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> It's a tool that doesn't pitch that it's a P2P tool - it doesn't try to convince you with sob stories in how using P2P helps fight against the big bad evil we

> It's a tool that doesn't pitch that it's a P2P tool - it doesn't try to convince you with sob stories in how using P2P helps fight against the big bad evil web. Instead, you use it because it's genuinely the best at what it does: it being P2P is not a selling point, it's just how it happens to work, and that is exactly what it should be. This should be something that every creator who markets or sells products should learn. Consumers don't care how it works, it just has to be better than the solution before it. Appealing to how things ought to be moralistically doesn't work (for the vast majority of consumers). They just don't care, they want a solution to their problem.

im3w1l 6y ago
I think everyone aspires to this. They just fall short.
- cercatrova 6y ago
  Perhaps. I see a lot of developers make stuff (non-dev related even) but then only list out their technical specs and features rather than benefits, as if the programming language its written in is supposed to entice (non-dev) consumers. A corollary is devs making software for their own enjoyment but that which doesn't solve an actual problem. I think it's more that they don't think in that entrepreneurial mindset yet, but once they realize no one is buying, they'll understand for the next time around.
  - megameter 6y ago
    It's a problem with the creative process itself, I've learned, and it isn't different in other mediums. It follows the McCloud "Six Steps to Art" - starting with surface changes, gradually learning the elements of the craft, and eventually settling on a purposeful idea in the medium or about the medium. Most developers, and therefore most projects, get stuck somewhere in the middle area, where there is enough skill to create features, but no direction or vision for those features, other than a basic template based on other software. Often, the project will be called "minimal" to excuse having few features, but only a few projects adhere to a genuine restriction like SLOC limits or eliminating dependencies. Appeals to commerce as the goal often have a further narrowing effect of making one anxious with thoughts like "project must moonshot on day 1", but then you look at Bittorrent, an all-time software success, and it's like, no, this probably wasn't ever going to create the next Microsoft. Funds were raised to have a Bittorrent company, but the market success it had was always modest at best. And yet it did and still does represent an idea that people can believe in. The actual thing that I see every great project do, whether it's defined artistically or not, is to define up-front some themes and principles that you believe cohere well, and then direct the specific elements around deeply studying and exploring them. This can manifest as a corporate mission statement, or as an artist's manifesto, or an academic research subject. In final form, it generally manifests as "do one thing exceptionally well", since if you have a very clear idea of the goal, you can direct all your energy upon it. But in the intermediate stages it is still trial and error to learn what fits the theme best, what the actual success metrics are. The thing is, if you have coherence in the abstract, it's way easier to explain the reason for being: "This is just a manifestation of the principles". Being easy to explain in turn makes it marketable without resorting to sales tricks. And because it deals with general concepts it taps into a breadth of appeal that can't be found just by looking at any one feature. So adhering to principle sets you up for success in a general sense.
X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
>This should be something that every creator who markets or sells products should learn. Consumers don't care how it works. I distinctly remember being a teenager and learning how bittorrent worked, thinking it's the coolest thing I'd heard of and laboriously explaining how it worked to a friend that sounded interested. At the end of the explanation he asked "So how do you download music with it?" And I realized all he cared about was using it to pirate music. It's really easy for programmers to get lost in how cool some code or technology is and lose sight of how the rest of the world views it.
- giantrobot 6y ago
  > It's really easy for programmers to get lost in how cool some code or technology is and lose sight of how the rest of the world views it. Story of my fucking life.
- KMnO4 6y ago
  That’s been exactly my experience with amateur radio. I’ve given my friends the spiel about how cool it is that I can use the EM spectrum to send my voice through the air to the other side of town. And how other people have put up repeaters which mean my voice can actually go a lot further than that —- maybe across the country! And their response? “Sure, but I can already do that on my phone”
  - bergstromm466 6y ago
    Wow I wish I had a friend interested in stuff like that. That sounds so cool! After losing a lot of my curiosity the past few years, it’s coming back and my confidence is growing and I want to explore various fields and technologies deeper [and for the first time]. Do you think people don’t know about this beautiful stuff because inventions and products have become overly corporatized and use intellectual property and patents, which stifles curiosity? I can’t help but dream of a fully open source world where we don’t dominate each other by keeping information about the inner workings of things artificially scarce like we do today - as evidenced by Aaron Swartz, Library Genesis, corporate fight back against right to repair etc.
- 6y ago
dchuk 6y ago
This is exactly the problem with all cryptocurrency currently. It’s a massive user experience issue, in the sense that users have to experience the technical bullshit of how the currencies work, completely missing the brilliant part of real money: it just works. I hand people money, they give me things. I swipe my credit card, I get things. I can’t remember who aid it originally, but there’s a great test you can give to any statement or idea. Just immediately ask “who cares?” The best product demos I’ve ever seen answer who cares in each part of the pitch. The worst ones just rattle off mumbo jumbo forever.
- easymovet 6y ago
  UX has been a main focus of Bitcoin ever since Lightning made scaling possible. Checkout out the Strike app for seamless bitcoin (lightning) payments https://strike.zaphq.io/ https://strike.zaphq.io/ Who cares? Anyone who feels like their purchasing power isn't where it should be is either underpaid, or a victim of central banks diluting their dollars with printing.
  - empthought 6y ago
    > victim of central banks diluting their dollars with printing. So, nobody in the EU or North America, then.
    - dane-pgp 6y ago
      Perhaps a better threat scenario would have been "victim of banks confiscating their deposits", which is a much more realistic risk for people in the EU: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cyprus-bank-account-tax-puts-europe-on-edge-1.1316771 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cyprus-bank-account-tax-put... (Also, the grandparent post perhaps should have given some context to the statement "Lightning made scaling possible", such as the fact that Bitcoin originally supported 32 MB blocks of transactions, before being "temporarily" limited to 1 MB. Alternative blockchains have managed without this artificial restriction, and without relying on complicated second-layer "solutions" like Lightning.)
salty_biscuits 6y ago
I think everyone knows that, it is just much, much easier to say about how it works with fancy buzz words than to actually make something good.
Tepix 6y ago
> Consumers don't care how it works In the case of Bittorrent they should know a little bit about how it works before they start pirating software, music or movies using it, however.
- mikro2nd 6y ago
  Or distributing Linux ISOs or large magnetometer datasets or astronomical observations or...

