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> Goodreads proved it could work. But I don’t understand the market problem this one is solving. Goodreads and Shelfari both got bought by Amazon. They killed

> Goodreads proved it could work. But I don’t understand the market problem this one is solving. Goodreads and Shelfari both got bought by Amazon. They killed Shelfari and froze Goodreads development. As users, federation protects us from this. We even have the choice of running our own instance.

briandear 3y ago
I get it. But how big of a demand is there for that? Does the average Wednesday night neighborhood book club care? I am not denying that there is value there for someone, but most people don’t care. People that read books at a level of enthusiasm to join a network about reading don’t think about that stuff. Federation is a feature but it really isn’t an above the fold concern for the vast majority of the potential audience. My point is that the value prop of this site isn’t federation, it “a social network for books.” This could be marketed as a tool for virtual book clubs and communities. “Your book club, anywhere” kind of thing. This could be marketed as a tool for real world book clubs to use. There are thousands of book clubs who would probably love an easy to use tool for managing those clubs. Focusing on that aspect would be huge in my opinion. If the more tech astute want to “run their own instance,” that feature exists. Sort of like Wordpress for books — you have the Wordpress.com for those that just want to use the platform and the .org version for those that want to self-host as an example. The ideological aspects are secondary assuming the goal is to grow and have a lot of people caring about this. A huge independent book community would be amazing. But this won’t get huge if normal people don’t have a reason to care.
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  > But how big of a demand is there for that? I think every Goodreads or Shelfari user would benefit from the service not being dead.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Definitely. I hate that Shelfari is dead and that Goodreads sucks. That's why I clicked on this comment thread. But what should convince me that this product will not be dead? Sure, I believe that it won't be killed by Amazon in particular, but why should I be convinced that it will survive on its own terms?
    - bluefishinit 3y ago
      It will need a community to survive, so I think people being excited about it is a great first step. I feel comfortable investing into building a community knowing it won't be purchased and killed. That doesn't mean success is guaranteed, but it is a prerequisite for me to invest in a social network at this point. I'll add that a vertical like books probably has a better chance of succeeding than a more general purpose social network, because there's always going to be value in providing metadata around books, it's timeless information more like wikipedia than twitter. I see a lot of value in creating a community driven and community owned corpus of book information and reviews.
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        But if it will need a community to survive, then the selling point can't be "it won't go away after you use it for awhile". Or if it is, it needs some compelling narrative for why it will definitely attract a durable community. FWIW: I think this product looks really great and already does a bunch of stuff I want, and looks waaaay better and runs waaaay faster than Goodreads, and those are all absolutely big selling points that I think could break through with the general book-loving community, and I think that's awesome! But I just don't think "it is decentralized" or "it will definitely not die" are clear selling points for it.
        bluefishinit 3y ago
        If it needs a community to survive, you first need to bootstrap that community. People who care about federation and are willing try federated projects seem like a great community to help things get started. Especially because like I said earlier, this is in a vertical where value isn't locked into social silos. Reviews that these users make won't only be read by early users who they know, but will provide value to all future users. It's normal and actually required to start with early adopters and innovators before reaching more mainstream audiences.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  I'm with you here. I'll be bullish on federation when I understand what non-ideological problems it solves. I totally share the ideology! (And I get the sense that you do too.) But that's not enough. It needs to be useful to be durable.
  - goodpoint 3y ago
