27I was wondering what it would be like if Hubksi had a feature that catered to groups of people, like companies, institutions, or teams, organizations, groups friends, or events even.
On hubski, we follow different posters, but what if I was part of a small company or a bowling league or whatever, and I wanted to have a sort of 'partitioned' Hubski that consisted of only those people, and they could have the same. It would be like the Hubski version of subreddits, where it is organized around people instead of topics.
The group could be 'packaged' by being populated with the group of users and then named, then you could subscribe to the group of users as a whole.
Kind of far out, and I'm not saying there is a need or even if this is a good idea for a feature, -just something I've been musing on...
reddit had one real asset, the only thing that generated original content: People. An aggregator like reddit gets its content from everywhere but reddit, that makes its userbase its sole natural resource, and like all natural resources they burned through it with reckless abandon, utilizing it to its least potential, thinking it would never run out. But now it doesn't even have that. reddit consumes everything and produces nothing. It's the perfect paradigm for America.
People are Facebook's product, not their customer. reddit's not that different except reddit never figured out how to mine its massive userbase without also pissing it off. Since its inception, privacy cherishing redditors have made it abundantly clear that they will not be bought and sold.
Instead of selling its users and their information to third parties, reddit should have been selling the third parties to its users. reddit could have opened the doors of its community building platform to any industry to set up shop without selling out (and pissing off) their one product (i.e. people) to the highest bidder like Facebook and Google do. Companies and schools would have paid for access and use of an even more powerful version of reddit's community building platform designed especially for their private organizations but without direct access to the userbase. It would be up to the users to go to them. Like walking into an ARMY recruitment center. You can always turn back.
Say Harvard established an official subreddit that they controlled completely, like a Facebook page, but without all the stifling rules and restrictions. Different from the unofficial /r/Harvard that's in the public domain of the controlling reddit community, this hypothetical edu reddit (/e/Harvard) could only gain access to you and your information if you granted it to them. For any educational institution, this would be a powerful tool that could revolutionize the entire admissions process. Communities built around existing institutional communities.
You might be saying this sounds exactly like Facebook. It's not. While Facebook is always scraping your information, trying finding new ways to chip away at your privacy and soul to whore you out, reddit would put the power in the hands of its users to let them decide. Facebook leaves you no choice; reddit lets you choose. With options. You can remain completely anonymous or not or just a little. The choice is yours.
But that's just one idea. reddit could have provided an artistic platform for the undiscovered talent within its walls with arts reddits (/a/) for musicians and writers and every kind of artist. Like MySpace did for indie music and Deviant Art did for visual art, reddit could have provided a unique home that's not limited to the uniform blue world of Facebook. Instead, the creatives dwindled and fled drowning in a rising sea of mediocrity. Communities built around artists.
These examples aren't the strongest but they probably come with more thought than what reddit has actually done with its powerful community building platform. It's like if NASA used all its resources and technology to create a realistic sounding smelling whoopee cushion.
- Say Harvard established an official subreddit that they controlled completely, like a Facebook page, but without all the stifling rules and restrictions. Different from the unofficial /r/Harvard that's in the public domain of the controlling reddit community, this hypothetical edu reddit (/e/Harvard) could only gain access to you and your information if you granted it to them. For any educational institution, this would be a powerful tool that could revolutionize the entire admissions process. Communities built around existing institutional communities.
This is more along the lines of the use case I was thinking of. A little Hub you could subscribe to as a member of an org or group, which is administered to some degree (maybe just barely, or to varying degrees). Hubski would be providing a place for pre-existing IRL groups to gather.
I suppose in the scenario you mention, you could create a hub-tag, then grant its use to others. Something like #mylittleponyclub-hub or #guncrazy-hub. In some sense these would be like subreddits, but only a select few could post to it, yet anyone could follow it.
I also don't know if these are good ideas or not, but good ideas sometimes come when you are thinking up bad ones.
I don't know if it is a good idea to go into that direction YET...but something to think about.
Hmmm.. having "forums" or something like that? I had once thought that a community page that showed various hubski initiatives might be nice: film club, book...etc. But these would be open to anyone.
How is this different than blocking people from being able to see content? Wouldn't some people just use it as a way to have insulated groups that others can't join in on? Not that this is all together bad. Just thinking out loud.
How is this different than a subreddit? Can't someone right now have a subreddit called /r/royaloaksoftballteam?
The porn thing I never really thought about. I didn't even realize it was on Reddit for the first year and a half I was on there despite having a shit-ton of comment karma. How that escaped me I have no idea, but at any rate, I could see an even greater degree if insulation on Huski from that sort of content. If you are not following anybody who posts or links to it, you might never know it exists.
So I am lame and trying to stick with the hub idea because because. And I was thinking about airline hubs and looking for a similar analogy to work with here because because.
The closest thing I could come up with that has users joining together for the porpoise of using the hub is the "gate" idea. And then I looked that up on wikipedia b/c/b/c. And I found "fortress hub":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_hub#Fortress_hub
... which sounds cool. Mostly because I want a hubski fortress.
So wait what? Groups? Yeah I suppose it would be a worthwhile thing but then who admins the groups?