The solution is not to build FB killer. The solution is to decentralise the web. Let's embrace newsletters and RSS feeds once again.
I recently came back to using RSS feeds and it feels great. The problem is that many websites don't maintain their feeds properly. Broken links, missing content and whatnot.. I guess nobody ever uses them aside from weirdos.
In other words, confine computer use to research and communication in sci-tech alone?
Not bad. It's probably how things should have been, but that boat has sailed long, long back.
Point is, efforts to make decentralisation and independent content creating, hosting and sharing should go on simultaneously with other social steps that you have enumerated. Neither can replace the other.
That sentiment is why 99.9999 of programmers like us never made facebook. Normal humans don't want to maintain seperate feeds and RSS readers for every possible interest etc along with a seperate message client along with a place to post photos, etc. They want something simple and human, like fb.
Humans are lazy by design. That's why most laws inconvenience on individual level for the sake of greater good. Getting rid of FB may soon reach that level.
I've also done the same. Invested the last 2 weeks more time in my theoldreader account and using twitter bridges (even instagram bridges exist) for not supporting entities like http://twitrss.me/
I recently came back to using RSS feeds and it feels great. The problem is that many websites don't maintain their feeds properly. Broken links, missing content and whatnot.. I guess nobody ever uses them aside from weirdos.