10 ms·

Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform

162 points by yawnxyz 4y ago

reinboar 4y ago
There seems to be a decent amount of lag when scrolling on Firefox (106.1.0) for Android. Other than that, the mobile UI is pretty slick and I'm enjoying reading what others have posted.
kelseyfrog 4y ago
Anyone can spew unfiltered thoughts. It's the refinement of the editorial process that distills those into something valuable.
- brnaftr361 4y ago
  No, thoughts are work done. If they're directed but not deliberate, they're still revelatory. Imagine a bunch of white tendrils in all directions, and every one of those has their own tendrils, and so on and so forth, like a system of roots, but a 2D manifestation of such. Now divide them and name them after scientific domains, imagine the white is what we know, imagine the black is our absence of knowledge, imagine the tendrils scale to what we do know and what we don't, how big do you think the negative space is? Now you say something stupid, that's off the beaten path, you cast a line and you wonder if it's worth reinforcing through investigation, and so you think more and more on it, and maybe you investigate it, and suddenly that stupid thought becomes fleshed out, and the question is answered. You start from ignorance, we learn nothing new if you stay in the confines of the known - that is filtering, that is refining, that is ego pressing you to be right. Every statement has a thousand queries nested inside it, and for every answer borne from those...
  - louispereira 4y ago
    I love this comment. It feels like you've understood exactly why the platform exists. So glad it resonates. Thank you.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    I appreciate your optimism, but unless you supply some evidence, it's an extraordinary claim.
    - brnaftr361 4y ago
      Why don't you go think on it? That's the point. I've given you a lens by which to see the world, you can look through it if you please.
troutwine 4y ago
> No trolls. While I'm sure some trolls do what they do for the external audience, private responses won't stop griefing just for giggles. I send a troll message to Bob, privately, get a rise out of him and screenshot the whole conversation and repost to some other platform if I want external validation.
- dollo_7 4y ago
  While you have a point, this process may make it harder to be a troll. Nowadays you can be a troll anywhere and anytime you want, specially online. I'm curious how this approach may benefit those who share their plain thoughts without the fear of being automatically targeted by trolls looking for triggered responses and tribal support.
  - zeruch 4y ago
    "While you have a point, this process may make it harder to be a troll." Trolls are not lazy. If anything, their efforts are hype fixated.
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      I think it's a little more complicated than that. Trolls are often very fixated on their targets but they also tend to be impulsive and looking for quick fixes of glory. This is why things like shadow banning and slow modes and signup waiting periods work pretty well on them. Very few have the patience to wait for a fresh sock account that's limited to be useful.
      - zeruch 4y ago
        "I think it's a little more complicated than that." Agreed, but decades of observation tell me there is more than enough supply across the shitpost to troll spectrum to go around :)
- oefrha 4y ago
  I have a friend with millions of followers on social media. She gets all kinds of disgusting private messages all the time. The worst trolls aren’t publicly commenting (or at least aren’t solely publicly commenting), they message you directly as long as you leave an avenue open.
Krisjohn 4y ago
Isn’t this literally the problem with every social media site?
SuperMild 4y ago
It's cool, I like the geek style design.
- louispereira 4y ago
  Thank you!
SamBam 4y ago
I don't really understand the purpose. If I'm writing these thoughts for myself, why would I want to post them? If I'm writing these thoughts to engage with an audience or wider community, why wouldn't I want them to be able to reply?
- PenguinCoder 4y ago
  For my writing it's both really. I write so that I can better present my ideas and thoughts Ina coherent manner that make sense to other people; not just myself. At the same time I am not writing FOR anyone else. I don't want feedback or commentary. I write to help my own thought process, making sure I understand the topic well enough that I could explain to someone else. I don't write for audience engagement, or for someone else. But I do try and write what someone without my knowledge or expertise can understand. I write for peers and practice.
  - louispereira 4y ago
    I love this. It's exactly the kind of use case I had in mind while building Nicheless. Happy that it resonates!
- conductr 4y ago
  For the likes/upvotes or whatever they do
- louispereira 4y ago
  Hey Sam! I'm Louis, the guy who built Nicheless. The purpose of the platform is simple – it's a place to improve your thoughts through writing. I wrote a bit about it here: https://nicheless.blog/post/why-i-built-this https://nicheless.blog/post/why-i-built-this Also, people can like and reply to your posts, but both those are private. Only you'll know how many likes a post has, and all replies will go directly to your DMs instead of a comment section. This is so that it helps reduce uneccessary trolling and status games among people, with the goal of making it easier for people to write for the sake of thinking, and not to impress their audiences which may or may not exist. Let me know if you have any questions. Happy that you took the time to try it out.
azhenley 4y ago
None of the blogs are loading for me. Just spins. The console is showing several 500 errors.
- louispereira 4y ago
  Apologies! Trying to fix it right now!
louispereira 4y ago
Hey folks! I'm Louis – the builder (founder?) of Nicheless. I'm not sure how it got here, but I'm grateful that it did. Nicheless is a fun little side project I created for people to share their thoughts with the world without needing to be performative or afraid of trolls. I'm a firm believer that writing online is a great way to improve your thinking, and I'm hoping Nicheless encourages more people to do the same. Happy to answer any questions you may have, and grateful that you took the time to try it out.
- xmonkee 4y ago
  I love it. Just made my first post. Is there a way to discover other writers? Edit: jk, just found the "discover" section
  - louispereira 4y ago
    Awesome. What do you plan on writing about? I'm curious about the use cases people have, because they're often surprisingly (and pleasantly) different from mine. I mainly use it to think through things or share experiences, but I've seen people use it as an anonymous public journal, as a photography blog, or even as a public notebook for their poetry.
- mintysoap 4y ago
  I really like this, and I like the first few random posts I read. Is there a way to view the newest public posts? Discover seems to show random posts from months ago.
  - louispereira 4y ago
