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Tent.is alpha
- whalesalad 14y agoThis is sort of a non sequitur, but the bootstrap UI makes this feel oddly like app.net.
- datapolitical 14y agoYea, this felt like the app.net model for social networking.
- 18pfsmt 14y agoI feel like having open source-code and no VC funding differentiates Tent's offering quite a bit from App.net, no?
- pax 14y agoWhat, both Twitter killers are using Twitter bootstrap? :))
- Robin_Message 14y agoIt's part of their secret plan to sue competitors for patent infringement in the future ;)
- beatpanda 14y agoWhat does HN think about using this protocol to build a distributed publishing system? Like I'vegot this software that facilitates publishing a certain kind of post type, and each node of the software can subscribe to any number of other nodes. The problem is that each node will represent a tent server, not every person publishing on said node. I'm not sure if this woud be a misuse of this protocol, but its features are really well-suited to what I want to do.
- emillon 14y ago> Tent.is will become a showcase for what is possible with Tent. And 10 other sentences telling me that tent.is is for tent users and I still don't know what tent is. The information I'm looking for is under the fold and seems to be on : https://tent.io/ https://tent.io/ Otherwise it looks quite interesting, thanks ! (statusnet but for facebook-type content)
- danielsiders 14y agoTent.is is a Tent server. You can read about the Tent protocol here: http://tent.io http://tent.io. You can connect any Tent app to Tent.is, and it also includes a basic status app (status posts are 140 characters or less) to get people started.
- benatkin 14y ago"Tent" is an awfully generic name. I wish you'd call it tent.io. It's easier for people who haven't yet heard of it to understand and less pretentious.
- ukd1 14y ago"Tent is a protocol for open, decentralized social networking. Tent users share content with apps and each other. Anyone can run a Tent server, or write an app or alternative server implementation that uses the Tent protocol. Users can take their content and relationships with them when they change or move servers. Tent supports extensible data types so developers can create new kinds of interaction. Tent is for sharing with others and seeing what others have shared with you. You can ask to follow other users and other users can follow you. Because you control your own Tent server, it is also a good place to store things you do not want to share with others, a sort of personal data vault. It can also be used as a secure site login replacement so you don't need passwords when accessing other sites on the web." (apparently)
- spindritf 14y ago> Users can take their content and relationships with them when they change or move servers. How does it work when users seem to be identified by the url (which, at least now, is in the provider's domain)?
- seagreen 14y agoDo you have a date for when Tent will be released under an open license?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jblz 14y agoThe MIT-licensed reference server is on github. Get to forkin'! https://github.com/tent/tentd https://github.com/tent/tentd
- seagreen 14y agoSweet! If Tent folks are reading this you might want to update the last sentence currently on tent.io, "Tent will be released under an open license in the immediate future."
- danielsiders 14y agoAs mentioned, the software (tentd, admin, and status) are all MIT licensed and on github, as will be any libraries we create. That (confusing) sentence refers to the specification itself for which we still need a permanent governance model and foundation to oversee its' development. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, we'll try to clarify the language soon!
- ragmondo 14y agoHey "be my friend" etc etc - https://ragmondo.tent.is/ https://ragmondo.tent.is/ - to see how well this works..
- spindritf 14y agoHow do you discover new content and find people to follow? EDIT: OK, then https://spindritf.tent.is/ https://spindritf.tent.is/ EDIT2: Tent is available over ipv6, great to see.
- ceejayoz 14y agoRight now, the same way you found people on early Twitter - the global feed and "hey, mine is username.tent.is".
- ceejayoz 14y agoI picked up support.tent.is. Probably should block that.
