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I tried it few weeks ago. Worst p2p experience of my life. Was super unclear how to bootstrap myself to start following something. Feels like it was run by an

I tried it few weeks ago. Worst p2p experience of my life. Was super unclear how to bootstrap myself to start following something. Feels like it was run by an in-crowd, with no strong interest in new users. Keybase has similar goals, but was super easy to get started in.

midenginedcoupe 4y ago
Seconded. The onboarding is so terrible we just gave up after failing in every possible direction. Nothing worked. It's such a shame as I really like the underlying ideas. But the implementation is hopeless and the way it's presented on their website is downright icky. Honestly, the video "explanation" of a love story with Scuttlebutt weirded me out - it was more like some weeb's fantasy of what a love story would be like rather than any kind of useful intro into how you'd use it.
- staltz 4y ago
  (I develop Manyverse) Onboarding in SSB is invite-driven and thus is at odds with safety. If you want to "find people" easily, and easily join the network, then this means that any harasser can also do the same. Improving Onboarding while not sacrificing Sustainability and Safety is my top priority and there are several protocol advancements being worked on, more information here: https://gitlab.com/staltz/manyverse/-/wikis/Starchart/ https://gitlab.com/staltz/manyverse/-/wikis/Starchart/
  - midenginedcoupe 4y ago
    None of the docs I found said that. And we could get on to the network and join pubs. Only there was nothing in there. We should also have been able to invite each other and follow each other's posts, as we were both using devices on the same wifi, but that just silently failed. A week or so later the iphone app rolled out an update with a patch note saying something along the lines of "whoops, new signups went to the test servers instead of prod by mistake" which _may_ explain some of it. But going back in to the app after the fix was no better.
    - staltz 4y ago
      Are you talking about Planetary social?
      - midenginedcoupe 4y ago
        Probably, yes. I don't remember which client I tried, but that's showing as a previously installed app that's no longer on my phone.
hobofan 4y ago
> Feels like it was run by an in-crowd, with no strong interest in new users. My more charitable interpretation of the experiences I had when trying it out was that they are stuck in a never-ending refactoring state where they are always in between the "old" and the "new" system, and you have to be very up-to-date to know which are the compatible beta versions of all packages (which can't be a good experience for existing users either). ----- I do like SSB for it's conceptual approach of trying to model existing social realities in technology rather than trying to build a technological model of communication and making humans conform to it. In practice however, I think it has been superseded with ActivityPub and Matrix, which build on very similar core primitives.
Broue 4y ago
As a long time patchwork user —April 2017 for the win…— that just recently quit, I could see how the multitude of half finished clients, deprecated functionality would get to that outcome. SSB is dead, other than the few trying to make a go financially at it, via either crowdfunding, NLnet grants, or VC. I've reverted to Web 1.0 blogging, with none of the bs that is consistent with using a archived client, focus on trying to fit a database into a mobile app — without regard to front end functionality. > When I look at Beaker, I think it was probably 50% easy. The initial demo took 2 weeks: 20%. It was a full website editor in about 2 months: 30%. The feedback was great: 50%. The users didn't stick: 50%. We got invited to talks which increased exposure: 51%. A few niche communities took an interest: 53%. Folks liked it enough to donate via OpenCollective and Patreon: 54%. You get the idea. Notably absent is "usage and retention went through the roof: 80%" and then "usage continued to grow for years: 100%." Everything that pfrazee wrote here about Beaker Browser at https://github.com/beakerbrowser/beaker/blob/master/archive-notice.md https://github.com/beakerbrowser/beaker/blob/master/archive-... is true for ssb.
- tarasglek 4y ago
  That's interesting, will read. Thank you for the pointer.
- staltz 4y ago
  What makes you think it is dead when there are active users every day, development is active, and there's a developer conference this week (https://p2p-basel.org/ https://p2p-basel.org/)?
  - Broue 4y ago
    Simple, 1. it hasn’t grown past the early adopter phase 2. There is no product-market fit. The evidence I have is the litany of dead accounts that follow my account. Luckily, via mastodon I’ve been able to reconnect with those people. As someone else has mentioned mastodon is doing quite well. And from experience Web 1.0 blogging is a breath of fresh air. The Nile is not just a river in Egypt.
evbogue 4y ago
Onboarding wasn't as bad as your recent experience when SSB first started. You just jumped on the same wifi router as your peer and the feeds sank, or got a pub invite and the feeds of the pub's friends were sent to you. It could work that way again, you just have to emulate the original experience and get rid of all the weird broken stuff that's been added to make it hard to sync posts.
- Broue 4y ago
  I would agree. @evbrogue I’m not sure if you know of the current tech stack direction… meta feeds so you have a blockchain of off blockchain content. This is the delete « fix »

midenginedcoupe 4y ago

Seconded. The onboarding is so terrible we just gave up after failing in every possible direction. Nothing worked. It's such a shame as I really like the underlying ideas. But the implementation is hopeless and the way it's presented on their website is downright icky. Honestly, the video "explanation" of a love story with Scuttlebutt weirded me out - it was more like some weeb's fantasy of what a love story would be like rather than any kind of useful intro into how you'd use it.