    The discover page is currently just a bunch of manually curated posts from the platform. I don't want to create a feed of the latest posts because a lot of folks are just experimenting on the platform and it will end up being an overwhelming, incoherent feed, something that i'm trying to actively design against. My goal is to have people invite their friends and other people they know to write on the platform, and follow their nicheless blogs. When that is the case, the default feed will end up being populated with posts that will be more contextual. However, I will admit I am not sure how to reach this goal just yet. It's still early days and I'm still experimenting. Happy to hear any ideas :)
techaqua 4y ago
micro-blogging but the text is long enough to be considered as just blogging.
- louispereira 4y ago
  Long enough to allow for nuance. Short enough to compel clarity of thought. That's the goal :)
welanes 4y ago
Nice job. No RSS though as far as I can tell. For something slightly less minimal but very nice to use, I stumbled across this the other day: https://blogstatic.io/ https://blogstatic.io/ Feels likes - after being crowded out by FB and Twitter (and the death of Google Reader) - blogs are making a comeback.
- louispereira 4y ago
  Thanks! You're right, there's currently no RSS. Might change that in the future, but I haven't given it much thought just yet. I agree that blogs are making a comeback. It's about time. We're in need of some sort of detox after a decade of social media fuelled lives. Hopefully it leads to a more interesting, less overwhelming internet.
- lawgimenez 4y ago
  Blogstatic looks nice I though it was ghost.org. Their guide is straight up how to setup your domain with Cloudflare.
batrat 4y ago
Looks like Tumblr but simpler. I like it.
- louispereira 4y ago
  Thanks! Let me know if you have any questions or feedback :)
Timja 4y ago
Does not work for me because it somehow prevents reader mode in Firefox.
- louispereira 4y ago
  Oh that's strange. Not sure why that's happening but I'll look into it when I can. Thanks for bringing it to my notice.
prakis 4y ago
Its soo clean. Logo, Icons, Font, Color selection, everything looks perfect.
- louispereira 4y ago
  Thank you! I'm not a designer, but I try. I took some creative inspiration from a few other minimalist blogs on the internet, as well as some stuff I saw on pinterest.
olah_1 4y ago
> Private likes. > Private responses. > Private subscriber counts. > No status games. No trolls. No pressure. This is the real differentiator. Do you still use algorithms around likes and follows to recommend users to each other and such? Those data points actually are useful to get people more connected to the network and help them find their community
- philosopher1234 4y ago
  Unfortunately also probably the reason it won’t gain traction
  - louispereira 4y ago
    You're probably right. I'm going to try and be an idealist for as long as I can though :)
    - philosopher1234 4y ago
      Good luck. I’m rooting for you.
      - louispereira 4y ago
        Thank you! I appreciate it.
- louispereira 4y ago
  Hey! Glad this resonates with you. At the moment there are no algorithms by design. I want to make Nicheless a more closed network. A place to discover and discuss ideas from people you already know in real life or from other spaces on the internet. Not a space to discover new people. I've expanded a bit on that thought here: https://nicheless.blog/post/mission https://nicheless.blog/post/mission Here's an excerpt from that post: "I want Nicheless to grow into a place where you come to read the thoughts of people you know. To take a dip into the depths of your friends' minds. And to turn those excursions into conversations – both online and IRL. In the ideal scenario, I imagine a bunch of friends following each other, each publishing without fear of public judgment, and then occasionally discussing what they read and wrote about when they meet in real life."
leke 4y ago
Very nice, Louis. How do you plan to make money from this?
- louispereira 4y ago
  Thanks Leke. I currently have no clue. I don't want to pursue the advertising route unless I absolutely have to. I might try and take some inspiration from Twitter Blue and create something similar in the future. The platform is still in its early days though, so I want to see where it goes before making any rash decisions. Got ideas? I'm happy to hear them!
swidi 4y ago
I say this every time one of these pops up: Just do it yourself. Just get a $5 Linode or a Cloudflare account, make a Hugo/Pelican/whatever site and go. These niche microblogging sites are so small and insignificant that you can never ever trust them to survive (or even persist). Just do it yourself from the very beginning and you'll have a much better time.
- louispereira 4y ago
  Hey. You're right. But there are lots of folks who don't have the time to build and maintain a site themselves. Besides, I'm hoping to make Nicheless more than just a micro blogging platform. My goal is to make it into a space that encourages groups of people to share their thoughts without fear, and eventually let the exchange of those ideas percolate into real life discussions. It's still a long way out from becoming that, but it's the goal. I've written a bit about it here: https://nicheless.blog/post/mission https://nicheless.blog/post/mission
- rendaw 4y ago
  Every time this DIY reply comes it misses the fact that the platforms take care of commenting (account management, moderation), something that's more or less impossible for a DIY solution. Twitter/FB/etc make commenting painless because everyone has an account and is already logged in. This at least has the potential to get to that position. DIY doesn't.
  - sixstringtheory 4y ago
    I actually don’t want comments on my site. No comments, no user database. HN or Reddit can be my comment site, if anyone actually read my blog :P Or people can write their own blog post in response and host it on their site.
    - wishinghand 4y ago
      Cool. But do most others want that?
  - 4y ago
asim 4y ago
Not a knock on the author. All power to him for doing this. I worked on similar small side projects years ago. But I'm not convinced. And not of nicheless, just of anything attempting to fill the void where Twitter once was. I think some of these services might find their community and build something with network effects but I couldn't tell you which will make it as much as I couldn't say 3 years into Twitter if it would still exist a decade from then. But something just isn't sitting right with me in this entire space. As I sit and watch the mindless babble of the Twitter billionaire owner and his groupies, it's causing me to fade slowly into the background of life. Spaces for idle chatter turns out to be a total waste of time. Whether it's about movies, gaming or politics, there's really more we could be doing with our time. Twitter is a void and trying to fill that void with another one isn't the answer. I don't really know what the solution is beyond knowing some sort of community platform is definitely missing. But it's likely to focus on some active component, not idle chat.
- louispereira 4y ago
