If you really want to build a social network, don't fall into the trap that many side-projects and freeware products fall into: Trying to experiment. There really is no room for experimentation, because the market has already been there and tried that. Anything novel or unique you can think of, existing sites have already either experimented with, or decided against based on A/B testing.
Better to just make a "bland"/"vanilla" social network and focus on differentiating yourself by having a sterling reputation and "new car smell". Be like Google when Google was new:Just another search engine, but eh, it seems nicer than the rest somehow!
Facbook/Instagram is haunted by Cambridge Analytica and ongoing investigations and lawsuits around the world. Twitter has become Musk's playpen. LinkedIn is full of dark patterns (and that was even before Microsoft bought it!) TikTok is banned in several countries.
You also need to be able to make enough money from the project to keep the servers running, and pay engineers to fix bugs, and pay customer support people to do GDPR deletions and stuff like that. And you'll need moderators to keep the Nazis away. So, you'll need to build an advertising platform also.
Better to just make a "bland"/"vanilla" social network and focus on differentiating yourself by having a sterling reputation and "new car smell". Be like Google when Google was new:Just another search engine, but eh, it seems nicer than the rest somehow!
Facbook/Instagram is haunted by Cambridge Analytica and ongoing investigations and lawsuits around the world. Twitter has become Musk's playpen. LinkedIn is full of dark patterns (and that was even before Microsoft bought it!) TikTok is banned in several countries.
You also need to be able to make enough money from the project to keep the servers running, and pay engineers to fix bugs, and pay customer support people to do GDPR deletions and stuff like that. And you'll need moderators to keep the Nazis away. So, you'll need to build an advertising platform also.