staltz 4y ago
(I develop Manyverse) Onboarding in SSB is invite-driven and thus is at odds with safety. If you want to "find people" easily, and easily join the network, then this means that any harasser can also do the same. Improving Onboarding while not sacrificing Sustainability and Safety is my top priority and there are several protocol advancements being worked on, more information here: https://gitlab.com/staltz/manyverse/-/wikis/Starchart/ https://gitlab.com/staltz/manyverse/-/wikis/Starchart/
- midenginedcoupe 4y ago
  None of the docs I found said that. And we could get on to the network and join pubs. Only there was nothing in there. We should also have been able to invite each other and follow each other's posts, as we were both using devices on the same wifi, but that just silently failed. A week or so later the iphone app rolled out an update with a patch note saying something along the lines of "whoops, new signups went to the test servers instead of prod by mistake" which _may_ explain some of it. But going back in to the app after the fix was no better.
  - staltz 4y ago
    Are you talking about Planetary social?
    - midenginedcoupe 4y ago
      Probably, yes. I don't remember which client I tried, but that's showing as a previously installed app that's no longer on my phone.

hobofan 4y ago

> Feels like it was run by an in-crowd, with no strong interest in new users. My more charitable interpretation of the experiences I had when trying it out was that they are stuck in a never-ending refactoring state where they are always in between the "old" and the "new" system, and you have to be very up-to-date to know which are the compatible beta versions of all packages (which can't be a good experience for existing users either). ----- I do like SSB for it's conceptual approach of trying to model existing social realities in technology rather than trying to build a technological model of communication and making humans conform to it. In practice however, I think it has been superseded with ActivityPub and Matrix, which build on very similar core primitives.

Broue 4y ago

As a long time patchwork user —April 2017 for the win…— that just recently quit, I could see how the multitude of half finished clients, deprecated functionality would get to that outcome. SSB is dead, other than the few trying to make a go financially at it, via either crowdfunding, NLnet grants, or VC. I've reverted to Web 1.0 blogging, with none of the bs that is consistent with using a archived client, focus on trying to fit a database into a mobile app — without regard to front end functionality. > When I look at Beaker, I think it was probably 50% easy. The initial demo took 2 weeks: 20%. It was a full website editor in about 2 months: 30%. The feedback was great: 50%. The users didn't stick: 50%. We got invited to talks which increased exposure: 51%. A few niche communities took an interest: 53%. Folks liked it enough to donate via OpenCollective and Patreon: 54%. You get the idea. Notably absent is "usage and retention went through the roof: 80%" and then "usage continued to grow for years: 100%." Everything that pfrazee wrote here about Beaker Browser at https://github.com/beakerbrowser/beaker/blob/master/archive-notice.md https://github.com/beakerbrowser/beaker/blob/master/archive-... is true for ssb.

tarasglek 4y ago
That's interesting, will read. Thank you for the pointer.
staltz 4y ago
What makes you think it is dead when there are active users every day, development is active, and there's a developer conference this week (https://p2p-basel.org/ https://p2p-basel.org/)?
- Broue 4y ago
  Simple, 1. it hasn’t grown past the early adopter phase 2. There is no product-market fit. The evidence I have is the litany of dead accounts that follow my account. Luckily, via mastodon I’ve been able to reconnect with those people. As someone else has mentioned mastodon is doing quite well. And from experience Web 1.0 blogging is a breath of fresh air. The Nile is not just a river in Egypt.

evbogue 4y ago

Onboarding wasn't as bad as your recent experience when SSB first started. You just jumped on the same wifi router as your peer and the feeds sank, or got a pub invite and the feeds of the pub's friends were sent to you. It could work that way again, you just have to emulate the original experience and get rid of all the weird broken stuff that's been added to make it hard to sync posts.

Broue 4y ago
I would agree. @evbrogue I’m not sure if you know of the current tech stack direction… meta feeds so you have a blockchain of off blockchain content. This is the delete « fix »