  Hey Asim. I appreciate you taking the time to thoughtfully (and elegantly) lay out your thoughts. At the moment, I don't want Nicheless to perform a similar function to Twitter. I love Twitter and use it daily, but I find it useful as a space to reach a broad audience of people I don't know. An open network with unlimited growth potential. With nicheless, I want it to be the opposite. A place to follow people you already know, either from real life, or from existing social connections. I want it to be a place for a higher density of thought to be exchanged for a smaller group of people. I've written a bit about it here: https://nicheless.blog/post/mission https://nicheless.blog/post/mission In fact, I'm even considering capping the number of people you can 'follow' on Nichless. Maybe it will help create an algorithm free feed of interesting thoughts that spark real life conversations. I don't know yet, but I might experiment and find out. Let me know what you think?
  - asim 4y ago
    It's a noble goal. I think many an engineer have tried. Even convincing your own social group to try new things is hard so it really has to offer something new or attract a specific type of audience. I think most people's group of well know friends and contacts caps out at 100. So that would be where I'd put a soft limit on follows e.g a little hint that says maybe you want to split this out into sub groups or separate as accounts.
pacifika 4y ago
So we used to have this thing called telnet BBSes in the mid nineties. Discord is not too similar, but typically with less moderation. Bunch of people talk about stuff in subject based rooms, there’s some administrators looking after the health of the channel. Join or leave rooms, etc. Open source would shield it a bit more from commercial interests. Social media is simply too big for this, it will always be advertised run because of the size of the audience. Also the viral component and manipulation affect how valuable it can be. Build and join smaller communities.
- louispereira 4y ago
  The goal here is to help people create and communicate in a one to many & many to one manner within small communities. I'm still working on making it easier or more obvious to do that, but I'm going to keep trying!
lenova 4y ago
Just played around with it, loving the concept so far... great work! Feature request: dark mode setting :-)
- louispereira 4y ago
  Thank you! Might do a dark mode in the future!
alathon 4y ago
This really resonates with me too. I already have a private Discord with just a few others who are both friends and work in software development, which serves as our closed-network way of discussing software and also a healthy dose of memes and real-life chat. Ive thought about inviting others who I'm less close to, because I'd welcome their contributions to those discussions, but there is always the fear of adding anyone reducing the trust and transparency present atm. In lieu of that I'd love a nice and easy way to follow the thoughts of those peers and friends, without having to switch between substack blogs, LinkedIn posts, medium posts and a range of other things. The trouble, usually, is that convincing all of those peers to adopt a new thing for this alone is a hard sell, when we're already so oversaturated on tools and platforms.
- louispereira 4y ago
  Agreed. I haven't solved that problem myself. Most of my own friends haven't switched to Nicheless, although most of them don't write elsewhere either. To me, nicheless is an ideal space for those that are afraid to publish online to start doing so. I'm yet to figure out how to make that happen. I'll keep at it till I figure it out though.
  - alathon 4y ago
    Makes sense! One of the things stopping me from publishing is less about time or size of post, and more about focus and method. Nicheless definitely helps with focus/scope because of the limit on post length; perhaps you can incentivize if the platform provides helpful writing tips and suggestions? Just a thought, might be outside the scope of the platform.
q-base 4y ago
I signed up. I actually have 2 personal blogs, so I am unsure about whether I will use your platform. But there is something about the unfiltered short format that I like and even though I have thought about publishing shorter style posts on my own blogs, I for some reason never get to it. I am a big fan of the design as well! Nice job.
- louispereira 4y ago
  Thank you! If you're curious about how to use it, I personally use it as a layer 1 for my thoughts. It helps me think about them more deeply than I would otherwise do if I was just talking to myself or writing in a private journal. Eventually, I plan on taking some thoughts and graduating them into full blown blog posts on my main website.
  - q-base 4y ago
    I can see the value. The interesting thing is whether people will notice and follow along. But of course just the act of writing in a setting where people potentially will read it makes you think a little more thoroughly even of "random" thoughts. I think you should consider making tags case-insensitive. I would just lowercase them all :)
    - louispereira 4y ago
      Regarding the tags, great suggestion. Will add it to my list. And regarding your earlier point, I agree. I'm yet to clear up the positioning of the site. I'm struggling with 2 separate, but intertwined angles. 1. A low-pressure place to write in public, because writing helps you clarify your thoughts. 2. A place to keep up with what your existing circle of friends is up to in life You can't have 2 without 1, and hence most of the messaging is geared towards 1 right now. I'm thinking about ways to encourage users to invite their IRL friends to participate, as I think there's a powerful, albeit small, network effect to be had.
qwerty456127 4y ago
What immediately scares me is every post on the website by the link having a title. To me inventing a good title arguably almost seems the hardest part of writing at all. A microblog should let you dump a thought quickly without requiring you to name it first. Also, individual post URL is hidden to deep. You apparently have to open the post, scroll down, click "share", click "copy link", and even that element is not a real link. As soon as I see a post/preview/listing I want to be able to middle-click it to open it in a background tab or Ctrl+click it to copy/whatever.
- louispereira 4y ago
  Hey! I'm sorry you find the title intimidating. You could just use a random character in your title, or even a whitespace, to achieve the effect of a title-free place to post. Regarding the individual URL, if you don't want to click to copy it using the current flow, you could just CMD+Shift+C to copy the URL?
  - qwerty456127 4y ago
    > You could just use a random character in your title As a mild-OCD perfectionist I'm literally grinding my teeth imagining doing it this way. If there is a place for a title a post I write has to have a good title or no title at all. > or even a whitespace to achieve the effect of a title-free place to post. If title doesn't have to be unique this already seems as an acceptable compromise. > Regarding the individual URL, if you don't want to click to copy it using the current flow, you could just CMD+Shift+C to copy the URL? Nice point. Any chance I could copy a post URL or open it in a background page straight from the posts list? I scroll the feed, see some read/bookmark/share-worthy posts and I would normally middle click them to get them all opened in background tabs.
