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by cvwright 1779 days ago
Well, since you asked... :-)

I've been working on something in this space for a little while. It's called Circles. Originally, I just wanted a safer and easier way to share baby photos with my extended family. Safer than posting pictures of my kid publicly on Facebook. Easier / more convenient than pinging the crap out of everyone's phone on Signal.

It's kind of like a bare-bones version of Facebook. Only you can have multiple social circles (like in G+), each with your own "wall" for posting stuff and timeline of posts from the friends that you're following there.

All posts are E2E encrypted, using the same crypto as in Element/Matrix, and the back end is just a standard Matrix server. The E2EE prevents the server from seeing what you post, or from injecting crap into your timeline. You can use your own Matrix server, or you can sign up to create an account on mine.

It's open source: https://github.com/KombuchaPrivacy/circles-ios

You're welcome to try out the beta if you want: https://testflight.apple.com/join/cwsJZed9

If all goes well, it should go live in the App Store later this month.

Unfortunately it's iOS only for now. I'm working as fast as I can to get started on an Android version.

If you try it out, please let me know what you think! Thanks!!!
1 comments
djz2k 1778 days ago
The problem w/ circles, lists and tags, is that they require the user themselves to create and maintain them. Unless your tech can read minds and prompt for new affinities discovered or changes in relationship automatically, its too much cognitive load.

You should read - http://blog.intercom.io/what-we-can-learn-from-google-plus/ Curious how you solve for that.

I don't think its natural for humans to say "today Bob went from acquaintance to friend" or "i'll make a circle for dirty jokes" proactively.

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