Summarise with AI
Summarise with AI
Building a social network is a devastatingly simple concept with an equally devastatingly difficult path to success.
Creating a place for users to connect and share content is an idea that can trace its origins all the way back to 1997 with the founding of Six Degrees, and yet, platforms like Twitter and Instagram are still trying to perfect the art of the social network.
However, what if the reason these companies struggle to perfect the digital town square is because, just like a town square, a single place can never encompass the needs and wants of billions of people?
That’s what I’ve been thinking about recently, and it gave me the idea to collate a list of alternative social media sites, one’s that might be a bit different from the usual stalwarts, that provide content and connection for more niche audiences!
So let’s get started with:
Fruit + number, bold name combo.
It made me very old but I had never heard of Lemon8 prior to writing this blog, so excuse me for not being down with the kids.
Lemon8 is actually the ‘sister’ app to TikTok, and is developed by the same (sometimes controversial) company Bytedance.
As of mid 2023, Lemon8 had 17 million users, and is closer to Pinterest/Instagram than its TikTok counterpart, with an emphasis on lifestyle content.
Discoverability is really high on Lemon8, and it has a really interesting Rising Stars feature, which allows creators the chance to grow their audiences quickly if they post enough to get featured there.
I adore minimalism, so much so I even try to keep my achievements and ambitions nice and minimal.
Locket is an incredibly minimalistic social media app, which works by allowing users to put live photos onto their friends iPhone home screen.
It actually has a super sweet backstory as well, developed by programmer Matt Moss to keep in contact with his girlfriend whilst they went long distance.
If you’re interested in a small intimate social networking experience without the algorithmic hellscape of Instagram, definitely give Locket a try.
I ❤️ open-source and decentralisation, and as such have a huge soft spot for the following entry on this list.
After Elon Musk purchased Twitter and the discourse on the platform got kind of funky (hell of a way to describe the erosion of social values and decency), a bunch of competitor text-based social media apps sprung up to house the Twitter churns.
Mastodon is probably the coolest of these, because it’s decentralised, meaning no one person controls it. Instead, it’s powered by ActivityPub, which makes it part of something called the Fediverse.
This sounds complex, and it is, so the simplest way I have heard it described is using the analogy of email.
If you have a Facebook account, you can’t use that to look at Twitter content or browse TikTok, because they’re siloed platforms. But if you have a Gmail account, you can still email Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook and iCloud email addresses, because they all use the same underlying protocol.
This flexibility and interoperability is what ActivityPub (likewise protocols like AT and Nostr) and the Fediverse are bringing to social media.
This means users of Mastodon can natively view (and share to) content from sites like microblogging site Misskey and the Reddit-esque discussion platform Lemmy.
Another cool aspect of Mastodon is its ability for you to host your own ‘instance’, meaning you can apply your own content moderation policies, effectively deciding what parts of the Fediverse you want to see, providing bottom-up content moderation rather than being left to the whims of whatever the exec team think.
LinkedIn essentially has a monopoly on business-first social media, but if you’re looking for a more relaxed and informal approach to work-based social media, Polywork might just be the network for you.
A good way of describing Polywork is like Twitter compared to LinkedIn’s Facebook vibe. Polywork is positioned to be more focused on your accomplishments and personal achievements/quirks rather than the company you work for or where you went to school, providing a much more social feel than LinkedIn.
The most fun part of the Polywork experience however, is the ability to create your own personal webpage with AI (on the paid subscription), a bit like how MySpace used to offer customisation abilities, to really make your profile page a custom experience.
Polywork isn’t just LinkedIn with a backwards hat on though or a standalone web page generator, it actually has a bunch of cool networking features to distinguish it, like a lack of like buttons and follower counts, preventing the ‘competitive’ nature of other social medias.
You also have the ability to request ‘collaborations’ and more importantly, the ability to prevent others from offering ‘collaborations’, meaning no more ‘hey I noticed your profile, fancy buying our $100,000 p/a SaaS tool despite the fact you’re 2 weeks into your training contract?’.
If you’re open for collaborations though? You can list that and quickly appear in users' discovery feeds, making Polywork a really attractive network for freelancers and consultants looking to make some money.
It’s all well and good promoting your achievements, but where’s the drama…
Blind is a fully anonymous business-focused social media, which is supposed to inspire honesty, but essentially their value proposition is as a forum for you to bitch about your workplace without repercussions.
However, users report that Blind enables people to be more honest about difficult-to-discuss areas of worklife, and there’s a really interesting post on HackerNews about users requesting anonymous feedback on work/projects/career progression that allow them to garner actually useful insights rather than platitudes.
If you’re finding advice on how to progress in your work life difficult to obtain, could Blind be the answer?
Have I missed any social media sites? How do you use social media in your day-to-day? Leave a comment below!
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