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I want this to work so much. So many people have tried this, and I have signed up for, or self-hosted, every single one of these things, and even convinced my f

I want this to work so much. So many people have tried this, and I have signed up for, or self-hosted, every single one of these things, and even convinced my friends to join a few. None of them ever take off. How is this different?

joe_the_user 11y ago
Yes, this. It seems like there are far more programmers creating back-end for this kind of thing than there are designers working on good concepts and front-ends.
- pjbrunet 11y ago
  I'd build it on top of WordPress as a plugin. Then most of the interface decisions are done, the community is already there, and installation takes about 3-4 clicks.
Animats 11y ago
Yes. There's Diaspora and Frendica already, with maybe a few hundred users. To launch something like this, you need to figure out some way to get a user base, a user base that people will want to connect with. Something like - Ivy League students (hey, it worked for Facebook.) - VC, angels, investors, and startup CEOs. (They might like something with more security, especially since they might be planning to take a bite out of Facebook or Google.) - Political groups, where there are communities of fund-raisers and lobbyists, people trying to get things done together and concerned with others not listening in. Consider targeting groups that involve people working together to do something. They need to-do lists, spreadsheets, scheduling tools, and other collaboration support. Basically Box.net's feature set, but without Box, Inc.
- eellpp 11y ago
  Its a big leap to jump from a centralised social network to a truly distributed self hosted network. The missing link seems to be the semi-central ones, like having few central hosts which allow users to flow between them. Get the protocol to evolve and user adoption to happen on this and subsequently allow anyone to plugin their self hosted server, if they want to and still allow full network discovery across the hosts all over world.
- jaywink 11y ago
  diaspora* and Friendica have a combined 80K active users, at least: http://the-federation.info http://the-federation.info

joe_the_user 11y ago

Yes, this. It seems like there are far more programmers creating back-end for this kind of thing than there are designers working on good concepts and front-ends.

pjbrunet 11y ago
I'd build it on top of WordPress as a plugin. Then most of the interface decisions are done, the community is already there, and installation takes about 3-4 clicks.

Animats 11y ago

Yes. There's Diaspora and Frendica already, with maybe a few hundred users. To launch something like this, you need to figure out some way to get a user base, a user base that people will want to connect with. Something like - Ivy League students (hey, it worked for Facebook.) - VC, angels, investors, and startup CEOs. (They might like something with more security, especially since they might be planning to take a bite out of Facebook or Google.) - Political groups, where there are communities of fund-raisers and lobbyists, people trying to get things done together and concerned with others not listening in. Consider targeting groups that involve people working together to do something. They need to-do lists, spreadsheets, scheduling tools, and other collaboration support. Basically Box.net's feature set, but without Box, Inc.

eellpp 11y ago
Its a big leap to jump from a centralised social network to a truly distributed self hosted network. The missing link seems to be the semi-central ones, like having few central hosts which allow users to flow between them. Get the protocol to evolve and user adoption to happen on this and subsequently allow anyone to plugin their self hosted server, if they want to and still allow full network discovery across the hosts all over world.
jaywink 11y ago
diaspora* and Friendica have a combined 80K active users, at least: http://the-federation.info http://the-federation.info