from Hacker News

What if men weren't allowed on Facebook?

by nnnnnn on 8/27/14, 8:45 PM with 12 comments

• by vonklaus on 8/27/14, 10:45 PM

  I think this is a pretty bad idea for a company unless it is a total passion project. Let's leave aside the boys v girls mentality that is sure to spring up and just look at it as an objective business.

  1. Social is insanely crowded, it is such a crowded space and most of the decent niches have been carved out already. Other networks provide nearly perfect substitutes and are already well established an populated.

  2. You eliminated 50% of your potential market before launch.

  3. Is having 2X chromosomes something that is going to bring people together.

  4. This can only work as either an anonymous network (because people will likely just want great opinions from other women who they ALREADY DO NOT KNOW IRL) and that means men and trolls will flood it

  OR

  5. It has to be a Facebook like social network that really tries to get an actual identity, in which case it is competing with Facebook, which is tough.

  I don't see this becoming a huge thing. Would be surprised if they get a million users even in like a few years.

• by mbubb on 8/28/14, 12:12 AM

  I wonder how many times this has been tried.

  There is Korean website I've known about for the past 10+ years - MissyUSA

  It is a Alexa ~ 35,000 global site:

  http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/missyusa.com

  So it is not all that large. They have had a women only policy and focus on Koreans in the US - it is pretty active and is has a political impact:

  http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2013/05/390_1357...

• by DanBC on 8/27/14, 11:10 PM

  i) is it legal to exclude people based on gender?

  ii) depressing that a women-only social network is needed. We've had online communities for over forty years so it's kind of disturbing that they all suck so much.

  iii) trolls are trolls and it's not just men making threats of sexual violence. Women do it too. http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25886026 (the tweets were so extreme that the BBC has to filter them, so it's hard to get the tone of the tweets.). Still, this should stop "boobs or gtfo".

• by oh_sigh on 8/27/14, 10:39 PM

  Then there would be no general purpose discussions like there are on facebook, only discussions specific to the group that is allowed access. If you only let white people on a web site, it is going to become about white supremacy. If you only let women on a website, it is going to be about womens issues, etc.

• by cgore on 8/27/14, 10:12 PM

  What if women weren't allowed in the Freemasons?

• by gaius on 8/27/14, 10:21 PM

  Mumsnet? Pinterest? There are already women-only social networks, but as far as I know, no men-only.