Messengers vs social network vs ... - announcement of a new project



    In April last year, Pavel Durov, the creator of "Vkontakte", reset the lists of his friends and followers on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

    “Friends in social networks - the phenomenon of 2010. Everyone who needs it has long been in messengers, ”Durov said. In his opinion, maintaining outdated lists of friends in public networks is pointless and long. “To read someone’s news is a clogged brain,” the creator of Russia's largest social network is convinced.





    Whether this statement was part of a PR campaign for the promotion of the Telegram messenger or Durov really thinks so is not known for certain.

    Meanwhile, the popularity of social networks is not affected in any way, as well as the popularity of Telegram.

    Nevertheless, the pain point of social networks was affected - indeed, something was wrong with them.



    We will not repeat about the draining of data on Facebook or about the special relationship between the VK and law enforcement agencies - there have already been many articles about this.

    Let's take a look at the social network a little on the other side.



    Recently I saw such a post in FB:

    I conducted an audit of my friends.
    Here are the top triggers to which the brain reacted, and my finger bravely pressed the “Delete” button: Ass
    Boobs Stretched lips


    Bikini
    Photos from the rest
    abundance selfi gallery
    A large number of pictures of food
    large number of photos desserts
    repost stupid video
    repost stupid pictures
    Let the tape without his own thoughts
    Solid repost in the tape
    abundance advertising
    dream of Autobots ...


    In the jargon of the regulars of Facebook is called "frendotsid tape."
    But why do people in FB add friends to other people?

    Everything is very simple - there is no normal Facebook in a multibillion-dollar Facebook ... Search by post

    People want to see interesting information and that is why they are added to other people as friends - otherwise it will be impossible to find such a post and they will miss the most important thing.

    Therefore, there are restrictions for friends in 5000 - otherwise the tape can not be read.
    For those who are not friends, there is a subscription.

    The owner of the account is the king and god, he can remove someone from his friends and can also block someone if he does not like someone's post or comment.

    And what about messengers with channels?

    All the same - the owner of the channel can post information in one direction, for subscribers and in this case, readers can only unsubscribe.
    There are also public chats - the owner already receives feedback in them, but can also block the channel for a specific user.

    However, in the messenger inside the channel, you can do a search and find the necessary info, which cannot be done in sets with their endless ribbon.

    But even here an ambush - in the messengers it is impossible to do a search on all channels at once.

    A common problem of instant messengers and social networks - they are not indexed by search engines (except VC).

    Any messenger and social network, even if posts and channels are public, are not indexed by search engines.
    Everyone pulls the blanket over themselves, everyone wants to be the custodians of unique content in their ecosystem.

    Infinite scrolling (pagination) in social networks



    No comments.

    Channels in messengers

    Channels have become so popular and links to channels are so easy to do that sometimes comes to the point of absurdity.

    Take some online media and find the channel in the messenger:



    Go to the site messenger:



    Click on the link and go back to the same site with this news - the circle is closed.

    All this resembles such a picture:



    A huge amount of various information per unit of time - both in social networks and messengers.

    Let's take a look at the channel description in the messenger:

    The most important news and news from selected sections of the site NEWSru.com You can read in Telegram services:
    Channel with important news per day
    40-60 posts per day


    once more - 40-60 per day!
    And this is only the most important!

    Every 20 minutes there will be only important messages in one channel only.
    Well, if you have a lot of them, then ...

    But in social networks, the situation is no better - on average, the owner of a popular account in the FB can generate one message per hour in a 12-hour period.

    What does all this lead to?

    Well, firstly to the information overdose, this is understandable.

    But the most important thing is that the information and its discussion will not last more than 1 day on average in social networks or on instant messenger channels.
    24 hours - the ceiling of the response to the post.
    Usually all this is buried even faster.

    By the way, exactly the same problem on Habré - the average post lives for a maximum of 2 days.
    Posts come out at a frequency of 10-20 minutes and everything is buried by new posts.

    But Habr and similar sites are well indexed by search engines and there you can find articles even after a few years.

    And social networks and channels in messengers, which generate much more information noise of content per unit of time, diligently avoid normal search - either outside or inside their platforms (except VC).

    For these reasons, it turns out that in social networks that seem to have been created to communicate with people, it is communication that is absent.

