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The Internet I Knew (2014)

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Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#81

Post by Goladus »

pault wrote: post #36
dijit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I maintain to this day a personal IRC network. Many of us have been “together” for over a decade. In fact I just tried to advocate self-hosted communities at CCC. So I’m also stuck in the past and refuse to let the internet go. But I have two points I’d like to mention. 1) Forums are dead for almost all but the biggest communities that surround a product of some kind. Social forums are simply dead. 2) As an IRC-user…

Spam is the reason Facebook is currently the easiest way to get in touch with someone. Otherwise you could just put your email address in a publicly searchable database. It seems like we need a service that provides the verification and permission based communication model of Facebook but without the public feeds, virtue signaling, and political garbage.

Spam drove people to Facebook even in the early days. When Facebook first came out, spam filtering was far less effective than it is today. Also, for whatever reason, people trusted Facebook and would post private things there that they wouldn't post on pseudonymous forums.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#82

Post by lyra_comms »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #44
lyra_comms wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a nonprofit, we operate on grants and revenue alone, not investment. We'd love to hear some specific feedback on what you think could be improved about our UI :) We also think we're not doing too badly compared to Reddit and Hacker News!

If you’re trying to be a new alternative to Big Social, you should aim to be better or at the very least more interesting than the competition. There’s no way your network can be THE network for all people but you’ve gotta get them in the door. Good design goes a long way, the bare minimum is MEH.

A quest to remain "more interesting" leads to constantly changing platforms, dark patterns, and intrusive notifications. A useful and effective platform enables communication in a reliable and stable way.

Thanks for your comments; we are very open to any more specific or detailed feedback on improving the platform.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#83

Post by lyra_comms »

60654 wrote: post #33
lyra_comms wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a nonprofit, we operate on grants and revenue alone, not investment. We'd love to hear some specific feedback on what you think could be improved about our UI :) We also think we're not doing too badly compared to Reddit and Hacker News!

Not the parent, but I have two specific suggestions about the on boarding process. One, please add a directory (feed?) of public conversations that can be viewed without logging in. I want to see how the platform is used by other people and whether that fits me - but if you ask me to create an account first, I'm going to bounce. Two, here on HN you say the team is mostly cog sci and engg people, which sounds awesome…

Thanks, we will add a page about the team.

We have been thinking carefully about whether to include a public conversation feed. Public communications are not Lyra's central use case, and as most conversations are private at the moment, such a feed would be quite sparse.

As a nonprofit which is not funded by advertising, it is not our main goal to support viewers without an account. There is no charge to sign up.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#84

Post by lyra_comms »

CM30 wrote: post #49
nofilter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why does all the free and open stuff look so bad. I mean seriously, Lyra is in dire need for someone with a UX/UI background to join their team.

Money presumably. It's a lot easier to get a good design for your site or app if you have a decent amount of money to pay professional designers. Which most open source foundations and charitable organisations don't have. Edit: Though I guess it could also be because a lot of alternative software and services are created by people with a 'hacker' or 'programmer' mindset, where very little attention is paid to the UX…

Exactly! We agree that email and newsgroups do not have the most useful or accessible UI, and aim to offer a much better design. Needless to say, our design is constantly improving.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#85

Post by lyra_comms »

throwanem wrote: post #67
lyra_comms wrote: post #10

Our team (mostly cognitive scientists and engineers) is nostalgic about the past of online communication and concerned about its future. Our platform, Lyra, provides support for effective conversations rather than social networking and advertising. You can read our history of online convesation - and more about our approach - here: www.hellolyra.com/introduction

This has a lot of potential to compete with Livejournal circa 2000.

We approach a completely different use case to Livejournal: hierarchical conversations rather than broadcast blogging.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#86

Post by NetOpWibby »

lyra_comms wrote: post #82
NetOpWibby wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re trying to be a new alternative to Big Social, you should aim to be better or at the very least more interesting than the competition. There’s no way your network can be THE network for all people but you’ve gotta get them in the door. Good design goes a long way, the bare minimum is MEH.