- danielsiders 14y agoThanks, I thought we caught all the really scary ones in our blocklist. You'll be blocked in a few minutes-- thanks again
- jyap 14y agoFor a count of number of users, check out the following count for: https://tent.tent.is/ https://tent.tent.is/ Currently at 429 and growing quickly. That account auto-follows new users. That's also a good way (for now) to explore the other accounts (https://tent.tent.is/followings https://tent.tent.is/followings). The interesting thing is that Tent.is has a freemium business model compared to App.net which has no free tier. I expect Tent.is to surpass the number of users of App.net pretty quickly. Follow me here: https://jyap.tent.is/ https://jyap.tent.is/
- axx 14y agoThanks! The "followings" list was a good start to find a few people. Over time Tent needs a "discovery" function i guess. The ^http://domain.tld http://domain.tld thing is a bit annoying, though i know the reason. It should be easy to have a domain/name converter, no? I'm also on Tent.is: https://aleks.tent.is/ https://aleks.tent.is/
- vacipr 14y agoA discovery option would be great,or some sort of user tags. Someone should make a list of hacker news users on tent.is. Here's mine. https://vacipr.tent.is/ https://vacipr.tent.is/
- davedx 14y agoFollowed you! And then a load of other people. I like it.
- creat0 14y agoHow do users behind NAT run their own tent servers? If they can manage to run their own HTTPS servers from behind NAT, if they have those skills (not to mention a reachable IP), then why do they need tent? Couldn't they just host all their content on their own server? I can see tent as providing some sort of coordination of user data hosted on different servers, but I'm not seeing how tent enables users to host their own content and have full control over it. Maybe that's not the goal? Correct me if I'm wrong but what this tent idea seems to lead to is a proliferation of tent service providers, not independent users running tent servers behind consumer ISP accounts. If that's true, then how can we be sure these service providers will not adopt the same sort of annoying monetization strategies of providers like Facebook and Twitter? By no means am I suggesting tent could not be useful. I just want some clarification of what problem they are trying to solve. (There is no shortage of problems to choose from. :)
- wmf 14y agoServers belong in the cloud, not at home. The cloud is available to consumers.
- creat0 14y agoWhat is "hosting"? If you and I have a peer-to-peer connection and I queue up some content for you and possibly others who are on our private network, and you choose to retrieve it, is that "hosting"? Are these rules about what belongs in the cloud and what does not published somewhere? Who drafted them? Marketers? Do they apply to both home and business consumers? C'mon. (Now there may be some interesting uses for the cloud, for sure. But to suggest I have to upload everything I want to send you to someone else's server in "the cloud" before you can access it makes little sense, unless of course you are working for a cloud provider.)
- wmf 14y agoI'm not talking about someone else's cloud server; I'm talking about your cloud server. The one that you will control because you pay for it. (Interesting that you went from complaining about NAT to assuming that a P2P connection is established. Which is it? Anyway, I cut the knot; my cloud server suffers no NAT.)
- the1 14y agono unicode support
- pclark 14y agoWhat is the difference between a passphrase and a password? Good grief.
- tree_of_item 14y agohttp://xkcd.com/936/ http://xkcd.com/936/ has a mildly amusing explanation.
- pclark 14y agoI saw that tent used an xkcd comic to explain it, and was instantly reminded that the audience of tent will never ever become anything close to mainstream
- kennywinker 14y agoHaters gonna hate. Thing is, what it is now is not necessarily what it will be. Right now it's for the nerds, no question. Twitter was the same thing when it started.
- pclark 14y agoThe killer thing about Twitter was that it was succinct public text messages. It turns out that is actually kind of an awesome way to communicate in some contexts. The killer thing about tent is that it is an open, de-centralised social network. It turns out that is actually kind of an awesome way to … ?
- seagreen 14y agoI don't know about you, but social networks and email seem fairly similar in that I don't want to be locked into the same website my friends are using. Can you imagine how painful email would be if it had been controlled by one company from the start? That's why people are excited about Tent.
- robertpateii 14y ago
- bpatrianakos 14y agoI am so glad someone built out a Tent.io service so fast! This is exactly what I imagined it'd be like. People would host their own and people like this would host one for those who don't want to or don't know how to host their own. I see this and laugh whenever I hear a doubter say Tent will fail because "no one will run their own server". That's beside the point and Tent.is is the counterargument.
- johnpmayer 14y ago"The architects of Tent built Tent.is"
- bpatrianakos 14y agoHaha I'm an idiot (but I still got up votes somehow).
- bashzor 14y agoLimited in the free version? This isn't going to work in the battle against Facebook... Yes, I realize it's too early to 'battle', but if it's starting out like this already...