    Claiming that federation is ideological is itself a very ideological statement. Being able to have an independent platform instead of a corporate-controlled one is very useful in practice.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      > Claiming that federation is ideological is itself a very ideological statement. No, it isn't. Federation is ideological because it is not (yet?) in and of itself a useful feature. It is a feature desired by people (like myself) who have an ideology that attracts them to the idea. Ask yourself: What is the selling point of federation / decentralization to someone who does have any ideology whatsoever with respect to technology? I want there to be a good answer to this question, but I've yet to see a compelling one.
      - mavhc 3y ago
        When the site you use goes bad/offline/whatever, you can easily move to another. If you're moving from a site that went bad/offline/whatever, do you want to lose all your data again next time?
  - the_third_wave 3y ago
    Federation is what keeps SMTP in place as the default electronic communications channel. Alternatives come and go but SMTP abides, there to cover your posterior when that fancy instant shout channel app flips over and goes the way of the dodo. While many of the current proponents of federation are wont to explain the concept in line with their own ideologies - usually in the form of references to anti-Capitalism, Anarchism or some form of Marxism, often mixed in with a heavy dose of MDS when it comes to proposing alternatives to Twitter - this does not make the concept of federation ideological. It just makes it a widely applicable concept which has shown its usefulness for a very long time.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  > Federation is a feature but it really isn’t an above the fold concern for the vast majority of the potential audience. Federation is a feature, not a benefit. I read your other comments and generally agree. To be fair, the feature vs benefits (that people care about) is an ongoing problem will nearly all new products (I've clicked into) that are shared on HN. You'd think by now more would get it, but they don't. Instead, it's more, "Ooh! Ooh! Look at our features..." but as you said...no one cares. I would say it also falls under the product classic "don't make me think." Yeah, if I had the time I might be able to convert features to benefits but that takes effort. Sorry. I'm out. Next!!! Benefits! It's all about me. F*k your features. What are you going to do for me (i.e., benefits)?
sanderjd 3y ago
> As users, federation protects us from [the service being killed or development frozen]. Honest question: Does it? Personally, I worry significantly more about bit rot on projects that make no money. Does federation solve that somehow? What I'm usually looking for is: What is the incentive for people to keep working on this? Is it a passion project made by one or more young people? What happens to it when life happens to them, when they want to start families, etc.? Is it a prestige project from a wealthy person? I think this is less risky, but wealthy people get bored... Or is there reason to think they can get a decent amount of donation money like Wikipedia? This is probably best case scenario, but does it work for niches? I dunno. Does federation overcome these challenges in a novel way?
- the_third_wave 3y ago
  Federation can help if you run the software yourself since your identity and your "content" are tied to your instance just like they are with email. As long as you keep it running and make sure the software is up to date with current federation standards you're more or less safe from all those hazards. If the developers of Bookwyrm grow out of their anti-capitalist phase and sell it to Amazon, get that family and realise there is more to life than chasing characters on a screen, get hit by the proverbial Bus or otherwise lose interest in maintaining the project you still have your "content" and identity which you can keep alive by either federating with other ActivityPub-enabled platforms - which will probably lead to a loss of functionality - or maintaining/getting someone to maintain the project for as long as there are interested users. All this stands and falls with the viability of ActivityPub, it will be interesting to see whether the concept pans out in the coming years.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    This makes some sense, but couldn't this also be achieved with a centralized but open source product?
    - the_third_wave 3y ago
      No, that would make it possible to create alternative instances to use if and when the main instance goes belly-up. Those alternative instances would start afresh, without the user base and lacking any content created by them. If there were more than one alternative instance the two would not communicate unless they employed some sort of federation - ActivityPub or something similar - or some mirroring scheme.

