[HN Gopher] Raya and the Promise of Private Social Media
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Raya and the Promise of Private Social Media
Author : mitchbob
Score : 27 points
Date : 2021-10-16 04:26 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| 1cvmask wrote:
| From what I know is that it was a membership of the beautiful and
| famous.
|
| Seems like a good profitable niche and a lifestyle business.
|
| But by definition they can not scale as they have to be exclusive
| to maintain existing members and avoid dilution of that aspect.
| mitchbob wrote:
| https://archive.ph/urLmR
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'm glad this exists. Powerful people need to understand how
| badly social media sucks, and there's no better way to teach them
| that lesson than pitting them against each other in an app where
| they're exclusively locked with their contemporaries. I can't
| imagine any of the milquetoast characters they name-dropped
| having anything interesting to say, so frankly: let 'em have it!
|
| In the meantime, I think the rest of the world should be
| switching to more privatized social media. Platforms like
| Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey and the all-uniting ActivityPub
| standard have created a frankly fantastic infrastructure for
| keeping people connected. I've been greatly enjoying the pull-
| first style of microblogging it offers, and it greatly alleviates
| the doomscrolling of Twitter or Facebook. Want to check in on
| your friends? 30 seconds of scrolling through your Mastodon feed
| will get you up to date. Twitter took me a few minutes to even
| catch my bearings, and after that I'd have to sift through the
| promotions and completely unrelated content to get to the stuff I
| cared about.
| dageshi wrote:
| Seems like Discord is the real private social media out there.
| skybrian wrote:
| The problem is finding interesting people to follow. Do you
| have any suggestions for Mastodon?
| smoldesu wrote:
| It all starts with finding a good instance. Instances are
| usually designed to collect like-minded people, which makes
| for more interesting discussion (eg. you wouldn't want BTS
| fans to interrupt a cybersecurity thread). You can still chat
| outside these bubbles (hence the federation), but the main
| interaction loop is stronger on your local instance.
|
| I'd recommend https://instances.social/ to find a good
| starting group. There's quite a few technology/computer
| science instances out there, many of which are quite active.
| skybrian wrote:
| That's a standard, generic recommendation, but it hardly
| compares to recommending a blog you really like.
|
| It would be like saying there are lots of good blogs on
| Substack, or lots of good books in the library. It's true
| but not helpful.
|
| What do _you_ like?
| onethought wrote:
| It uses Instagram to "verify identity".
|
| So is this Just another Facebook territory in disguise?
| [deleted]
| trevcanhuman wrote:
| I remember this being on Billions.
| wishawa wrote:
| > admission rate is in the single digits
|
| > expects to receive its millionth application by the end of 2021
|
| > subscription fee of $7.99 per month (now $9.99)
|
| To still turn a profit after paying 40 staff members and all the
| costs of maintaining and developing an app, this thing would need
| at least 50% of its registered users to be active. I really doubt
| this is possible for a dating app. Curious what other revenue
| streams they might have.
| adjkant wrote:
| I would bet people are staying on over 50% given the acceptance
| rate and self selection there, but that's 12M in revenue even
| at 100% active paying and 10% acceptance rate.
|
| That's 200K per employee - server costs. Seems like they're
| likely near break even, but even if not, they aren't burning a
| ton is my bet. VC's would be head over heels for that audience
| for even just a whiff of influence or monetization being
| dangled in the future.
| bradlys wrote:
| It's not a typical dating app though... I don't know if it's
| still true but supposedly it had 6-12 month subscriptions to
| start. It's also mostly used by celebrities and people adjacent
| to celebrities. For those folks - it probably pays for itself
| and they're not hurting over $10/month. It's also highly
| selective and so if you get selected then of course you'll pay
| - it's a relatively cheap status symbol. There are probably a
| lot of networking opportunities on it beyond just the dating
| aspect. A lot of other industries are very dependent on "who
| you know" for anything to happen.
|
| I'd gladly be a longer term subscriber if there was an app that
| A) connected me to people (most dating apps just don't do this
| to start for most straight men) and B) connected me to people
| who were what I'm looking for ( _very few_ people on dating
| apps I look at and feel drawn to). As it stands - all the
| dating apps right now are extremely disappointing. The filters
| I would like in an app just don 't exist. I would legitimately
| pay $100+/month if I knew the apps would lead to dates with
| people I was interested in or if I would be able to connect
| with likeminded individuals that lead to real world
| interactions.
|
| If I was a celebrity or adjacent to celebrity stuff - I would
| gladly be on an app like Raya because it sounds like you could
| at least filter out the overwhelming majority of people who
| you're not gonna line up with.
| mawise wrote:
| > A private social-media platform like Raya can certainly be
| safer. It is also by nature less open and more stratified than
| we've come to expect social networks to be.
|
| This matches well with lots of the smaller social networks that
| have enthusiastic memberships, SSB[1] is one of the first that
| comes to mind. With a small membership, you get a community of
| like-minded people--but to keep membership small you either need
| to be a niche (like SSB) that doesn't (yet?) have broad interest
| from the greater population, or you need to create imposed
| exclusivity like Raya does.
|
| However- the game could change if you're not trying to provide a
| layer of discovery. If "discovery" means going out into the world
| and meeting new people out-of-band, then your existing group of
| friends and family can provide the same experience of an
| exclusive network. That's the tack I propose with open-source
| Haven[2]: self-host, and grant access to others instead of
| letting them search and request access.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt
|
| [2]: https://havenweb.org
| Barrin92 wrote:
| > _" Raya's increased emphasis on work might be less a pivot than
| a reflection of how, for a millennial clientele, love, careers,
| networking, and identity formation often flow seamlessly
| together. Erotic capital intermingles with economic capital. Two
| perfectly curated lives frictionlessly intersect. "In the age of
| everybody having a personal brand, Raya's the place where people
| compare personal brands,"_
|
| this sounds more like the premise for a dystopian Netflix show
| than it sounds like a social network
|
| Honestly I would recommend, if people feel isolated, visit a
| chess-club. It's a good game for everyone, it's having a
| renaissance, you meet people from all ages, looks, and walks of
| life (instead of just the millennial petite bourgeoisie) and
| you're probably not going to run into a lot of influencer types.
| bitwize wrote:
| > this sounds more like the premise for a dystopian Netflix
| show than it sounds like a social network
|
| "'Our decision is final,' the fateful message to rule breakers
| reads." When I read that I imagined it spoken by a man in a red
| hooded sweatsuit and black fencing mask with a PlayStation
| symbol on it -- and followed by a burst of machine gun fire.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| Yet Affleck was allowed to remain
| bitwize wrote:
| Affleck, in this metaphor, is one of the VIPs who get to
| enjoy the entertainment of the game without risking
| anything.
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