I’d like to introduce you to Slow Social.

Slow Social is my idea of what I wish social networks were, and what I think they can be. It is simple, straightforward, and sets out to accomplish one thing and do it well. Slow Social functions similar to a personal blog or email list, except with private by default settings and metering to ensure that you don’t have to check it more than once or twice a week to be fully up to date. But let me back up a bit first.

I love social networks, but they’ve pretty consistently let me down. For the past 5 years, the readily available social networks have really failed to adapt, provide, and facilitate meaningful interactions between me and my peers. There are bright spots certainly, but the social apps themselves seem more interested in maximizing easy to quantify metrics like interaction counts, time spent on the app, advertising dollars earned, and other revenue driving numbers rather than actually providing users with tools and guardrails to build and sustain meaningful relationships. I can’t really blame them for this because, after all, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok are all products owned by publicly traded companies who have a legally binding responsibility to maximize financial return on investment to their shareholders. Nevertheless, I’m grieved by the toll its taken on our society, as well as the lost opportunities we’ve had to leverage the incredible technology and resources we have at our disposal to create something better than what we have.

But what does a “better” social network look like? I am by no means the first person to ask that question, and there is no shortage of thoughts on the matter. Undoubtedly the answer is subjective, but I’ve decided to take a crack at it, both ideologically and in terms of engineering.

From my perspective, the principle problem with our existing social networks is that they abuse human psychology rather than try to mitigate it. Humans, by and large, lack impulse control when considering an action where there is no immediate or apparent repercussions. For example, many of us continually trade our next 30 seconds for the potential of mild amusement, but often fail to account for the hits we take to our self esteem or how much “just 30 more seconds” can turn into. My solution? Make an app that forces you to post and read less often, not more.

I’m going to get ahead of things by saying yes, I know, this drastically reduces potential user base. But, if you’ve ever felt like you can’t share anything real because you’re post is going to be sandwiched between memes, can’t stay up to date with your friends without betting distracted or discouraged, can’t stay up to date because there’s just too much content flowing through your feed, or don’t ever want to share anything because you're afraid of what your future friends might think when scrolling back through your feed, then a slower social network might be for you.

That all being said, Slow Social is my take on a social network. With my limited time and resources, I’ve done my best to make it something that gives you space to write and share with your friends what you’ve been doing, as well as see what your friends are up to. The main catch, as you’ve might’ve guessed, is that you can only post at most once every 6 days (so you can post weekly with a grace period). The limited cadence benefits the writer by removing the pressure to give constant, live updates and gives more space for longer form content to be written and thought over. On the other hand, the limited cadence benefits the reader by removing the pressure to always be checking in. Once a week and you’re good.

Aside from the limited cadence, there are other facets of Slow Social that are less central but still support fostering relationships. Some examples are that posts are never visible publicly (but they can be sent as an email easily), newly added friends can only see your latest post and all future posts (they don’t see your entire history), and users are encouraged to write at least 100 words before posting (although it’s not enforced, you just have to dismiss a modal). And lastly, if Slow Social has any measure of success my main goal is to prioritize something sustainable that serves users, not to maximize profit.

If I’ve caught your interest, please check out Slow Social and let me know what you think. You can email me at team@slowsocial.us.