briandear 3y ago

I get it. But how big of a demand is there for that? Does the average Wednesday night neighborhood book club care? I am not denying that there is value there for someone, but most people don’t care. People that read books at a level of enthusiasm to join a network about reading don’t think about that stuff. Federation is a feature but it really isn’t an above the fold concern for the vast majority of the potential audience. My point is that the value prop of this site isn’t federation, it “a social network for books.” This could be marketed as a tool for virtual book clubs and communities. “Your book club, anywhere” kind of thing. This could be marketed as a tool for real world book clubs to use. There are thousands of book clubs who would probably love an easy to use tool for managing those clubs. Focusing on that aspect would be huge in my opinion. If the more tech astute want to “run their own instance,” that feature exists. Sort of like Wordpress for books — you have the Wordpress.com for those that just want to use the platform and the .org version for those that want to self-host as an example. The ideological aspects are secondary assuming the goal is to grow and have a lot of people caring about this. A huge independent book community would be amazing. But this won’t get huge if normal people don’t have a reason to care.

bluefishinit 3y ago
> But how big of a demand is there for that? I think every Goodreads or Shelfari user would benefit from the service not being dead.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Definitely. I hate that Shelfari is dead and that Goodreads sucks. That's why I clicked on this comment thread. But what should convince me that this product will not be dead? Sure, I believe that it won't be killed by Amazon in particular, but why should I be convinced that it will survive on its own terms?
  - bluefishinit 3y ago
    It will need a community to survive, so I think people being excited about it is a great first step. I feel comfortable investing into building a community knowing it won't be purchased and killed. That doesn't mean success is guaranteed, but it is a prerequisite for me to invest in a social network at this point. I'll add that a vertical like books probably has a better chance of succeeding than a more general purpose social network, because there's always going to be value in providing metadata around books, it's timeless information more like wikipedia than twitter. I see a lot of value in creating a community driven and community owned corpus of book information and reviews.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      But if it will need a community to survive, then the selling point can't be "it won't go away after you use it for awhile". Or if it is, it needs some compelling narrative for why it will definitely attract a durable community. FWIW: I think this product looks really great and already does a bunch of stuff I want, and looks waaaay better and runs waaaay faster than Goodreads, and those are all absolutely big selling points that I think could break through with the general book-loving community, and I think that's awesome! But I just don't think "it is decentralized" or "it will definitely not die" are clear selling points for it.
      - bluefishinit 3y ago
        If it needs a community to survive, you first need to bootstrap that community. People who care about federation and are willing try federated projects seem like a great community to help things get started. Especially because like I said earlier, this is in a vertical where value isn't locked into social silos. Reviews that these users make won't only be read by early users who they know, but will provide value to all future users. It's normal and actually required to start with early adopters and innovators before reaching more mainstream audiences.
sanderjd 3y ago
I'm with you here. I'll be bullish on federation when I understand what non-ideological problems it solves. I totally share the ideology! (And I get the sense that you do too.) But that's not enough. It needs to be useful to be durable.
- goodpoint 3y ago
  Claiming that federation is ideological is itself a very ideological statement. Being able to have an independent platform instead of a corporate-controlled one is very useful in practice.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    > Claiming that federation is ideological is itself a very ideological statement. No, it isn't. Federation is ideological because it is not (yet?) in and of itself a useful feature. It is a feature desired by people (like myself) who have an ideology that attracts them to the idea. Ask yourself: What is the selling point of federation / decentralization to someone who does have any ideology whatsoever with respect to technology? I want there to be a good answer to this question, but I've yet to see a compelling one.
    - mavhc 3y ago
      When the site you use goes bad/offline/whatever, you can easily move to another. If you're moving from a site that went bad/offline/whatever, do you want to lose all your data again next time?
- the_third_wave 3y ago
  Federation is what keeps SMTP in place as the default electronic communications channel. Alternatives come and go but SMTP abides, there to cover your posterior when that fancy instant shout channel app flips over and goes the way of the dodo. While many of the current proponents of federation are wont to explain the concept in line with their own ideologies - usually in the form of references to anti-Capitalism, Anarchism or some form of Marxism, often mixed in with a heavy dose of MDS when it comes to proposing alternatives to Twitter - this does not make the concept of federation ideological. It just makes it a widely applicable concept which has shown its usefulness for a very long time.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
> Federation is a feature but it really isn’t an above the fold concern for the vast majority of the potential audience. Federation is a feature, not a benefit. I read your other comments and generally agree. To be fair, the feature vs benefits (that people care about) is an ongoing problem will nearly all new products (I've clicked into) that are shared on HN. You'd think by now more would get it, but they don't. Instead, it's more, "Ooh! Ooh! Look at our features..." but as you said...no one cares. I would say it also falls under the product classic "don't make me think." Yeah, if I had the time I might be able to convert features to benefits but that takes effort. Sorry. I'm out. Next!!! Benefits! It's all about me. F*k your features. What are you going to do for me (i.e., benefits)?

sanderjd 3y ago

> As users, federation protects us from [the service being killed or development frozen]. Honest question: Does it? Personally, I worry significantly more about bit rot on projects that make no money. Does federation solve that somehow? What I'm usually looking for is: What is the incentive for people to keep working on this? Is it a passion project made by one or more young people? What happens to it when life happens to them, when they want to start families, etc.? Is it a prestige project from a wealthy person? I think this is less risky, but wealthy people get bored... Or is there reason to think they can get a decent amount of donation money like Wikipedia? This is probably best case scenario, but does it work for niches? I dunno. Does federation overcome these challenges in a novel way?

the_third_wave 3y ago
Federation can help if you run the software yourself since your identity and your "content" are tied to your instance just like they are with email. As long as you keep it running and make sure the software is up to date with current federation standards you're more or less safe from all those hazards. If the developers of Bookwyrm grow out of their anti-capitalist phase and sell it to Amazon, get that family and realise there is more to life than chasing characters on a screen, get hit by the proverbial Bus or otherwise lose interest in maintaining the project you still have your "content" and identity which you can keep alive by either federating with other ActivityPub-enabled platforms - which will probably lead to a loss of functionality - or maintaining/getting someone to maintain the project for as long as there are interested users. All this stands and falls with the viability of ActivityPub, it will be interesting to see whether the concept pans out in the coming years.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  This makes some sense, but couldn't this also be achieved with a centralized but open source product?
  - the_third_wave 3y ago
    No, that would make it possible to create alternative instances to use if and when the main instance goes belly-up. Those alternative instances would start afresh, without the user base and lacking any content created by them. If there were more than one alternative instance the two would not communicate unless they employed some sort of federation - ActivityPub or something similar - or some mirroring scheme.