A quest to remain "more interesting" leads to constantly changing platforms, dark patterns, and intrusive notifications. A useful and effective platform enables communication in a reliable and stable way. Thanks for your comments; we are very open to any more specific or detailed feedback on improving the platform.

Mmm, no. I don't think it should be a "quest". That's what Facebook is doing and I've never heard an FB user say they like any change that gets made.

I don't have any specific feedback about your platform (heck, I'm building my own social network at the moment), but I will say that your site is VERY text-heavy. I've seen your other comments about the common person not wanting to create a Mastodon instance and while I agree with you, the common person also doesn't want to wade through an essay just to find out what you're promoting.

Simple and Stripe are great examples of sites that have a LOT of text but it's designed in a way to make it not look tedious to peruse.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#87

Post by lyra_comms »

CM30 wrote: post #53
lyra_comms wrote: post #10

Our team (mostly cognitive scientists and engineers) is nostalgic about the past of online communication and concerned about its future. Our platform, Lyra, provides support for effective conversations rather than social networking and advertising. You can read our history of online convesation - and more about our approach - here: www.hellolyra.com/introduction

Okay, since you're advertising your service here, I think it's only right I give you some feedback on it, as someone who registered an account to test it out just now. Firstly, it took me a fair bit to realise that the book icon at the top was actually the menu button, and not just a logo linking to the home page. It's a neat idea (having the service logo act as the menu), but it's not at all clear to users, and shou…

Thanks, this is excellent feedback.

- It's OK to have a small learning curve; we think users will be OK with the menu symbol.

- We've thought extensively about whether to show content to non-logged-in users. This isn't really Lyra's use case. You can see it as closer to email than social media. Our goal is not to categorise "content". The very term "content" makes us itch. We don't aim to provide searchable communities or hashtags, as these are easy avenues for harassment, abuse and targeting vulnerable communities.

- Most of Lyra's existing use cases look like this: start converstion (with existing contacts, or invite them otherwise). Have conversation, usually private, with contacts.

- The tour can be removed with a single click, it was actually a requested feature and has received positive feedback.

- The general design is constantly evolving and it will improve as we have access to more funding.

- We offer a growing number of customisable themes (left menu); the look and feel of a platform should be in the user's control. Style is very subjective; some like basic, some like glitz. If you have any suggestions for a theme you would like, we will be happy to set it up for you.

There's no need to apologise for good, constructive feedback!

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#88

Post by lyra_comms »

__s wrote: post #48
lyra_comms wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's hard to see it this way when one is into tech, but many of my non-tech friends (artists, philosophers, retail...) would balk at this. We believe using a communication tool needs to be as easy as entering a URL and logging in - friendly, familiar, no new terminology.

Sorry, but that doesn't fly in a technocracy. Oh well, just bow before the Google/Amazon/Facebook/Apple overlords

We bow only to the Hypnotoad.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#89

Post by r3bl »

z3t4 wrote: post #78

Facebook killed most of the old social communities. The big ones where very lucrative basically swimming in cash, they where only replaced by a bigger fish. The non profit forums and IRC channels are still alive. What worries me though is that so many people use smartphones instead of work-station computers. With a smartphone you are mostly a consumer/by-stander. While on a work-station you are actively taking part b…

And you've just described how Instagram and Snapchat took off. You don't need a work-station to post the content. All you need is a camera and a couple of seconds of your life and you're contributing something.

Sure, that content might be crappy photo of your breakfast or a short video of you puking rainbow, but it's a content that regular people submitted with little or no effort simply because they had a phone with a camera that they spend most of their time on the Internet on, not a laptop or a desktop.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#90

Post by Goladus »

klez wrote: post #5
montrose wrote: post #2

This description of the old days is actually a fairly accurate description of HN now.

On old forums (at least the ones I was part of) the community was usually small, and you knew most users and what they thought. Instead on hn most of the comments I see are from people I don't think I ever read from before. Also, here we don't officially have PMs or an official IRC channel, both of which were major parts of the communities I remember (most of the stuff actually happened on IRC, not on the forums).

Even the visual design of HN (grey usernames in a smaller font) minimizes identity in favor of the content.

Also, for whatever reason, convention seems to favor all-lowercase names.

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