- ricardobeat 14y ago$12/month is around the same ballpark as my water bill.
- 18pfsmt 14y agoAbout the same as mine as well. Although I don't personally utilize Facebook, I believe this could take the place of it. My friends' use of Facebook makes me feel uncomfortable, like I have to monitor them (they just don't have any understanding of the implications).
- conradev 14y agoFrom http://tent.io http://tent.io > 4. Alice's server sends the status to two friends (Bob's and Carol's) servers. What happens when you have, say, a million friends, and want to post a status? Your server (or army of them) has to send one million API calls to one million servers. For every post. What happens if you share a photo on your tent server, and your one million friends want to view it? That's a lot of bandwidth, and bandwidth isn't free. It's a cool idea, but I just can't see it being efficient (especially in terms of cost) down the road.
- danielsiders 14y agoJust as if you wanted to invite your one million friends to a party, you would need to pay for drinks, you might have to pay to send 1,000,000 a photo. You could either pay yourself, ask your friends to pay, or find an advertising sponsor. The same options exist online.
- spindritf 14y ago> What happens when you have, say, a million friends, and want to post a status? There won't be a million servers, most people will cluster around the few most popular providers.
- conradev 14y agoWhich defeats the purpose of P2P, that is centralization..
- Joeboy 14y agoThink of it as a competitive/non-monopoly marketplace rather than P2P then.
- graue 14y agoCompletely false. Think of email. I've been told by people running large-ish, open signup websites that Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail together account for more than 70% of users. But, so what? Three choices is already better than one, and then you have a long tail of a zillion other email providers making up the last 30%, which you can use if you don't like those 3, and finally, if there's no third-party email service you want to use, you can run your own server. With Facebook and Twitter, you don't have that choice. If you want to connect with friends on those services, there's only one provider available, and that's it. Tent will give you that choice back — even if, in practice, a few large servers have the most market share.
- mrchess 14y agoTent.is is the most confusing domain name, ever. Hurts my brain when I read anything. Feels like bad grammar. "Tent.is is the easiest..." Not to mention I have no idea what "Tent.is" actually IS after reading the extremely confusing blurb.
- foobert 14y agoits a social network, similar to twitter except not owned by anyone. so your twitter handle is twitter.com/mrchess but if twitter was cool like tent then you could CUSTOMIZE it to your own domain like mrchess.com/tom Tent lets you do stuff like that because all they're doing is creating a solid platform. They're creating the pieces that connect and communicate. Don't want Ads on your social network? create your own tent server by installing some software and follow people that you want to. their updates will be sent to your tent if you follow them.
- modarts 14y agoThe UX for this is kind of terrible in its current iteration, and extremely confusing as to where I am, or what's going on.
- ragmondo 14y agocan't reply to a reply :-(
- oellegaard 14y agoToo bad the docs are rather hard to understand :( I wish someone made some python source code or improved the docs. It seems the "server protocol" is basically just some sort of schema of JSON to be send over HTTP(s), but at the moment it seems rather unstructured.
- sauerbraten 14y agoThe json schemas seemed pretty structured, but the docs in general really are missing a table of contents and basic explanations of API commands and design decisions.
- drumdance 14y agoThis makes @replies rather harder, doesn't it? You have to know both the username and the domain
- oellegaard 14y agoJust the domain - but its also too bad they chose "^" instead of "@" - why change something everyone know how works?
- sondh 14y agoThis is the first thing I noticed too (thanks to the welcome post from tent.tent.is) and this is the answer https://tent.tent.is/posts/k0rxvn https://tent.tent.is/posts/k0rxvn If Tent goes mainstream, we will get used to it. No big deal.
- wmf 14y agoI think pet names (http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/petnames/IntroPetNames.html http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/petnames/IntroPetNames.html) can help here; your @wmf doesn't have to be the same as someone else's @wmf (full URLs must be used on the wire). (Fun fact: People in Germany keep tweeting about @WMF, but it's clearly not me.)
