People could start using gmail because emails work independently from the provider. If gmail provides the nicer user experience you lose nothing from switching.

People started using Facebook because it was exclusive for a group of students. They were friends in reallife already and Facebook made it easier to coordinate.

People started using Skype because it allowed calling real phones cheaply, msn doesn't.

A large fraction of HN readers probably use Linux and free software. A fraction of them probably even improves the software they use. That doesn't mean that the average person wants to switch too.

> People started using Facebook because it was exclusive for a group of students.

Citation needed, from a different source than the FB founders.

It's a very juicy marketing lie to spread but I've seen social and IM networks of all types come and go and the only reason ever has always been "because my friends are there".

All the rest is just feature candy, stuff to attract the pioneer trend-setters. The great mass of people just herded there, couldn't care less about exclusivity or particular features (cause learning to use features is hard and exclusivity is scary), not until it was shoved in their faces.

The trend-setters don't care nearly as much about "my friends are already there", because if they did, they wouldn't be trend-setters.

So right now what I'm seeing that among those people who care about features, what is in demand but not currently available: decentralized and private (and on some level, not-Facebook, not-Google), and another important thing I keep hearing echoed but not quite emphasized are group chats (quite available already but it also seems to be a deal-breaker for new platforms if it's not there, just saying, in case anyone wants to build the next encrypted social messaging whatnot).

>People started using Facebook because it was exclusive for a group of students.

>Citation needed, from a different source than the FB founders.

Facebook was only limited to a number of higher education institutions for the first few years of its life. You needed to be a student at a college / university to get access as it wasn't open to the general public, and it took a couple years before it was widespread across all schools before going public. I was among that set of people who were able to use it.

There also dont seem to be any safe/encrypted way to have a group chat with deniability, and not even a safe way to have audio and/or video communications that dont drop or lag randomly, are slow or require a programmer to setup. (Looking at you Jitsi).

Its a big problem, to get all this right, but whoever does it is doing humanity a great one. I propose to fund it by donations, not ads or subscriptions.

I remember people started using gmail because it's the first free email that offer virtually unlimited space, so I don't have to keep deleting old emails like I did in Hotmail.

5 years from now, "People started to use seamless encryption and pseudo/anonymizing services and protocols because it was exclusive, cheap and safe."

You are right in pointing out that all the services we switched too, had some USP, I believe I2P, ownCloud, Citadel, Tor, gnunet, OTR/XMPP all have their USP too, and that is safety and freedom to express and say what ever the fuck comes to mind without self-censorship or fear for what consequences/blackmail it might have in the future.

I have a thing to not talk about the "average person" because it means too many things and more often than not is a patronizing way of saying idiots. But lets go with it this time, the average person has no incentive to use productive equipment like a PC at all and they are perfectly fine with a consume-only, digitally-rights-managed, locked-down, surveillance device. We hackers should just give up on them, let them eat cake. /rant.

gmail won because it filtered spam out and didn't show you flashy ads.