now someone just make it a frontend for mastodon and we have a viable product
haha, I've never used Mastodon, but maybe you're on to something!
Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform
71–80 of 129 posts
Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform
#72What immediately scares me is every post on the website by the link having a title. To me inventing a good title arguably almost seems the hardest part of writing at all. A microblog should let you dump a thought quickly without requiring you to name it first. Also, individual post URL is hidden to deep. You apparently have to open the post, scroll down, click "share", click "copy link", and even that element is not…
Hey! I'm sorry you find the title intimidating. You could just use a random character in your title, or even a whitespace, to achieve the effect of a title-free place to post.
Regarding the individual URL, if you don't want to click to copy it using the current flow, you could just CMD+Shift+C to copy the URL?
Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform
#73Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform
#74I signed up. I actually have 2 personal blogs, so I am unsure about whether I will use your platform. But there is something about the unfiltered short format that I like and even though I have thought about publishing shorter style posts on my own blogs, I for some reason never get to it. I am a big fan of the design as well! Nice job.
Thank you! If you're curious about how to use it, I personally use it as a layer 1 for my thoughts. It helps me think about them more deeply than I would otherwise do if I was just talking to myself or writing in a private journal. Eventually, I plan on taking some thoughts and graduating them into full blown blog posts on my main website.
Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform
#75What immediately scares me is every post on the website by the link having a title. To me inventing a good title arguably almost seems the hardest part of writing at all. A microblog should let you dump a thought quickly without requiring you to name it first. Also, individual post URL is hidden to deep. You apparently have to open the post, scroll down, click "share", click "copy link", and even that element is not…
Hey! I'm sorry you find the title intimidating. You could just use a random character in your title, or even a whitespace, to achieve the effect of a title-free place to post. Regarding the individual URL, if you don't want to click to copy it using the current flow, you could just CMD+Shift+C to copy the URL?
> You could just use a random character in your title
As a mild-OCD perfectionist I'm literally grinding my teeth imagining doing it this way. If there is a place for a title a post I write has to have a good title or no title at all.
> or even a whitespace to achieve the effect of a title-free place to post.
If title doesn't have to be unique this already seems as an acceptable compromise.
> Regarding the individual URL, if you don't want to click to copy it using the current flow, you could just CMD+Shift+C to copy the URL?
Nice point. Any chance I could copy a post URL or open it in a background page straight from the posts list? I scroll the feed, see some read/bookmark/share-worthy posts and I would normally middle click them to get them all opened in background tabs.
Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform
#76Not a knock on the author. All power to him for doing this. I worked on similar small side projects years ago. But I'm not convinced. And not of nicheless, just of anything attempting to fill the void where Twitter once was. I think some of these services might find their community and build something with network effects but I couldn't tell you which will make it as much as I couldn't say 3 years into Twitter if it…
> Spaces for idle chatter turns out to be a total waste of time. [...] There's really more we could be doing with our time
Really? Is this such a bad thing? Sometimes i just want to take a break from 110% productivity and have some idle, mindless chatter.
If I go to the pub and chat with friends I'm not wasting my time.
Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform
#77I say this every time one of these pops up: Just do it yourself. Just get a $5 Linode or a Cloudflare account, make a Hugo/Pelican/whatever site and go. These niche microblogging sites are so small and insignificant that you can never ever trust them to survive (or even persist). Just do it yourself from the very beginning and you'll have a much better time.
Every time this DIY reply comes it misses the fact that the platforms take care of commenting (account management, moderation), something that's more or less impossible for a DIY solution. Twitter/FB/etc make commenting painless because everyone has an account and is already logged in. This at least has the potential to get to that position. DIY doesn't.
> platforms take care of commenting (account management, moderation)
You can embed services such as discourse, and in this case (Nicheless) it appears responses are private anyway.
Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform
#78Not a knock on the author. All power to him for doing this. I worked on similar small side projects years ago. But I'm not convinced. And not of nicheless, just of anything attempting to fill the void where Twitter once was. I think some of these services might find their community and build something with network effects but I couldn't tell you which will make it as much as I couldn't say 3 years into Twitter if it…
Hey Asim. I appreciate you taking the time to thoughtfully (and elegantly) lay out your thoughts. At the moment, I don't want Nicheless to perform a similar function to Twitter. I love Twitter and use it daily, but I find it useful as a space to reach a broad audience of people I don't know. An open network with unlimited growth potential. With nicheless, I want it to be the opposite. A place to follow people you alr…
This is an excellent idea, I love the thought you have put into it.
A cap is also great, I've been a member of a wonderful social network that employs this stance, 10,000 all in, every year they open it up by deleting dead accounts. It keeps it running fine.
More power to us, through your project.
Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform
#79Not a knock on the author. All power to him for doing this. I worked on similar small side projects years ago. But I'm not convinced. And not of nicheless, just of anything attempting to fill the void where Twitter once was. I think some of these services might find their community and build something with network effects but I couldn't tell you which will make it as much as I couldn't say 3 years into Twitter if it…
> Spaces for idle chatter turns out to be a total waste of time. [...] There's really more we could be doing with our time Really? Is this such a bad thing? Sometimes i just want to take a break from 110% productivity and have some idle, mindless chatter. If I go to the pub and chat with friends I'm not wasting my time.
A lot of time is lost to Twitter. I don't think it ends up being like the social norms of your small group of friends that go to the pub. How big is that group? How do you converse? From personal experience it's vastly different.
Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Spaces for idle chatter turns out to be a total waste of time. [...] There's really more we could be doing with our time Really? Is this such a bad thing? Sometimes i just want to take a break from 110% productivity and have some idle, mindless chatter. If I go to the pub and chat with friends I'm not wasting my time.
A lot of time is lost to Twitter. I don't think it ends up being like the social norms of your small group of friends that go to the pub. How big is that group? How do you converse? From personal experience it's vastly different.
As you said in your previous,
> Twitter is a void and trying to fill that void with another one isn't the answer.
You are 100% spot on something here, something that's well known but usually goes undiscussed.
As madeofpalk said,
> Sometimes i just want to take a break from 110% productivity and have some idle, mindless chatter.
That's true - so do I (although I usually opt for a chat with a friend, or for some mindless RealRacing).
But for the majority of Twitterheads, Twitter has become synonymous with the public square, with results that verge on (or fully reach) the toxic.
Here, I'm thinking of Sam Vaknin's position on the question of toxicity:
Pt. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmXcjvL9VSc
Pt. 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m38W8glySGw
Now, one may say that Vaknin isn't important, or that he's too self-important, or whatever. But his analysis (and he's not unique on that) concludes that such social media platforms have a corrosive effect on the individual and on society.
If nothing else, it's a system that essentially echo chambers you, and preys on vulnerabilities in the standard human psychological make up to maximize profit.
Not to mention that it's a private platform, and very specifically not a 21st century version of the agora/public forum.
I think that on principle private enterprises shouldn't be permitted to usurp the public sphere.