    There is no exchange of information, there is only one-way flow - to the poor reader.
    In fact, in social networks, everyone can make their own channel to promote something, but not for communication.

    Posts and comments in the same Facebook usually contain no more than 2 lines for the most experienced (Twitter has long done away with this chip) - apparently with account of the younger generations who are not able to remember and write more than 5 words in one sentence.

    Therefore, social networks are ideal for promoting something - influencing elections, influencing buyers, selling training courses, supporting their own exhibitionistic inclinations in the form of selfies, etc.

    Communication is unimportant, but no one will read the comments in a few hours.

    Most likely, therefore, because of the uselessness, Facebook does not have tools for communication.

    Citation? No, did not hear.
    Multi-citation? Not.
    Select fonts, insert links? It is too complicated.

    You can easily ban comments and you will only see one side.

    And what about messengers?

    Practically the same thing - it’s impossible to communicate normally in groups, but you can ideally make some stuffing of any unverified information, spread rumors, etc.

    For example, WhatsApp in India:



    In India, people are lynched because of rumors in WhatsApp. The messenger wants to win fakes with the help of newspapers.
    During the year, at least 30 people were killed due to rumors.

    Facebook-owned WhatsApp messenger has posted advertisements in leading Indian newspapers with tips on how to recognize fake news. This is due to the fact that recently in the country, cases of attacks on innocent people due to false information spread through the messenger have become more frequent.

    And what about the tools for communication in instant messengers?

    Also very bad.
    Not so long ago, many people appeared quoting - even now you can see which phrase someone answers in the general chat.
    But the rest - multi-citation, font selection, etc., is not and most likely will not be - just not necessary, the format of communication does not imply the need for this.

    Another big problem in groups in messengers is the preservation of information directly into the memory of a smartphone. And for example, in WhatsApp it cannot be stored on a separate carrier - SD card - WhatsApp will fill the entire free space with countless media files that participants place in groups.

    The result is that the same file is stored in hundreds of chat participants.
    Just a blockchain of some kind.
    And due to the fact that everything is easily sent with one or two clicks in the messengers, everyone in the group has to download some unnecessary videos, audio, pictures, etc. The

    situation with the channels is a bit better - the channel is a web page and everything is stored on the server , but to post more detailed information, you need to make links to third-party resources and again you get an elephant.

    So, to summarize:

    - It is impossible to conveniently find the necessary information in social networks and messengers - there is no indexing by search engines (except VK)

    - Unchecked and false information

    is easily distributed in social networks and messengers - A huge shaft of useless information that obscures the necessary information

    - There are no tools for quiet and thoughtful communication

    Well, but are there any platforms that are better than social networks and instant messengers for public communication?

    Yes.
    And they exist a long time ago - these are ... forums.

    According to the technical toolkit for communication, any modern forum is done by the same Facebook.

    Forums are well indexed by search engines.

    Forum topics may be relevant and active for several years (!).

    But why forums are not as popular as social networks and instant messengers?

    There are several reasons in my opinion.

    1. Forums missed the moment of transition to mobile devices and did not adapt in time. Only recently appeared forums with good adaptation for mobile devices.

    2. Forums are fragmented - each forum owner makes it on his platform, with his limitations, with his rules, with his registration, with his appearance, etc.

    3. Registration is required on every independent forum - if you want to browse a lot of forums , then you need to do a lot of registrations and get used to a different interface.

    The forums were originally designed for thoughtful communication between people.
    Modern forums have a great convenient mobile interface.

    That is why we decided to add forums to M1 Messenger instead of channels.
    Any user will be able to create their own forum, and other users to create topics in this section.

    In essence, this will be an adapted forum for mobile devices, but with one single registration and a single interface for all forum sections.

    And we hope that it will be more convenient for users in comparison with social networks and other messengers, both in terms of discussions and on technological equipment.

    In the very near future we will present the first version of such a free platform for communication.

    In fact, we are not the first to do this.
    Many have heard about a project like Tapatalk from the USA:

    They started a little differently - at first it was an aggregator of different forums into a single interface.
    Now they offer to post forums on their platform and at the same time buy up popular forums and transfer them to their site.



    It is interesting to hear the opinion of the habrovchan about it.
    Thanks in advance for comments with criticism, suggestions and comments.

    Update: Continued

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