    - louispereira 4y ago
      > As a mild-OCD perfectionist I'm literally grinding my teeth imagining doing it this way. Haha sorry I understand what you mean! >If title doesn't have to be unique this already seems as an acceptable compromise. Yes, currently the title doesn't have to be unique. The platform will just generate a unique URL for each post based on the title, and append a digit if necessary. > Nice point. Any chance I could copy a post URL or open it in a background page straight from the posts list? It was initially set up like this, but a bunch of users (mainly on mobile) complained that they didn't like the fact that each post opened in a separate tab. They wanted to just read a post and scroll to the next one easily. That's why I've moved to the current format. Maybe I could make it behave differently on desktop. I'll keep this in mind. Thanks!
jmpz 4y ago
I really like the implementation and the idea, but why have a word limit at all? You could encourage short form writing in other ways, but to make it impossible seems really limiting.
- louispereira 4y ago
  Hey! I've found that constraints make it easier for people to take action. The word limit does that for me. It's long enough to allow for nuance around a single topic, and short enough to not be intimidating to start, as well as to force some clarity of thought.
robobro 4y ago
now someone just make it a frontend for mastodon and we have a viable product
- louispereira 4y ago
  haha, I've never used Mastodon, but maybe you're on to something!
ashtavakra 4y ago
Awesome. Clean and minimal. I tried to write a post in Telugu language and it resulted in rather long and ugly URL. https://nicheless.blog/post/%E0%B0%B9%E0%B0%82%E0%B0%AA%E0%B1%80-%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%82%E0%B0%9A%E0%B0%BF-%E0%B0%B9%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%AA%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%AA%E0%B0%BE-%E0%B0%A6%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%95---%E0%B0%B6%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%B2%E0%B1%8B%E0%B0%95%E0%B0%BE https://nicheless.blog/post/%E0%B0%B9%E0%B0%82%E0%B0%AA%E0%B...
- louispereira 4y ago
  Hey! I just noticed that! You're the first person to write in a different script, so it's not a problem I experienced until now. Will figure out a way to make the URL neater by default, although you can currently edit it as well. Btw, I'm also Indian (from Goa) so it's amazing to see posts in one of our many regional languages :)
  - ashtavakra 4y ago
    Ah nice to know :) I was able to edit the URL, thanks!
    - louispereira 4y ago
      Cheers :)
bookofjoe 4y ago
Make a BRIEF introductory YouTube video
- louispereira 4y ago
  I'm very camera shy. But thanks for the suggestion. I might do it in the future if I can muster enough courage.
grvdrm 4y ago
I signed up. https://nicheless.blog/author/crc https://nicheless.blog/author/crc I like the extreme simplicity. It motivates me to write something and worry less about whether that writing is a properly crafted story. I think of my Substack as the place that requires something with more polish, and Twitter is for very short takes, opinions, conversations. This site sits somewhere in the middle. Looking forward to seeing how it evolves!
- louispereira 4y ago
  Yes! Exactly the way I see it as well. A layer 1 ecosystem for thoughts outside my mind. Substack is a layer 2 that is much more polished. Thanks for signing up :)
sequoia 4y ago
Is there a way to export one’s blog? I’d like to try it but want to avoid my content “going down with the ship” if you move on to another project :)
- louispereira 4y ago
  Hey, yes. On your dashboard, you can click on the export button next to your list of Published posts. It will export a CSV file with all your posts.
stokesr 4y ago
The site looks gorgeous, fair play. I've seen from the comments that you're looking for people's envisaged use cases, so here's mine - I have moved about a lot, I'm currently living abroad. In a few months time, everyone will start moving about again. This seems like a brilliant way to keep up with friends that I can't see very often, in a way that seems more genuine than the loop of "Hey we haven't talked in ages! How are you doing?" "It's been so long! I'm good, and you?" "Good :)". Being able to see what they're thinking and to interact with them from that without having to prompt a deep conversation on a Tuesday afternoon sounds wonderful. Looking forward to using it more, and seeing where you take it!
- louispereira 4y ago
  Hey. I had a conversation with one of my closest friends a few days ago, and this is exactly how I described what I want Nicheless to become. I wrote something similar here that might resonate: https://nicheless.blog/post/mission https://nicheless.blog/post/mission I stumbled upon this use case almost by accident, when a few of my IRL friends published stuff on Nicheless. I realised I looked forward to reading what they were upto or thinking about. And then figured other people might like the same experience. Thank you for sharing that you think about it similarly.
  - stokesr 4y ago
    Great to read that mission statement! Good to know I stumbled upon the Real Use Case aha
- rchaud 4y ago
  You've put into words the issue I've been having keeping up with friends I don't see often. Scheduled calls are too hard to do, and the awkwardness of those "hey how's it going" messages isn't much better.
  - louispereira 4y ago
    I'm going to screenshot this thread so I can look at it repeatedly. Thank you for this.
rchaud 4y ago
I like the landing page and the example posts. 300 words is a good middle ground between the twitter firehose and SEO-baiting thoughtfluencer essays on Medium.com. But, Twitter too was once simple and hassle-free. What happens if this takes off and some crypto-chastened VC starts sniffing around?
- louispereira 4y ago
  Hey! I'm glad you like it :) I can't predict the future, but I can say that I'm a team of one who isn't looking for VC funding. Even if I was, I doubt they'd fund me. I'm going to keep this platform alive for as long as I am alive, and if I can help it, even longer. You have my word.
derekzhouzhen 4y ago
Looking good. however, it seems like main content are printed through javascript, there is no text in the static html. I wonder the rationale behind this; it is not like you want to make a paywall.
simjnd 4y ago
Oh right, forgot I needed to download 1 MB of stuff (incl. 750 kB of JS) for a tiny 6-line article [1]. Performance is absolutely abysmal. If you really want to use a JS framework that much, just use Astro so you don't ship all the unnecessary JS that bloats and slows down a tiny page. Until this is fixed, anyone would be much better off going for Bear Blog [2] or Mataroa [3]. [1]: https://nicheless.blog/post/learn-one-thing-well https://nicheless.blog/post/learn-one-thing-well [2]: https://bearblog.dev/ https://bearblog.dev/ [3]: https://mataroa.blog/ https://mataroa.blog/

