According to the printed books in the year 2019 the social network Facebook is the most important website for connecting people. The amount of books about the topic is large and has grown over the last 10 years. Around the year 2005 Facebook was recognized as a student's community, while it has transformed later in a mainstream social network which is widespread used around the world. Not only the traffic counter measured by Alexa Internet is gigantic but the amount of conference, workshops, published books and self-published books about Facebook and social media in general is huge.
To stay on top of the movement it is not enough to repeat the same information again and explain why Facebook is great, but it's important to think into the future and investigate possible alternatives to Facebook. Which technology is available but not widespread used which is better than what Facebook has to offer? I've found a single website which will become the Facebook replacement in the future. A regular reader of this blog knows about which website I'm speaking:
Wikinews is an advanced more powerful version of Facebook. The reason why Wikinews is great is because it doesn't fit into normal categories. In contrast to WIkipedia wikinews is not creating new content, but it is referencing to existing content which is written in newspapers. And in contrast to Facebook, Wikinews doesn't hide the working of the admins but provides a version history of each edit. Using a mediawiki system not for creating content but to curate playlist is the core idea behind the WIkinews project.
Right now, the Wikinews project fly under the radar. I didn't found a single printed book about the website and the average edits per day on the website is very small. In the English version around 100 edits are made each day. In contrast the Facebook webpage has billion of new edits each day. The exact number is unclear but it for sure high.
The only reason why Facebook is huge and WIkinews is small is because of information asymmetry. That means, most people doesn't know what a social network is, and the existing tutorial about the topic are providing misinformation. Even the help section in Wikinews is manipulating the user. The only thing what is needed to make Wikinews a success are some fresh written books about the topic and some users who are motivated to try it out by their own.
if somebody has understood that Wikinews is a social network and allows to aggregate content and increase the traffic, then he won't go back to Facebook ever. Wikinews has all the feature of Facebook but is so more pleasent to use. Sure, Wikinews has not a monopol on the idea. Anybody can set up his own wiki and invite users to post URLs. The mediawiki software is available as Open Source, server space is cheap and tutorials about content aggregation and community building are available widespread. Not wikinews itself, but the idea behind it will be the next wave in social networks.
The main advantage of using the existing Wikinews website over building a similar project from scratch is, that in the existing information the version logfile is available from the last 10 years. It is possible to browse through the edits, and read the discussion to get an impression how the technology is working under real conditions. The main issue of the Wikinews project is, that the admins are not sure what a spam post is and what not. The definition is different from the WIkipedia project and the assumption is, that they don't find an answer in the future. The same problem is visible at Facebook, which also struggle to identify spam postings.
Some longterm Facebook user will argue, that the company is too large and the network is too advanced to fail. The idea of capitalism is that any business idea can fail, this is especially true for Facebook. Success was never a good advice for future decision. The problem of Facebook is, that they are not able to adapt to Wikinews. They can't change their underlying technology into a mediawiki system, and this will become the point of failure for the company. From a neutral standpoint the market share of Wikinews will grow while the market share of Facebook will shrink. The prediction is easy to track, and at the end Wikinews will become the new Facebook and gets a lot of attention.
Why I'm sure?
Wikis in general are perceived as not very attractive to the masses. Wikis are used by specialists to create content which works for them, but only a few people are motivated for doing so. Even the English wikipedia contains of not more then 20000 people from around the world and the amount of active authors has decreased in the last years. The prediction is, that this trend is active, which means that Wikipedia is read my many but edited only by few people.
The same principle is working by other content wikis. The lostpedia wiki for example collects articles about the TV serie Lost. The content is nice to read but the amount of motivated authors who are contributing is small. So what is the reason to assume that Wikinews is different from a content wiki? It has to do with the self-understanding. The core principle of Wikinews is, that not additional content is created but the users are posting URLs to existing information outside the wiki. Additionally these URLs are fresh, which means they were created in the last three months.
This kind of self-understanding is called content aggregation and social network. And it is working different from Wikipedia or Lostpedia. The difference is, that making an edit on such a wiki is fun and it is attractive for a large amount of people, especially for people who are creating bots, are making advertaisment for their products, likes to increase traffic and want to build communities. Basically spoken, Wikinews is attractive for the same audience which is using Facebook today. All the 3 billion Facebook users can be migrated to WIkinews and they feel comfortable with the website.
The only thing what is missing for doing so are some information sign which makes it easier for the people to get familiar with the concept. How such a sign will look like is unclear but it is possible to track if the mainstream audience is aware of this idea. The latest traffic statistics which is ultra fake is given under:
Over the years, the traffic has increased slowly. in the year 2015 around 4200 hits per day were available, in 2016 it was 5000, and in 2019 it was nearly 7000 hits per day.