5 ms·
Someone should build an app like this that is integrated with all the social networks. Give it a sexy UI, and a catchy feature or two to keep people checking in
by yosito 4y ago
Someone should build an app like this that is integrated with all the social networks. Give it a sexy UI, and a catchy feature or two to keep people checking in. Eventually, it could serve as a federated contacts hub that links people between networks. A vital piece of infrastructure to support mandated interoperability.
- klyrs 4y agoWe had Trillian back in the day, but then the messaging services locked down their protocols. I don't expect such an app would survive the cat&mouse with major players for long.
- jeroenhd 4y agoI'm not sure about your standard social media, but for direct messaging, several Matrix-based companies have popped up that allow for service interoperability. The European Union is also working on breaking open the messenger space, forcing tech companies to either leave the EU or work on an interoperable standard. I believe an IEEE working group is already developing a protocol to serve this purpose, even with encryption available if I recall correctly.
- zaik 4y agoIs there any information on this working group? I had hopes for the IETF standard XMPP, since the largest IM provider WhatsApp uses it internally.
- jeroenhd 4y agoApologies; it turns out I was mistaken in believing the IEEE was working on a standard, it's actually the IETF. Abbreviations are hard :( I believe this is the relevant draft: https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-mahy-mimi-identity-01.html https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-mahy-mimi-identity-01.html Edit: I should add that as far as I know, the working group hasn't done much as of yet. I heard about this on Matrix because some of the Matrix folks are trying to get (parts of) the federated Matrix protocol into the standard, or probably at least parts of it.
- zaik 4y agoThe draft doesn't mention Matrix, but it's nice to see that they consider standardization even if the use case for their protocol is probably already covered by the existing XMPP standard.
- jeroenhd 4y agoIt doesn't, but that's what the person I heard mention this effort is trying to change.
- scrollaway 4y agoThe messaging services never opened their protocols. Trillian (& pidgin etc) has always played catch-up. It was just more difficult for the "major players" of the time because for a protocol update, you needed to release a new version of your software, and somehow have all your users seamlessly migrate to it before releasing breaking changes. MSN/WLM, AIM, YIM, ICQ, Gadu-Gadu, Skype… all of them were reverse-engineered. The only open protocols it supported were IRC and Jabber.
- panic 4y agoAIM had the open TOC protocol, but it never got all the features of the OSCAR protocol the official client used.
- cpeterso 4y agoUnfortunately, I’m sure this is probably against the ToS of every social media service, even those that might still provide a client API. :( Otherwise someone would have done this. OTOH, I think there are services that companies use to manage and post to all their social media accounts.
- notpushkin 4y agoI'm oretty sure Twitter still allows this, but the API is crippled and this reflects the poor experience in custom clients. I used to use Twidere extensively, but it's been very limited for the last ~8 years or so. You could make it use private APIs by copying OAuth client id|secret from an official application. This would enable some features (notifications and polls, and higher rate limits). Later Twitter fixed that and also sent a DMCA, so Twidere had to remove the code that worked with said APIs.
- yosito 4y agoI'd imagine part of mandated interoperability would be regulation forbidding such ToS.
- malermeister 4y agoThat's actually a part of the EU's planned Digital Markets Act!
- shapefrog 4y agoI can see the headling now - Developer builds the ULTIMATE stalking tool