162 points by yawnxyz 4y ago

There seems to be a decent amount of lag when scrolling on Firefox (106.1.0) for Android. Other than that, the mobile UI is pretty slick and I'm enjoying reading what others have posted.

kelseyfrog 4y ago

Anyone can spew unfiltered thoughts. It's the refinement of the editorial process that distills those into something valuable.

brnaftr361 4y ago
No, thoughts are work done. If they're directed but not deliberate, they're still revelatory. Imagine a bunch of white tendrils in all directions, and every one of those has their own tendrils, and so on and so forth, like a system of roots, but a 2D manifestation of such. Now divide them and name them after scientific domains, imagine the white is what we know, imagine the black is our absence of knowledge, imagine the tendrils scale to what we do know and what we don't, how big do you think the negative space is? Now you say something stupid, that's off the beaten path, you cast a line and you wonder if it's worth reinforcing through investigation, and so you think more and more on it, and maybe you investigate it, and suddenly that stupid thought becomes fleshed out, and the question is answered. You start from ignorance, we learn nothing new if you stay in the confines of the known - that is filtering, that is refining, that is ego pressing you to be right. Every statement has a thousand queries nested inside it, and for every answer borne from those...
- louispereira 4y ago
  I love this comment. It feels like you've understood exactly why the platform exists. So glad it resonates. Thank you.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  I appreciate your optimism, but unless you supply some evidence, it's an extraordinary claim.
  - brnaftr361 4y ago
    Why don't you go think on it? That's the point. I've given you a lens by which to see the world, you can look through it if you please.

troutwine 4y ago

> No trolls. While I'm sure some trolls do what they do for the external audience, private responses won't stop griefing just for giggles. I send a troll message to Bob, privately, get a rise out of him and screenshot the whole conversation and repost to some other platform if I want external validation.

dollo_7 4y ago
While you have a point, this process may make it harder to be a troll. Nowadays you can be a troll anywhere and anytime you want, specially online. I'm curious how this approach may benefit those who share their plain thoughts without the fear of being automatically targeted by trolls looking for triggered responses and tribal support.
- zeruch 4y ago
  "While you have a point, this process may make it harder to be a troll." Trolls are not lazy. If anything, their efforts are hype fixated.
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    I think it's a little more complicated than that. Trolls are often very fixated on their targets but they also tend to be impulsive and looking for quick fixes of glory. This is why things like shadow banning and slow modes and signup waiting periods work pretty well on them. Very few have the patience to wait for a fresh sock account that's limited to be useful.
    - zeruch 4y ago
      "I think it's a little more complicated than that." Agreed, but decades of observation tell me there is more than enough supply across the shitpost to troll spectrum to go around :)
oefrha 4y ago
I have a friend with millions of followers on social media. She gets all kinds of disgusting private messages all the time. The worst trolls aren’t publicly commenting (or at least aren’t solely publicly commenting), they message you directly as long as you leave an avenue open.

Krisjohn 4y ago

Isn’t this literally the problem with every social media site?

SuperMild 4y ago

It's cool, I like the geek style design.

louispereira 4y ago
Thank you!

SamBam 4y ago

I don't really understand the purpose. If I'm writing these thoughts for myself, why would I want to post them? If I'm writing these thoughts to engage with an audience or wider community, why wouldn't I want them to be able to reply?

PenguinCoder 4y ago
For my writing it's both really. I write so that I can better present my ideas and thoughts Ina coherent manner that make sense to other people; not just myself. At the same time I am not writing FOR anyone else. I don't want feedback or commentary. I write to help my own thought process, making sure I understand the topic well enough that I could explain to someone else. I don't write for audience engagement, or for someone else. But I do try and write what someone without my knowledge or expertise can understand. I write for peers and practice.
- louispereira 4y ago
  I love this. It's exactly the kind of use case I had in mind while building Nicheless. Happy that it resonates!
conductr 4y ago
For the likes/upvotes or whatever they do
louispereira 4y ago
Hey Sam! I'm Louis, the guy who built Nicheless. The purpose of the platform is simple – it's a place to improve your thoughts through writing. I wrote a bit about it here: https://nicheless.blog/post/why-i-built-this https://nicheless.blog/post/why-i-built-this Also, people can like and reply to your posts, but both those are private. Only you'll know how many likes a post has, and all replies will go directly to your DMs instead of a comment section. This is so that it helps reduce uneccessary trolling and status games among people, with the goal of making it easier for people to write for the sake of thinking, and not to impress their audiences which may or may not exist. Let me know if you have any questions. Happy that you took the time to try it out.

azhenley 4y ago

None of the blogs are loading for me. Just spins. The console is showing several 500 errors.

louispereira 4y ago
Apologies! Trying to fix it right now!

louispereira 4y ago

Hey folks! I'm Louis – the builder (founder?) of Nicheless. I'm not sure how it got here, but I'm grateful that it did. Nicheless is a fun little side project I created for people to share their thoughts with the world without needing to be performative or afraid of trolls. I'm a firm believer that writing online is a great way to improve your thinking, and I'm hoping Nicheless encourages more people to do the same. Happy to answer any questions you may have, and grateful that you took the time to try it out.

xmonkee 4y ago
I love it. Just made my first post. Is there a way to discover other writers? Edit: jk, just found the "discover" section
- louispereira 4y ago
  Awesome. What do you plan on writing about? I'm curious about the use cases people have, because they're often surprisingly (and pleasantly) different from mine. I mainly use it to think through things or share experiences, but I've seen people use it as an anonymous public journal, as a photography blog, or even as a public notebook for their poetry.
mintysoap 4y ago
I really like this, and I like the first few random posts I read. Is there a way to view the newest public posts? Discover seems to show random posts from months ago.
- louispereira 4y ago
  The discover page is currently just a bunch of manually curated posts from the platform. I don't want to create a feed of the latest posts because a lot of folks are just experimenting on the platform and it will end up being an overwhelming, incoherent feed, something that i'm trying to actively design against. My goal is to have people invite their friends and other people they know to write on the platform, and follow their nicheless blogs. When that is the case, the default feed will end up being populated with posts that will be more contextual. However, I will admit I am not sure how to reach this goal just yet. It's still early days and I'm still experimenting. Happy to hear any ideas :)

techaqua 4y ago

micro-blogging but the text is long enough to be considered as just blogging.

