social-network
(8)
State wanted your opinion. Your follower count could stay home.
With $14 million behind it, State tried to turn everyday opinions into a network of their own. Its experiment reveals the distance between giving everyone a voice and giving them a reason to return.
VK built a social network. Then it put a shopping mall inside.
VKontakte turned friends, feeds and fandoms into a market for video, subscriptions and shopping. Its next test is making all that attention pay.
Facebook’s Second Act Is Happening in the Places the Internet Forgot
The original social network is no longer the internet’s newest room. It may be something harder to replace: the noticeboard, video channel, classifieds section and community hall used by billions.
A1Zap by A1Base
A1Zap is a social network where people build AI-powered apps for each other. Made by A1Base, a San Francisco consumer-AI lab in Y Combinator's Winter 2025 batch, it lets anyone spin up chatbots, tools and mini-apps without code and share them instantly into group chats and communities, starting on college campuses. The team began as an API giving AI agents phone numbers, emails and a trusted identity, then pivoted toward building the social distribution layer for AI apps.
Hornet
Hornet is a queer social network and mobile app for gay, bi, trans, and queer men, built around community, content, and connection rather than pure hookups. Launched in 2011 and led by founder and CEO Christof Wittig, the company (operating as Hornet Networks / Queer Networks) has grown to more than 30 million members, positioning itself as one of the largest gay social platforms in the world and a frequently cited competitor to Grindr.
The Nudge
The Nudge is a San Francisco company that texts its members curated plans for real-world fun - hikes, date ideas, restaurants, events and hidden gems in their city. Founded by siblings John and Sarah Peterson in 2018, it began as a $9/month SMS subscription pitched as an 'anti-startup' to get people off their phones, and has since grown into an AI-powered advisor and locals-only social network with roughly a million users across cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin and New York.
Dalton Caldwell
Dalton Caldwell is a serial entrepreneur turned venture capitalist best known for co-founding imeem (one of the first legal music social networks), launching App.net as a principled alternative to ad-supported social media, and spending over a decade as a Managing Partner at Y Combinator advising 1,000+ startups. He is now co-founding Standard Capital, a $425M AI-native Series A fund with Paul Buchheit and Bryan Berg.
Dustin Moskovitz
Dustin Moskovitz co-founded Facebook in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, then quietly built Asana into a billion-dollar project management company while giving away billions through Open Philanthropy (now Coefficient Giving). The youngest self-made billionaire in the world when Forbes first named him in 2011, Moskovitz has spent the years since turning wealth into what he believes are the most high-impact charitable causes on Earth - from malaria nets to AI safety - alongside his wife Cari Tuna.