I wrote up an incomplete, 16+ paragraph discussion about the kind of social network I would like to see, before realizing that even I don’t know what I want. In my head, I want everything to be clean and tidy — one network that did everything. Created great, strong communities, answered questions about various issues, felt tight-knit and allowed for reasonable discussions, all very pie-in-the-sky. But I don’t think these can be relegated to one network, nor should they.
By not centralizing all of our services, we can use various tools that all do their jobs much better then a consolidated, mega-tool that doesn’t help anyone in particular. Platforms, as specific as they are to their format, already have issues of trying to accomplish too many things, and therefore being worse at the job they initially tried to accomplish. I’ve realized that this is all a very simple idea, but I think it’s human to try to come up with an idea that will “fix everything” with more complexity, when the solution has probably already been found.
Small communities, that do their jobs well, and fulfill their users needs are always going to better serve their communities needs than a mega-platform that dumps all their users together. People are fundamentally different, and we all have different wants. As long as that’s true, I think we’ll need many different tools and spaces.