louispereira 4y ago
Long enough to allow for nuance. Short enough to compel clarity of thought. That's the goal :)

welanes 4y ago

Nice job. No RSS though as far as I can tell. For something slightly less minimal but very nice to use, I stumbled across this the other day: https://blogstatic.io/ https://blogstatic.io/ Feels likes - after being crowded out by FB and Twitter (and the death of Google Reader) - blogs are making a comeback.

louispereira 4y ago
Thanks! You're right, there's currently no RSS. Might change that in the future, but I haven't given it much thought just yet. I agree that blogs are making a comeback. It's about time. We're in need of some sort of detox after a decade of social media fuelled lives. Hopefully it leads to a more interesting, less overwhelming internet.
lawgimenez 4y ago
Blogstatic looks nice I though it was ghost.org. Their guide is straight up how to setup your domain with Cloudflare.

batrat 4y ago

Looks like Tumblr but simpler. I like it.

louispereira 4y ago
Thanks! Let me know if you have any questions or feedback :)

Timja 4y ago

Does not work for me because it somehow prevents reader mode in Firefox.

louispereira 4y ago
Oh that's strange. Not sure why that's happening but I'll look into it when I can. Thanks for bringing it to my notice.

prakis 4y ago

Its soo clean. Logo, Icons, Font, Color selection, everything looks perfect.

louispereira 4y ago
Thank you! I'm not a designer, but I try. I took some creative inspiration from a few other minimalist blogs on the internet, as well as some stuff I saw on pinterest.

olah_1 4y ago

> Private likes. > Private responses. > Private subscriber counts. > No status games. No trolls. No pressure. This is the real differentiator. Do you still use algorithms around likes and follows to recommend users to each other and such? Those data points actually are useful to get people more connected to the network and help them find their community

philosopher1234 4y ago
Unfortunately also probably the reason it won’t gain traction
- louispereira 4y ago
  You're probably right. I'm going to try and be an idealist for as long as I can though :)
  - philosopher1234 4y ago
    Good luck. I’m rooting for you.
    - louispereira 4y ago
      Thank you! I appreciate it.
louispereira 4y ago
Hey! Glad this resonates with you. At the moment there are no algorithms by design. I want to make Nicheless a more closed network. A place to discover and discuss ideas from people you already know in real life or from other spaces on the internet. Not a space to discover new people. I've expanded a bit on that thought here: https://nicheless.blog/post/mission https://nicheless.blog/post/mission Here's an excerpt from that post: "I want Nicheless to grow into a place where you come to read the thoughts of people you know. To take a dip into the depths of your friends' minds. And to turn those excursions into conversations – both online and IRL. In the ideal scenario, I imagine a bunch of friends following each other, each publishing without fear of public judgment, and then occasionally discussing what they read and wrote about when they meet in real life."

leke 4y ago

Very nice, Louis. How do you plan to make money from this?

louispereira 4y ago
Thanks Leke. I currently have no clue. I don't want to pursue the advertising route unless I absolutely have to. I might try and take some inspiration from Twitter Blue and create something similar in the future. The platform is still in its early days though, so I want to see where it goes before making any rash decisions. Got ideas? I'm happy to hear them!

swidi 4y ago

I say this every time one of these pops up: Just do it yourself. Just get a $5 Linode or a Cloudflare account, make a Hugo/Pelican/whatever site and go. These niche microblogging sites are so small and insignificant that you can never ever trust them to survive (or even persist). Just do it yourself from the very beginning and you'll have a much better time.

louispereira 4y ago
Hey. You're right. But there are lots of folks who don't have the time to build and maintain a site themselves. Besides, I'm hoping to make Nicheless more than just a micro blogging platform. My goal is to make it into a space that encourages groups of people to share their thoughts without fear, and eventually let the exchange of those ideas percolate into real life discussions. It's still a long way out from becoming that, but it's the goal. I've written a bit about it here: https://nicheless.blog/post/mission https://nicheless.blog/post/mission
rendaw 4y ago
Every time this DIY reply comes it misses the fact that the platforms take care of commenting (account management, moderation), something that's more or less impossible for a DIY solution. Twitter/FB/etc make commenting painless because everyone has an account and is already logged in. This at least has the potential to get to that position. DIY doesn't.
- sixstringtheory 4y ago
  I actually don’t want comments on my site. No comments, no user database. HN or Reddit can be my comment site, if anyone actually read my blog :P Or people can write their own blog post in response and host it on their site.
  - wishinghand 4y ago
    Cool. But do most others want that?
- 4y ago

asim 4y ago

Not a knock on the author. All power to him for doing this. I worked on similar small side projects years ago. But I'm not convinced. And not of nicheless, just of anything attempting to fill the void where Twitter once was. I think some of these services might find their community and build something with network effects but I couldn't tell you which will make it as much as I couldn't say 3 years into Twitter if it would still exist a decade from then. But something just isn't sitting right with me in this entire space. As I sit and watch the mindless babble of the Twitter billionaire owner and his groupies, it's causing me to fade slowly into the background of life. Spaces for idle chatter turns out to be a total waste of time. Whether it's about movies, gaming or politics, there's really more we could be doing with our time. Twitter is a void and trying to fill that void with another one isn't the answer. I don't really know what the solution is beyond knowing some sort of community platform is definitely missing. But it's likely to focus on some active component, not idle chat.