im3w1l 6y ago

I think everyone aspires to this. They just fall short.

cercatrova 6y ago
Perhaps. I see a lot of developers make stuff (non-dev related even) but then only list out their technical specs and features rather than benefits, as if the programming language its written in is supposed to entice (non-dev) consumers. A corollary is devs making software for their own enjoyment but that which doesn't solve an actual problem. I think it's more that they don't think in that entrepreneurial mindset yet, but once they realize no one is buying, they'll understand for the next time around.
- megameter 6y ago
  It's a problem with the creative process itself, I've learned, and it isn't different in other mediums. It follows the McCloud "Six Steps to Art" - starting with surface changes, gradually learning the elements of the craft, and eventually settling on a purposeful idea in the medium or about the medium. Most developers, and therefore most projects, get stuck somewhere in the middle area, where there is enough skill to create features, but no direction or vision for those features, other than a basic template based on other software. Often, the project will be called "minimal" to excuse having few features, but only a few projects adhere to a genuine restriction like SLOC limits or eliminating dependencies. Appeals to commerce as the goal often have a further narrowing effect of making one anxious with thoughts like "project must moonshot on day 1", but then you look at Bittorrent, an all-time software success, and it's like, no, this probably wasn't ever going to create the next Microsoft. Funds were raised to have a Bittorrent company, but the market success it had was always modest at best. And yet it did and still does represent an idea that people can believe in. The actual thing that I see every great project do, whether it's defined artistically or not, is to define up-front some themes and principles that you believe cohere well, and then direct the specific elements around deeply studying and exploring them. This can manifest as a corporate mission statement, or as an artist's manifesto, or an academic research subject. In final form, it generally manifests as "do one thing exceptionally well", since if you have a very clear idea of the goal, you can direct all your energy upon it. But in the intermediate stages it is still trial and error to learn what fits the theme best, what the actual success metrics are. The thing is, if you have coherence in the abstract, it's way easier to explain the reason for being: "This is just a manifestation of the principles". Being easy to explain in turn makes it marketable without resorting to sales tricks. And because it deals with general concepts it taps into a breadth of appeal that can't be found just by looking at any one feature. So adhering to principle sets you up for success in a general sense.

