The Hole At The Center of the Social Networking Universe

Sam Kaplan

February 14, 2023

Right now, the social space is seeing a transformation from the social graph to the interest graph. TikTok led the way with their hyper-addictive app that learns your deepest subconscious desires and interests simply from your passive consumption of 30 second clips. Facebook has followed close behind with a company wide pivot towards discovery and interests over social content. The space is just getting started with social industry heavyweights like Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger calling the interest graph “the future of social” and launching Artifact, essentially TikTok for news. Personally, I’m starting Chitchat, a new way for people to have meet people and have digital conversations, built on top of the interest graph rather than existing social relationships.

When even Facebook is pivoting towards the interest graph, it’s tempting to bid farewell to our old friend, the social graph. But, instead, every time I think about the social graph, I want to scream. Because, the truth is the social graph isn’t flourishing. We’re not in the golden haze of technological maturity, where one era of technology passes the baton to the next. Instead, the social graph is trapped. It’s in a terrible big blue prison named Facebook.

Everyone I talk to remembers the glory days of Facebook in 2008-2013, for me, when I was in middle school and high school. This was the time when your Facebook friends were really your friends, not a list of everyone you’d ever met; when Facebook was simple and easy to use; when Facebook had a flourishing developer community from Farmville to juvenile crush games. You felt comfortable being yourself and posting silly things. Content was relevant and personal. Becoming “Facebook Official” was the real test of a relationship. Facebook was fun.

So what happened? Facebook lost the forest for the trees. When I interned there in 2017, everything was about one metric: time on site. Even as Facebook’s social engagement slid, time on site and therefore ad revenue grew. The news feed got filled with news, video, and other non-social content. Friend lists grew and content became more public and formulaic. Hundreds of teams blindly added new features creating a grotesque frankenstein monstrosity of bloat. Slowly and then almost entirely after Cambridge Analytica, developers were kicked off the platform. Facebook went from a high quality social experience to a gluttonous anything goes consumer company.

After 2013, the bellwether of the social media industry - young Americans - began to reject Facebook in force. Instagram and Snapchat which started as minor companion social networks moved to a more primary position. Snapchat which began as a simple photo messaging app launched its first social feature, stories, in October 2013. While Snapchat’s core ephemeral social experience is engaging, a user’s primary social network does need some degree of permanence. Instagram’s news feed filled this niche functioning as a much simpler version of Facebook. Young Americans seeking more privacy and a simpler user experience moved to the more intimate Instagram as their primary social network.

But, this didn’t come without its costs. For all the virtues of simplicity, functionality matters too. Instagram has photos, stories, Reels, shopping, and messaging. Yet, it lacks basics too. From the obvious - posting non-photo content like news - to missing the Facebook features we once loved like Groups or Pages or Profiles. By far the worst of all, it’s missing a great API. Here’s an article from 2007 about the 101 best Facebook apps at that time. The sheer amount and creativity of social apps were amazing. From Super Wall or Super Poke adding UI elements on top of core features, to Roomster or Carpool inventing new ways to meet people, the developer ecosystem, nascent as it was, shined bright.

Today, we see the ghosts of this old world. Pop-up social networks regularly rise and fall - from YikYak to Gas to BeReal. Whether we want to view these as just the same seasonality as you’d find on a restaurant menu, or more painfully as social developers’ gasps for air, what is for certain is that at one point these would just be Facebook apps. And, in fact, they were. Hundreds of TBH/Gas-like semi-anonymous hyper-viral apps floated through the early days of Facebook. One moment you’d get a notification that someone has Liked you anonymously. To find out who it is, all you have to do is open the app and Like all your crushes, which of course sends them all the same notifications, completing the viral loop.

And, while I don’t miss what are basically literal social viruses, the same model powers apps that we actually care about. If BeReal could have built on top of a core social network, not just some proto version like importing your contact list, then the virality would be easy, and they could just focus on the core experience of BeingReal. But, for every pop-up social network like BeReal which has succeeded, there are hundreds which didn’t get a chance. The bar is simply much higher when you have to do everything yourself. Even more than that, some ideas are impossible without a deeper integration. Take apps which help friends coordinate hanging out. (If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard this idea…) On the one end of the spectrum, helping reconnect friends to hang out, you need strong network effects to have everyone on the platform. On the other end of the spectrum, helping a specific group communicate and decide, you basically have to rebuild Chat - another woefully fragmented and closed piece of social technology.

So, what’s the answer out of this abyss? Well, I think there is a big opportunity for existing social networks to improve and expand. Facebook/Instagram were merciless about copying Snapchat. Snapchat should copy them right back and start to own the core, basic social experience alongside a great, deep API. Hell, maybe even with the recent stock price collapse Facebook could re-open their API too and apply a little more creativity to their core product. But, I’m not too optimistic. Instead, I think we’ll have to wait for decentralized social networks to form. Often people ask me, but why is decentralized better? Well, this is exactly why. Decentralized networks are a developer’s interoperable dream. I’m not blindly on the decentralized train. If Facebook did it’s job for Social as well as Google has been doing its job for Search, then it might delay the web3 future by 5-10 years. But, there is so much surplus and creativity and beauty just waiting for an open social graph, that decentralization has the wind at its back.

Yes, I’m excited for all the new social technology yet to come. In our modern fragmented world, connection is more important than ever. And, I’m excited to be able to build my own ideas. But, really I’m just excited to go to a party, and instead of adding someone on LinkedIn or having to write down 10 numbers plus text them my name, I can just add them somewhere in my ever-growing social graph.