I understand there's a weirdly huge amount of opposition (like that guy who freaked out on Dalton over comment a couple days ago) about the project, so I'd like to say a bit.
I've been on the site for a good week now (@kristian) and there's some incredible people there. Great conversation, great progress on determining just what this project is. That's not a bad thing — the nature of a project like this is that it is evolving constantly.
In that vein, I encourage people to check out an issue filed at the App.net API page on Github.
The basic idea is a reworking of the API into something more extensible. If I'm understanding correctly (I'm pretty new at this stuff), the API at this point resembles the use case of something like Twitter: users have many posts, posts have text, a date, etc (Rails associations, anyone?). This issue proposes that the access control on those posts be variable, to fit an infinite amount of use cases. A couple examples are Twitter-style DMs (posts visible between two users), mailing lists (posts visible between specific, but multiple users), etc.
I think the thing that is causing App.net problems is that people think they are funding a Twitter clone. The fact is that the basic system of "users" with "things" goes a lot further than Twitter. It's email, it's chat, it's notifications, it's whatever you want it to be. And that's what's fascinating — we're funding an extensible piece of the next phase of the Internet — something decentralized and more or less living and breathing.
So here comes the part where I tell you to fund it. But I'm not going to. It's your call. I'm a huge fan of the service already and I can tell you that within the last two days, we've had a mobile web app, native iOS app, and streaming web app pop up out of nowhere. It's a crazy active community, and now's the time to get in. If you want to fund it, you probably know by now where to do that. There's my 2 cents (though arguably that was like 80 cents).
> we're funding an extensible piece of the next phase of the Internet — something decentralized
Unless there exists the ability for people to have their own App.net servers written in their own languages, then this is not decentralized. The recent trends towards web-app silos for our data is relatively new in the history of the Internet. If you want something decentralized, you need multiple clients and servers. You need the ability to set it up on your own hardware. You need the ability to make a new implementation if you don't like the old one. You don't need a single company running everything.
Eh, I'd really rather fund a non-abusive twitter clone than a "trying to be all things to all people" emailinotificatallistifederated whatnot.
There's an awful lot to be said for the focus of doing just one thing, well. I've never once thought to myself that the thing that Twitter really needed was complex ACL settings.
I think it's less of a "build a replacement for twitter" kind of thing and more along the lines of "build another twitter, but better." So it's a difference of degree, not kind.
This sucks. A distributed social network would be incredibly cool. On the other hand we've known we've needed one for a long time but nobody can seem to build on that catches on. Maybe there's a reason for that.
Here's a question for the app.net leadership. If app.net ever became successful, and someone came along with a real distributed social network and tried to Padlister your Craigslist, what would you do? Does your commitment to open APIs extend that far?
This post sounds more negative than I intended. Marginal improvement is still improvement! I'm actually starting to get kind of excited to see what happens.
Oh boy. I forgot decentralized would have some API connotations — my thinking was more along the lines of crowd-funded, "power to the people" kind of thing. If we're paying for it, we dictate how it works. Sorry about that.
I've been on the site for a good week now (@kristian) and there's some incredible people there. Great conversation, great progress on determining just what this project is. That's not a bad thing — the nature of a project like this is that it is evolving constantly.
In that vein, I encourage people to check out an issue filed at the App.net API page on Github.
https://github.com/appdotnet/api-spec/issues/33
The basic idea is a reworking of the API into something more extensible. If I'm understanding correctly (I'm pretty new at this stuff), the API at this point resembles the use case of something like Twitter: users have many posts, posts have text, a date, etc (Rails associations, anyone?). This issue proposes that the access control on those posts be variable, to fit an infinite amount of use cases. A couple examples are Twitter-style DMs (posts visible between two users), mailing lists (posts visible between specific, but multiple users), etc.
I think the thing that is causing App.net problems is that people think they are funding a Twitter clone. The fact is that the basic system of "users" with "things" goes a lot further than Twitter. It's email, it's chat, it's notifications, it's whatever you want it to be. And that's what's fascinating — we're funding an extensible piece of the next phase of the Internet — something decentralized and more or less living and breathing.
So here comes the part where I tell you to fund it. But I'm not going to. It's your call. I'm a huge fan of the service already and I can tell you that within the last two days, we've had a mobile web app, native iOS app, and streaming web app pop up out of nowhere. It's a crazy active community, and now's the time to get in. If you want to fund it, you probably know by now where to do that. There's my 2 cents (though arguably that was like 80 cents).