louispereira 4y ago
Hey Asim. I appreciate you taking the time to thoughtfully (and elegantly) lay out your thoughts. At the moment, I don't want Nicheless to perform a similar function to Twitter. I love Twitter and use it daily, but I find it useful as a space to reach a broad audience of people I don't know. An open network with unlimited growth potential. With nicheless, I want it to be the opposite. A place to follow people you already know, either from real life, or from existing social connections. I want it to be a place for a higher density of thought to be exchanged for a smaller group of people. I've written a bit about it here: https://nicheless.blog/post/mission https://nicheless.blog/post/mission In fact, I'm even considering capping the number of people you can 'follow' on Nichless. Maybe it will help create an algorithm free feed of interesting thoughts that spark real life conversations. I don't know yet, but I might experiment and find out. Let me know what you think?
- asim 4y ago
  It's a noble goal. I think many an engineer have tried. Even convincing your own social group to try new things is hard so it really has to offer something new or attract a specific type of audience. I think most people's group of well know friends and contacts caps out at 100. So that would be where I'd put a soft limit on follows e.g a little hint that says maybe you want to split this out into sub groups or separate as accounts.

pacifika 4y ago

So we used to have this thing called telnet BBSes in the mid nineties. Discord is not too similar, but typically with less moderation. Bunch of people talk about stuff in subject based rooms, there’s some administrators looking after the health of the channel. Join or leave rooms, etc. Open source would shield it a bit more from commercial interests. Social media is simply too big for this, it will always be advertised run because of the size of the audience. Also the viral component and manipulation affect how valuable it can be. Build and join smaller communities.

louispereira 4y ago
The goal here is to help people create and communicate in a one to many & many to one manner within small communities. I'm still working on making it easier or more obvious to do that, but I'm going to keep trying!

lenova 4y ago

Just played around with it, loving the concept so far... great work! Feature request: dark mode setting :-)

louispereira 4y ago
Thank you! Might do a dark mode in the future!

alathon 4y ago

This really resonates with me too. I already have a private Discord with just a few others who are both friends and work in software development, which serves as our closed-network way of discussing software and also a healthy dose of memes and real-life chat. Ive thought about inviting others who I'm less close to, because I'd welcome their contributions to those discussions, but there is always the fear of adding anyone reducing the trust and transparency present atm. In lieu of that I'd love a nice and easy way to follow the thoughts of those peers and friends, without having to switch between substack blogs, LinkedIn posts, medium posts and a range of other things. The trouble, usually, is that convincing all of those peers to adopt a new thing for this alone is a hard sell, when we're already so oversaturated on tools and platforms.

louispereira 4y ago
Agreed. I haven't solved that problem myself. Most of my own friends haven't switched to Nicheless, although most of them don't write elsewhere either. To me, nicheless is an ideal space for those that are afraid to publish online to start doing so. I'm yet to figure out how to make that happen. I'll keep at it till I figure it out though.
- alathon 4y ago
  Makes sense! One of the things stopping me from publishing is less about time or size of post, and more about focus and method. Nicheless definitely helps with focus/scope because of the limit on post length; perhaps you can incentivize if the platform provides helpful writing tips and suggestions? Just a thought, might be outside the scope of the platform.

q-base 4y ago

I signed up. I actually have 2 personal blogs, so I am unsure about whether I will use your platform. But there is something about the unfiltered short format that I like and even though I have thought about publishing shorter style posts on my own blogs, I for some reason never get to it. I am a big fan of the design as well! Nice job.

louispereira 4y ago
Thank you! If you're curious about how to use it, I personally use it as a layer 1 for my thoughts. It helps me think about them more deeply than I would otherwise do if I was just talking to myself or writing in a private journal. Eventually, I plan on taking some thoughts and graduating them into full blown blog posts on my main website.
- q-base 4y ago
  I can see the value. The interesting thing is whether people will notice and follow along. But of course just the act of writing in a setting where people potentially will read it makes you think a little more thoroughly even of "random" thoughts. I think you should consider making tags case-insensitive. I would just lowercase them all :)
  - louispereira 4y ago
    Regarding the tags, great suggestion. Will add it to my list. And regarding your earlier point, I agree. I'm yet to clear up the positioning of the site. I'm struggling with 2 separate, but intertwined angles. 1. A low-pressure place to write in public, because writing helps you clarify your thoughts. 2. A place to keep up with what your existing circle of friends is up to in life You can't have 2 without 1, and hence most of the messaging is geared towards 1 right now. I'm thinking about ways to encourage users to invite their IRL friends to participate, as I think there's a powerful, albeit small, network effect to be had.

qwerty456127 4y ago

What immediately scares me is every post on the website by the link having a title. To me inventing a good title arguably almost seems the hardest part of writing at all. A microblog should let you dump a thought quickly without requiring you to name it first. Also, individual post URL is hidden to deep. You apparently have to open the post, scroll down, click "share", click "copy link", and even that element is not a real link. As soon as I see a post/preview/listing I want to be able to middle-click it to open it in a background tab or Ctrl+click it to copy/whatever.

louispereira 4y ago
Hey! I'm sorry you find the title intimidating. You could just use a random character in your title, or even a whitespace, to achieve the effect of a title-free place to post. Regarding the individual URL, if you don't want to click to copy it using the current flow, you could just CMD+Shift+C to copy the URL?
- qwerty456127 4y ago
  > You could just use a random character in your title As a mild-OCD perfectionist I'm literally grinding my teeth imagining doing it this way. If there is a place for a title a post I write has to have a good title or no title at all. > or even a whitespace to achieve the effect of a title-free place to post. If title doesn't have to be unique this already seems as an acceptable compromise. > Regarding the individual URL, if you don't want to click to copy it using the current flow, you could just CMD+Shift+C to copy the URL? Nice point. Any chance I could copy a post URL or open it in a background page straight from the posts list? I scroll the feed, see some read/bookmark/share-worthy posts and I would normally middle click them to get them all opened in background tabs.
  - louispereira 4y ago
    > As a mild-OCD perfectionist I'm literally grinding my teeth imagining doing it this way. Haha sorry I understand what you mean! >If title doesn't have to be unique this already seems as an acceptable compromise. Yes, currently the title doesn't have to be unique. The platform will just generate a unique URL for each post based on the title, and append a digit if necessary. > Nice point. Any chance I could copy a post URL or open it in a background page straight from the posts list? It was initially set up like this, but a bunch of users (mainly on mobile) complained that they didn't like the fact that each post opened in a separate tab. They wanted to just read a post and scroll to the next one easily. That's why I've moved to the current format. Maybe I could make it behave differently on desktop. I'll keep this in mind. Thanks!

