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I tried making an app where you repost interesting news onto your own sorta-RSS feed, which your followers could then re-repost and so on. No global "trending"

I tried making an app where you repost interesting news onto your own sorta-RSS feed, which your followers could then re-repost and so on. No global "trending" or visible follower counts, just peers, imo the exact right about of social networking. But nobody used it.

NetOpWibby 3y ago
Try it again
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Oh I will at some point. It's been 4 times already.
from-nibly 3y ago
Sounds like distributed tumblr. I think the world needs that really bad right now. Tumblr is going to fail soon it's totally zombified as far as the software goes. But this is basically how Tumblr operates except it's centralized.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Erm, it's not distributed though, but it could be. I've been told about Tumblr before, but it has popularity contests (trending topics, high-profile accounts), which I intentionally avoided because it changes the whole thing. You follow your IRL friends and that's it.
  - noirbot 3y ago
    That seems like it presumes that your IRL friends have good taste/similar interests though. The reason people follow big accounts is because the big accounts often have some specific niche of thing they post in that's curated in a way that resonates with people. Most of my IRL friends maybe only share 1-2 major interests with me. My friend who may repost interesting board game news would also share things about kayaking or crypto investing that I don't care about. If my IRL friends run into something they think I'd be interested in, they'll just send it to me directly. What's the value in getting the combined firehose of all their reading?
    - prox 3y ago
      I think there should be two tiers in any account, the private space (private spaces where you talk to friendgroups) and a public space where you have a rather anonymous nickname and which isn’t directly connected to your private space. Usually it’s one or the other and you need multiple accounts (say on Instagram for example) It feels like businesses figured out accounts and then moved on, while I think there is still room for so much growth and customization.
      - noirbot 3y ago
        Aren't those tiers just functionally accomplished by other technologies better suited? For instance, a Slack/Discord/Matrix with themed channels for people to talk and share relevant stuff about some hobby or topic for sharing among a group of friends, and then a public Twitter/Instagram/Tumblr that your friends may or may not follow and may be anonymous?
      - hot_gril 3y ago
        It works kinda like Discord, you have some fake name handle, but IRL friends know what your handle is.
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      It does mostly presume that you have things in common with your friends. At least it's not everything they read, only what they repost. Also, if something was reposted from 8 hops away by someone you don't know, you still see the OP's handle and can follow it. The only value this brings is that it's much easier to hit "repost" on things you like than it is to go send links to everyone. People do this already, it's just awkward, and friends get annoyed from chat notification spam.
      - noirbot 3y ago
        The question is what percentage of my friends have more than 50% of my interests? I read plenty of interesting stuff on HN that isn't interesting to a lot of my non-programmer friends. So I post it in the "software-dev" channel of my dev friends' Discord. I don't post it in the server I share with the folks I play video games with, or my friends I cook food with. Channels of info are only as valuable as the signal/noise ratio is. That's the whole point of RSS in some ways. You follow a lot of specific curated news sources that may be low-volume but high relevancy. "All the stuff my friends enjoy enough to repost" is likely below 50% relevant to me, just because I have a lot of friends who do a lot of stuff that I don't also care about, or don't care about that much.
TheRealPomax 3y ago
Nobody used it? That is indeed the exact right amount of social networking.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Heh, I mostly feel the same, but a little communication with friends is a good thing imo.
eastbound 3y ago
> But nobody used it. Stats are addictive. They are also the first step towards justifying spending time on it. Have some stats.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  The one stat so far is how many times a thing has been reposted. Problem is, it's very hard to market an app that's only useful to a whole group of people. Someone random joins and knows nobody. I read about how other companies overcame this, and even Tinder, which only requires users to be in the same area, had to be kick-started by hosting large college parties ($$$) and getting all the attendees to download it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

NetOpWibby 3y ago

Try it again

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hot_gril 3y ago
Oh I will at some point. It's been 4 times already.

from-nibly 3y ago

Sounds like distributed tumblr. I think the world needs that really bad right now. Tumblr is going to fail soon it's totally zombified as far as the software goes. But this is basically how Tumblr operates except it's centralized.

hot_gril 3y ago
Erm, it's not distributed though, but it could be. I've been told about Tumblr before, but it has popularity contests (trending topics, high-profile accounts), which I intentionally avoided because it changes the whole thing. You follow your IRL friends and that's it.
- noirbot 3y ago
  That seems like it presumes that your IRL friends have good taste/similar interests though. The reason people follow big accounts is because the big accounts often have some specific niche of thing they post in that's curated in a way that resonates with people. Most of my IRL friends maybe only share 1-2 major interests with me. My friend who may repost interesting board game news would also share things about kayaking or crypto investing that I don't care about. If my IRL friends run into something they think I'd be interested in, they'll just send it to me directly. What's the value in getting the combined firehose of all their reading?
  - prox 3y ago
    I think there should be two tiers in any account, the private space (private spaces where you talk to friendgroups) and a public space where you have a rather anonymous nickname and which isn’t directly connected to your private space. Usually it’s one or the other and you need multiple accounts (say on Instagram for example) It feels like businesses figured out accounts and then moved on, while I think there is still room for so much growth and customization.
    - noirbot 3y ago
      Aren't those tiers just functionally accomplished by other technologies better suited? For instance, a Slack/Discord/Matrix with themed channels for people to talk and share relevant stuff about some hobby or topic for sharing among a group of friends, and then a public Twitter/Instagram/Tumblr that your friends may or may not follow and may be anonymous?
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      It works kinda like Discord, you have some fake name handle, but IRL friends know what your handle is.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    It does mostly presume that you have things in common with your friends. At least it's not everything they read, only what they repost. Also, if something was reposted from 8 hops away by someone you don't know, you still see the OP's handle and can follow it. The only value this brings is that it's much easier to hit "repost" on things you like than it is to go send links to everyone. People do this already, it's just awkward, and friends get annoyed from chat notification spam.
    - noirbot 3y ago
      The question is what percentage of my friends have more than 50% of my interests? I read plenty of interesting stuff on HN that isn't interesting to a lot of my non-programmer friends. So I post it in the "software-dev" channel of my dev friends' Discord. I don't post it in the server I share with the folks I play video games with, or my friends I cook food with. Channels of info are only as valuable as the signal/noise ratio is. That's the whole point of RSS in some ways. You follow a lot of specific curated news sources that may be low-volume but high relevancy. "All the stuff my friends enjoy enough to repost" is likely below 50% relevant to me, just because I have a lot of friends who do a lot of stuff that I don't also care about, or don't care about that much.

TheRealPomax 3y ago

Nobody used it? That is indeed the exact right amount of social networking.

hot_gril 3y ago
Heh, I mostly feel the same, but a little communication with friends is a good thing imo.

eastbound 3y ago

> But nobody used it. Stats are addictive. They are also the first step towards justifying spending time on it. Have some stats.

hot_gril 3y ago
The one stat so far is how many times a thing has been reposted. Problem is, it's very hard to market an app that's only useful to a whole group of people. Someone random joins and knows nobody. I read about how other companies overcame this, and even Tinder, which only requires users to be in the same area, had to be kick-started by hosting large college parties ($$$) and getting all the attendees to download it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]