But that's now how this works. If everyone on HN went and created an account and went to great pains to post relevant things to it, it would still be useless.

The success of a social network hinges on a wide base of appeal. Facebook was inherently mainstream from the get-go, starting with colleges. Twitter bootstrapped off of celebrities and famous people who have an audience that transcends simple subcultural boundaries (Lady GaGa instead of Edward Tufte, for example).

"People who care about software freedom" have little relevant content to anyone but themselves. Getting these people to create accounts and post will only succeed in creating yet another place from a niche, isolated demographic to hang out - and we're not really in desperate need for yet another meeting ground for free software folk.

Google+ for example has seen tremendous uptake by photography enthusiasts. I enjoy using it greatly for this purpose - but break into the mainstream is certainly has not, and never will with this group.

  > Facebook was inherently mainstream from the get-go

I joined Facebook in 2003, didn't get what the point was (they wanted me to fill in my school schedule, etc), and got a friend request from someone that I wasn't on good terms with in highschool. I never bothered to remove the account, but I think I've logged in < 10 times since then.

I think that Facebook was only 'mainstream' within a certain set of people from the get-go. Also, Facebook 'from the get-go' wasn't just the Facebook of today with less users.

You are not "the mainstream" for Facebook. Sure, many mainstream focused products are not going to get everybody. The point is to get critical mass across a broad enough demographic, not to get every single person on board.

One cannot refute the iPhone's popularity by saying "but I hate it and own an Android phone". One needs to look at sales data and trends and even then correct conclusions are not always immediately clear from the data at hand.

Arguing against Facebook being mainstream from the get-go by saying "but I don't like it" or "but I don't use it" misses the argument. A few people who don't like it does not argue against its mainstream appeal.

A better argument is that, of course with 20/20 hindsight Facebook seems like a great, popular idea with mass appeal just waiting to take off. But in 2003 that wasn't at all obvious.

> "People who care about software freedom" have little relevant content to anyone but themselves.

I have a friend who cares very much about freedom, in the FLOSS sense of things, who is a musician (and not a coder at all, as it happens) and has several videos up on youtube with >10k views - that would seem to be content that's relevant to quite a few people who don't "care about freedom".

Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because someone supports FLOSS ideals that sums them up entirely.

I think it's more than just creating an account. It's about contributing with relevant content, discussions and other ways of participation which increase the value of the network itself.