X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago

>This should be something that every creator who markets or sells products should learn. Consumers don't care how it works. I distinctly remember being a teenager and learning how bittorrent worked, thinking it's the coolest thing I'd heard of and laboriously explaining how it worked to a friend that sounded interested. At the end of the explanation he asked "So how do you download music with it?" And I realized all he cared about was using it to pirate music. It's really easy for programmers to get lost in how cool some code or technology is and lose sight of how the rest of the world views it.

giantrobot 6y ago
> It's really easy for programmers to get lost in how cool some code or technology is and lose sight of how the rest of the world views it. Story of my fucking life.
KMnO4 6y ago
That’s been exactly my experience with amateur radio. I’ve given my friends the spiel about how cool it is that I can use the EM spectrum to send my voice through the air to the other side of town. And how other people have put up repeaters which mean my voice can actually go a lot further than that —- maybe across the country! And their response? “Sure, but I can already do that on my phone”
- bergstromm466 6y ago
  Wow I wish I had a friend interested in stuff like that. That sounds so cool! After losing a lot of my curiosity the past few years, it’s coming back and my confidence is growing and I want to explore various fields and technologies deeper [and for the first time]. Do you think people don’t know about this beautiful stuff because inventions and products have become overly corporatized and use intellectual property and patents, which stifles curiosity? I can’t help but dream of a fully open source world where we don’t dominate each other by keeping information about the inner workings of things artificially scarce like we do today - as evidenced by Aaron Swartz, Library Genesis, corporate fight back against right to repair etc.
6y ago

dchuk 6y ago

This is exactly the problem with all cryptocurrency currently. It’s a massive user experience issue, in the sense that users have to experience the technical bullshit of how the currencies work, completely missing the brilliant part of real money: it just works. I hand people money, they give me things. I swipe my credit card, I get things. I can’t remember who aid it originally, but there’s a great test you can give to any statement or idea. Just immediately ask “who cares?” The best product demos I’ve ever seen answer who cares in each part of the pitch. The worst ones just rattle off mumbo jumbo forever.

easymovet 6y ago
UX has been a main focus of Bitcoin ever since Lightning made scaling possible. Checkout out the Strike app for seamless bitcoin (lightning) payments https://strike.zaphq.io/ https://strike.zaphq.io/ Who cares? Anyone who feels like their purchasing power isn't where it should be is either underpaid, or a victim of central banks diluting their dollars with printing.
- empthought 6y ago
  > victim of central banks diluting their dollars with printing. So, nobody in the EU or North America, then.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    Perhaps a better threat scenario would have been "victim of banks confiscating their deposits", which is a much more realistic risk for people in the EU: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cyprus-bank-account-tax-puts-europe-on-edge-1.1316771 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cyprus-bank-account-tax-put... (Also, the grandparent post perhaps should have given some context to the statement "Lightning made scaling possible", such as the fact that Bitcoin originally supported 32 MB blocks of transactions, before being "temporarily" limited to 1 MB. Alternative blockchains have managed without this artificial restriction, and without relying on complicated second-layer "solutions" like Lightning.)

salty_biscuits 6y ago

I think everyone knows that, it is just much, much easier to say about how it works with fancy buzz words than to actually make something good.

Tepix 6y ago

> Consumers don't care how it works In the case of Bittorrent they should know a little bit about how it works before they start pirating software, music or movies using it, however.

mikro2nd 6y ago
Or distributing Linux ISOs or large magnetometer datasets or astronomical observations or...