I spent some time last year exploring similar ideas. I assumed that an application that bridged the divide between public feed-first models and private group messaging apps by allowing control of post visibility across your network, was bound to be an attractive proposition. I put something together but was surprised at just how few people signed up, even if just to take advantage of it as a private social network between small friend groups.

Interestingly, the few users that did join, tend to never bother to use the more public social aspects of it, and exclusively post privately. I think this is likely representative of the big shift of the more genuine social media interactions we first enjoyed in old Facebook, all now having migrated to private messaging apps and that the original experience we all remember fondly, may simply not be repeatable in today's social media landscape.