> Like every human endeavour, every social network is there for a limited duration and will be useful to a limited niche of people
On a grand enough scale, sure. If we expand the scope of "social network" very slightly to consider things like the web and email, this fact becomes less clear. I am fairly young, and I suspect at least email will be used for the rest of my life. The difference between the modern landscape for new protocols and the landscape when the early internet protocols were made is that there was little struggle for power. People made things they wanted, and they took off if other people wanted the same thing.
Now we have a bunch of competition for what is essentially the same experience. Does that mean there will never be one dominant protocol (or shudders, one application) for social media? I wouldn't bet on that claim. I think it will just take longer to reach somewhere that we land on as a common denominator.
It seems to be that a protocol must be flexible enough to support the division of communities and migration of users, like the article says is human nature. Protocols can support that though - email is one such protocol that does. ActivityPub is another, seems to be the route that we are headed towards right now.
On a grand enough scale, sure. If we expand the scope of "social network" very slightly to consider things like the web and email, this fact becomes less clear. I am fairly young, and I suspect at least email will be used for the rest of my life. The difference between the modern landscape for new protocols and the landscape when the early internet protocols were made is that there was little struggle for power. People made things they wanted, and they took off if other people wanted the same thing.
Now we have a bunch of competition for what is essentially the same experience. Does that mean there will never be one dominant protocol (or shudders, one application) for social media? I wouldn't bet on that claim. I think it will just take longer to reach somewhere that we land on as a common denominator.
It seems to be that a protocol must be flexible enough to support the division of communities and migration of users, like the article says is human nature. Protocols can support that though - email is one such protocol that does. ActivityPub is another, seems to be the route that we are headed towards right now.