HACKER Q&A
📣 rblion

What comes after social media? What's out there already?


I can't decide if there is a massive movement underway or a vocal minority becoming slightly bigger. People say one thing and do another, this is history in many ways.

I have seen many ideas come and go like the wind, forgotten to all but communities like HN. Many ideas that are still active only have a few thousand members.

What else is out there? What else is emerging? Anything new or interesting?

  👤 madamelic Accepted Answer ✓
Privacy-centric, user-friendly services focused on making a profit by asking users for money.

I don't know if it is just my own echo chamber but it seems there is a rejection of traditional VC-backed tech companies both by LPs, partners and founders.

If I had to make a bet, I would make a bet on 'non-traditional' funding like bootstrapping and revenue-backed financing where a stable 3 - 5x return on investment is found on MRR rather than 10:1 flop-to-unicorn exits.

My second bet will be a rejection of big corporate players (Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc) by "the cool kids". FAANG of today are becoming the IBMs and Oracles of the 2030s in my opinion; tired and uncool.

Bet on solo founders or small teams (under 5 people) taking non-traditional funding and carving out niches of big players like was done before. These small teams will purposefully stay sustainable (look at Gumroad purging basically their entire team). These non-traditional founders won't be getting $10B exits but building stable ventures that have huge profit-to-employee ratios.

👤 saluki
I think the next step is VR, ready player one style where everyone is going to school, working and playing in the same virtual space. I expect this pandemic will speed us in that direction. No commute, no office space, want to see Paris let's go.

I think we'll all be fit though because I think it will get more interactive and action oriented along the way.

I expect most of us will die in our VR rooms of a heart attack at a ripe old age.

That's right we'll all have a VR setup and room for each family member.

I just hope facebook doesn't build the Oasis.

👤 krapp
The deep integration of social media and virtual assistants with the Internet of Things, resulting in social appliances. Basically everything you own will either have its own AI personality, or will be controlled by a "hub" that does, and these will also have their own constructed social media presences on the web, which you will be required to interact with.
👤 probinso
hiking