[rainbowmverse]

Your site has some auto-playing video below the fold and a spinning GIF of a globe from 1995. It's cluttered, noisy, and unclear. There is no point of focus. I can't get as far as figuring out what sets it apart or makes it better because I had to close the page.

Compare this to Mastodon--which you dismissed with all other open source social networks--where the project lead thinks hard and openly about the accessibility and value of virtually every UX change.

[EGreg]

Thank you for your feedback. What operating system and browser do you use that the video autoplays? It’s not supposed to. And the globe - if you click it - is a visualization of 5 million people actually using our product.

Where is Mastodon today? What are its stats?

[rainbowmverse]

>> "What operating system and browser do you use that the video autoplays?"

Latest Firefox and Windows 10.

>> "Where is Mastodon today? What are its stats?"

This is the wrong question before you ask about the goals of the platform and its users. Stats only let you compare it against something it might have no interest in being.

Your dismissal of it and other open source efforts is likely due to a goal mismatch. The fact that you spent so much money on it tells me you're probably aiming at a Twitter competitor.

I don't care about Twitter and its goals. I care about what Mastodon is and what I already do with it. It's self-funding and community supported. There are plenty of people on it, and it's still growing. It seems like someone's making a new thing with ActivityPub every month that I can interact with from my Mastodon account. That's all that matters to me, and seems to be enough for most of the people on it.

[EGreg]

Not aiming at a Twitter competitor at all. If we wanted that, we’d be done in like 3-6 months.

What we built is a GENERAL PURPOSE OPEN SOURCE SOCIAL APP PLATFORM.

Like Wordpress but for collaboration.

The goal is total reusability. You release an app for your community and install some plugins for various functionality. Then you throw some “tools” on “pages”. Apply styles. And you’re done. Your app works on the web on every device, can be released in app stores, integrates with notifications, contacts, etc. out of the box.

What sort of “tools” can you have in your apps? Well here is just a sample:

  Chatroom
  Chess game
  Collaborative documents
  Blogging
  Group rides
  Events and checkins

“Streams” is our we handle data. Out of the box every stream supports:

  Role based access control integrated with contacts
  Invites
  Realtime updates
  Offline notifications
  Relations and indexing

We integrate with every browser and OS vendor for Payments and Notifications.

And more. We provide a standard interface for people to basically collaborate with one another, and do it across domains too. Meanwhile developers can add new types of “streams” and “tools” for app developers and also startups can package and sell various apps to communities. Everyone can re-use code. Did you see the video?

[rainbowmverse]

While I have no specific affinity for ActivityPub as a protocol, I do like a lot of the software being built on it and enjoy being able to follow people on them from my Mastodon account.

No one's investing or expecting a return on a million dollars in investment with it. It's already a W3C standard. One popular piece of software (which you dismissed) supports it. Other promising attempts like Plume (blogging), Pixelfed (image sharing), and Aardwolf (Facebook-like) are in development. They're already revenue neutral (or better) from the Patreons and Liberapays that provide their funding.

From that perspective, your thing is just another closed-off ecosystem that doesn't talk to any other. Open source is not sufficient when we're talking about social media software. My new social graph is growing, and it's not dependent on someone expecting an ROI.

I understand you started this project before ActivityPub was a thing, and before anyone took federated social media seriously. But that's the hazard with starting early: sometimes something comes along and forces you to change how you think.

You missed the boat, and you don't realize it because you're busy building a yacht that holds smaller yachts. It's a nice yacht, but I like the growing network of party barges I'm on.

[EGreg]

You can like it, but I know that protocols are driven by large commercial projects, not the other way around.

oAuth was pioneered by Twitter and took off BECAUSE they had clout. I have seen FOAF, Personas and tons of other things fall by the wayside without adoption.

[rainbowmverse]

You and I are talking about completely different things. I don't care about numbers or prospective adoption of a private company's protocol and platform. I'm talking about what I can do now. What I'm already using it for. What's on the horizon. What's not going to happen. It's popular enough for my needs. It's funded. It's in active development.

No matter how popular your protocol gets, it's still your protocol. I have no interest in it. I can go back to Twitter if I want to have my social connections locked into someone else's platform.

I have been burned by enough companies that play up open source and development ecosystems, then close up when it's no longer convenient. Your own example of Twitter was built on developers making tools for it. Who makes apps for Twitter now but marketing companies? Virtually no one.