I’m still thinking about how to do better at building social connections. Thought I’d share a few of the things I’ve used that are alternatives to the big social networks—Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and friends. I don’t currently use all of these, but at least tried them at some point in the past.
- I’ve enjoyed Goodreads in the past because it’s a single-topic social network. I think there’s something valuable about that, where you know what you’re going to get when you log in—a feed of what your friends are reading or want to read in the future.
- The StoryGraph is an alternative to Goodreads. I used it briefly, it seemed nice. Over time my privacy has become more important to me, so I’ve stopped using the share-your-reading websites.
- You could argue that LinkedIn is similar to Goodreads as a single-topic social network—in LinkedIn’s case, business. But that doesn’t really work in practice, since LinkedIn lets you post about whatever you’d like, business-related or not. Plus, I’m not a fan of the AI-crafted self-congratulatory posts that plague the platform.
- More recently I’ve gotten back on the RSS train with Feedly as a way to stay off Reddit. I like that it’s only the stuff I subscribe to, and that I can set the default view to be reverse chronological.
I’m working on a more-thorough comparison in this spreadsheet. Feel free to reply with any input you might have—alternatives I haven’t listed, columns I should add, etc.