jmpz 4y ago

I really like the implementation and the idea, but why have a word limit at all? You could encourage short form writing in other ways, but to make it impossible seems really limiting.

louispereira 4y ago
Hey! I've found that constraints make it easier for people to take action. The word limit does that for me. It's long enough to allow for nuance around a single topic, and short enough to not be intimidating to start, as well as to force some clarity of thought.

robobro 4y ago

now someone just make it a frontend for mastodon and we have a viable product

louispereira 4y ago
haha, I've never used Mastodon, but maybe you're on to something!

ashtavakra 4y ago

Awesome. Clean and minimal. I tried to write a post in Telugu language and it resulted in rather long and ugly URL. https://nicheless.blog/post/%E0%B0%B9%E0%B0%82%E0%B0%AA%E0%B1%80-%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%82%E0%B0%9A%E0%B0%BF-%E0%B0%B9%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%AA%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%AA%E0%B0%BE-%E0%B0%A6%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%95---%E0%B0%B6%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%B2%E0%B1%8B%E0%B0%95%E0%B0%BE https://nicheless.blog/post/%E0%B0%B9%E0%B0%82%E0%B0%AA%E0%B...

louispereira 4y ago
Hey! I just noticed that! You're the first person to write in a different script, so it's not a problem I experienced until now. Will figure out a way to make the URL neater by default, although you can currently edit it as well. Btw, I'm also Indian (from Goa) so it's amazing to see posts in one of our many regional languages :)
- ashtavakra 4y ago
  Ah nice to know :) I was able to edit the URL, thanks!
  - louispereira 4y ago
    Cheers :)

bookofjoe 4y ago

Make a BRIEF introductory YouTube video

louispereira 4y ago
I'm very camera shy. But thanks for the suggestion. I might do it in the future if I can muster enough courage.

grvdrm 4y ago

I signed up. https://nicheless.blog/author/crc https://nicheless.blog/author/crc I like the extreme simplicity. It motivates me to write something and worry less about whether that writing is a properly crafted story. I think of my Substack as the place that requires something with more polish, and Twitter is for very short takes, opinions, conversations. This site sits somewhere in the middle. Looking forward to seeing how it evolves!

louispereira 4y ago
Yes! Exactly the way I see it as well. A layer 1 ecosystem for thoughts outside my mind. Substack is a layer 2 that is much more polished. Thanks for signing up :)

sequoia 4y ago

Is there a way to export one’s blog? I’d like to try it but want to avoid my content “going down with the ship” if you move on to another project :)

louispereira 4y ago
Hey, yes. On your dashboard, you can click on the export button next to your list of Published posts. It will export a CSV file with all your posts.

stokesr 4y ago

The site looks gorgeous, fair play. I've seen from the comments that you're looking for people's envisaged use cases, so here's mine - I have moved about a lot, I'm currently living abroad. In a few months time, everyone will start moving about again. This seems like a brilliant way to keep up with friends that I can't see very often, in a way that seems more genuine than the loop of "Hey we haven't talked in ages! How are you doing?" "It's been so long! I'm good, and you?" "Good :)". Being able to see what they're thinking and to interact with them from that without having to prompt a deep conversation on a Tuesday afternoon sounds wonderful. Looking forward to using it more, and seeing where you take it!

louispereira 4y ago
Hey. I had a conversation with one of my closest friends a few days ago, and this is exactly how I described what I want Nicheless to become. I wrote something similar here that might resonate: https://nicheless.blog/post/mission https://nicheless.blog/post/mission I stumbled upon this use case almost by accident, when a few of my IRL friends published stuff on Nicheless. I realised I looked forward to reading what they were upto or thinking about. And then figured other people might like the same experience. Thank you for sharing that you think about it similarly.
- stokesr 4y ago
  Great to read that mission statement! Good to know I stumbled upon the Real Use Case aha
rchaud 4y ago
You've put into words the issue I've been having keeping up with friends I don't see often. Scheduled calls are too hard to do, and the awkwardness of those "hey how's it going" messages isn't much better.
- louispereira 4y ago
  I'm going to screenshot this thread so I can look at it repeatedly. Thank you for this.

rchaud 4y ago

I like the landing page and the example posts. 300 words is a good middle ground between the twitter firehose and SEO-baiting thoughtfluencer essays on Medium.com. But, Twitter too was once simple and hassle-free. What happens if this takes off and some crypto-chastened VC starts sniffing around?

louispereira 4y ago
Hey! I'm glad you like it :) I can't predict the future, but I can say that I'm a team of one who isn't looking for VC funding. Even if I was, I doubt they'd fund me. I'm going to keep this platform alive for as long as I am alive, and if I can help it, even longer. You have my word.

derekzhouzhen 4y ago

Looking good. however, it seems like main content are printed through javascript, there is no text in the static html. I wonder the rationale behind this; it is not like you want to make a paywall.

simjnd 4y ago

Oh right, forgot I needed to download 1 MB of stuff (incl. 750 kB of JS) for a tiny 6-line article [1]. Performance is absolutely abysmal. If you really want to use a JS framework that much, just use Astro so you don't ship all the unnecessary JS that bloats and slows down a tiny page. Until this is fixed, anyone would be much better off going for Bear Blog [2] or Mataroa [3]. [1]: https://nicheless.blog/post/learn-one-thing-well https://nicheless.blog/post/learn-one-thing-well [2]: https://bearblog.dev/ https://bearblog.dev/ [3]: https://mataroa.blog/ https://mataroa.blog/