- driverdan 14y agoThe site is completely broken if you block 3rd party tracking scripts (Mixpanel). The registration form does nothing when I try to submit it. $12 a month is way, way too much. Someone could host it themselves on a cheap VPS for <$10 a month and not worry about 3rd parties tracking their activity.
- johnpmayer 14y agoI think the extra $2 accounts for the laziness factor. By all means run your own - that's probably better for the overall ecosystem.
- asymmetric 14y agoSame here, sign up and consequent access to my subdomain is broken with NoScript.
- tree_of_item 14y ago<$10 a month + the dollar value of the expertise required to maintain the server per unit time.
- rainboiboi 14y agoThey just changed from 140 characters limitation to 256 with a blink of an eye!
- modarts 14y agoFollow me at https://modarts.tent.is/ https://modarts.tent.is/ !
- followben 14y agoI'm surprised by some of the negativity here - it's a pretty neat service for an alpha. Sure there's kinks/ shortcomings, but it's very early days. They even seem to be ironing things out even as we speak (switched from 140 to 256 char status updates in front of my eyes).
- h2s 14y agoNegativity appears to be the default response to bold new things on HN. Ironic really, for a site run by an incubator for bold new things. Personally I'm liking Tent a lot. It appears to be the exact social networking application I've occasionally daydreamed about for the last few years, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. Hopefully that's a sign that this is an idea whose time has come.
- gambler 14y agoFor me the registration/login are broken even when I unblock mixpanel. Might be because I block third party cookies, or it's just allergic to NoScript or RequestPolicy, even if I unblock everything on their registration/login screens. I just get blank pages.
- coverband 14y agoWhile SaaS pricing is an ongoing discussion in other HN threads, this site is a good example of a terrible pricing strategy (IMHO). Their freemium model is useless for discovering what the service is capable of, since it only allows for a status post. The premium service is ridiculously over-priced as well -- if the "open sourced FB" model somehow becomes a viable product with a market, I'd expect GoDaddy and others to start offering it for $1-2/month or even less if paid annually.
- seagreen 14y agoI doubt they'd have a problem with GoDaddy coming along and offering it cheaper. The whole point is to get more people involved, and it's actually pretty smart of them to go ahead and anchor the price fairly high. There are probably about a million patio11 quotes that would be relevant here.
- obilgic 14y agoIn case you are wondering how many users they have: https://cat.tent.is/followings https://cat.tent.is/followings
- luke_s 14y agoThe tent.io protocol looks very interesting. Architecturally the way e-mail works, mixed with the functionality of social networks all done over JSON/REST. I wonder if it would be possible to implement a tent.io -> facebook/G+/Twitter bridge? A tent.io server, which instead of being backed by some sort of database, would instead read and write to somebodies existing social network profiles?
- zoul 14y agoSome kind of proxy that would join Tent with other social networks would IMHO do wonders for the adoption rate. But at the same time it’s not what the existing social networks want, which is why it probably wouldn’t work. Google+ doesn’t have a write API at all and see what Twitter is doing with their API. See also my thoughts on Tent, http://goo.gl/lGnfm http://goo.gl/lGnfm.
- graue 14y agoInterestingly, rstat.us already does this one way. You can post a status update there and have it automatically crosspost that update to Twitter for you. I've switched to posting most of my text-only updates this way, so my rstat.us stream shows life even though all my followers are still on Twitter (for now).
- beberlei 14y agoNow all that i need is a proxy, that reliable allows me to use my own domain as a tent server, proxying to tent.is. ;-)
- robodale 14y agoOk, I took the bait and signed up. I went to the home page, and was presented with a spartan and VERY pretentious pricing/signup/(ad copy? description of the service?) layout. After trying to figure out what a Tent is (still had no idea after reading), I signed up with blind faith that the Tent will tell me what to do next. The next page was where I was expected to make a status update. Ok, so I enter some gibberish. Click the post button. Yay, I made a post. Have you ever showed up way to early to a sporting event or large classroom, and there is nobody there. I mean nobody. No sound, just you. You look around and think "am I supposed to be here?". "Is it Saturday?". Looking at the post I made made me feel like that. Now that I wasted 10 minutes of my life on this, good luck with pitching your Tent.
- blues 14y agoTent is probably like CIA?