I found a new good normal (normal like growing up when you just made regular non-sexual friendships) dude friend and travel buddy and he has connected me to other dudes who just want normal regular dude friendships. All good if you aren't straight but unfortunately our male minds the majority think apps are to connect people for more then friendship. Which is a bummer!
With that in mind others have said use friendster for a way for people to come together in real life. Don't do AI stuff unless your using it to verify people. People indeed want real/genuine and the best way to do that is create local groups for people to meet to create friendships organically. Its a normal way to make friends for all sexes as we do and have done via work and while in/thru school. What im and everyone else is describing sounds like meetup.com but one that is free and for a younger generation.
If that's the case, then maybe this is a good opportunity to reconsider. I for one have had many great platonic relationships with women that I am interested in sexually. Interest is not pursuit. If I had avoided every platonic relationship that could feel like a failed sexual pursuit, I would have missed out on a lot of great friends.
I mentioned I made a solid platonic friend and travel buddy. I hang out with weekly and we go to happy hours with other straight to non-straight dudes. Only one of them has been inappropriate, but we worked it out and there are no more advances. If they want to continue being my friend great as that’s all, I’m looking for on a friends app and/or through happy hours.
And personally if they called it, something else that problem would still exist.