I like this. Speaks to my own goal of creating "micro" communities. https://micro.mu . We limit groups to 20 people. I think that's an ideal number for real connections. Need more, it's likely for a different type of communication.
This is a cool idea and a nice looking implementation. I have a Signal group chat that I've been trying to find a slightly better home for, one feature I think we desperately need is a community calendar; some way that we can create and coordinate big group events beyond just spinning off an invitee chat or something. I see that you call out event-focused groups here, is there any tooling that would support actually…
I like this. Speaks to my own goal of creating "micro" communities. https://micro.mu . We limit groups to 20 people. I think that's an ideal number for real connections. Need more, it's likely for a different type of communication.
This is a cool idea and a nice looking implementation. I have a Signal group chat that I've been trying to find a slightly better home for, one feature I think we desperately need is a community calendar; some way that we can create and coordinate big group events beyond just spinning off an invitee chat or something. I see that you call out event-focused groups here, is there any tooling that would support actually…
Good eye. Yes we're thinking about that already. I think when we think about this tool from a community and even family or friends perspective, keeping track of everything you're doing or need to do becomes difficult even if you're living by the calendar. It's because that calendar isn't shared. So I think for us "events" is something we want to find a way to integrate at the core of the experience. That at to-dos, because mostly when you have some event, there's still some level of planning to get done before it.
What's with the sudden influx of "smol" things? Is this related to "smol" ML / "smol" AI models, and/or the HN user that (IIRC) is associated with them and likes to use the word "smol" in their comments?
I like this. Speaks to my own goal of creating "micro" communities. https://micro.mu . We limit groups to 20 people. I think that's an ideal number for real connections. Need more, it's likely for a different type of communication.
What did you use to implement end-to-end encryption?
I like this. Speaks to my own goal of creating "micro" communities. https://micro.mu . We limit groups to 20 people. I think that's an ideal number for real connections. Need more, it's likely for a different type of communication.
What did you use to implement end-to-end encryption?
There's no end to end encryption right now but it's interesting the thought immediately goes there. This is not a replacement for signal, WhatsApp, etc. It's more like an advancement on forums or replacement for Facebook groups that takes things private in the sense that it's invite only and no one outside your group can talk to you. The recent community chats product from Facebook has also foregone end to end encryption because they want to be able to centralise the tech and moderation as it's much simpler for group products. Again this is not a replacement for whatsapp, signal or related messengers.
This is a cool idea and a nice looking implementation. I have a Signal group chat that I've been trying to find a slightly better home for, one feature I think we desperately need is a community calendar; some way that we can create and coordinate big group events beyond just spinning off an invitee chat or something. I see that you call out event-focused groups here, is there any tooling that would support actually…
Good eye. Yes we're thinking about that already. I think when we think about this tool from a community and even family or friends perspective, keeping track of everything you're doing or need to do becomes difficult even if you're living by the calendar. It's because that calendar isn't shared. So I think for us "events" is something we want to find a way to integrate at the core of the experience. That at to-dos, b…
Sweet! Yeah my partner and I have made a shift to keep our lives in our personal calendars which has been a huge QoL upgrade for us, but it's still so hard to keep track of who in the friend group is available when, as well as keep everyone remembering what's coming up in the next week or so. I feel like this was the biggest value+add of Facebook, but that particular product is now all but unusable :(. Adding shared, event-level to-do lists to a calendar tool would be absolutely KILLER, we just planned a big group camping trip and it was an enormous headache to track who was riding with who, who was bringing food, wood, etc. Having even just one or two simple tools to coordinate all that would have been a lifesaver. Definitely looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
I think what ruins communities is large sustained growth and not size. Back in ye olden forum days, you'd often see cozy communities with thousands of members, most of which weren't active and a lot of them came and went. You'd see like one maybe two new members every few days. What kills most mainstream social media is needing to show growth to investors. This turns them from a village with familiar faces into a tra…
In ye olden days the whole world didn’t exist. Maps indicated ‘here be dragons’. I feel you though, marginalia, and appreciate your work. I wrote a search engine too once and after a few months of me not using it myself, gave up. My results were too specific and not broad enough to include the world.
> In ye olden days the whole world didn’t exist
This! Why is it everything we build is to communicate with the world? The reality is we live in a certain physical space, we can only see, hear and speak at a certain distance and while technology has enabled a way to overcome that, it does feel like we're overwhelmed by the scale of humans we can communicate with. I want to go back to real, small, private connection. Hence micro.
I think what ruins communities is large sustained growth and not size. Back in ye olden forum days, you'd often see cozy communities with thousands of members, most of which weren't active and a lot of them came and went. You'd see like one maybe two new members every few days. What kills most mainstream social media is needing to show growth to investors. This turns them from a village with familiar faces into a tra…
In ye olden days the whole world didn’t exist. Maps indicated ‘here be dragons’. I feel you though, marginalia, and appreciate your work. I wrote a search engine too once and after a few months of me not using it myself, gave up. My results were too specific and not broad enough to include the world.
Well yeah, sure.
The world still doesn't really exist. At least not in any where we can comprehend it. Since it is almost certainly incomprehensible and probably not even possible to capture the world as it is, then isn't the second best to build something that is nice?
Good eye. Yes we're thinking about that already. I think when we think about this tool from a community and even family or friends perspective, keeping track of everything you're doing or need to do becomes difficult even if you're living by the calendar. It's because that calendar isn't shared. So I think for us "events" is something we want to find a way to integrate at the core of the experience. That at to-dos, b…
Sweet! Yeah my partner and I have made a shift to keep our lives in our personal calendars which has been a huge QoL upgrade for us, but it's still so hard to keep track of who in the friend group is available when, as well as keep everyone remembering what's coming up in the next week or so. I feel like this was the biggest value+add of Facebook, but that particular product is now all but unusable :(. Adding shared,…
Thanks that's super interesting to hear! I think we sort of share this pain and spent 4-5 months basically riffing about it while working on other ideas. It definitely solves a personal pain and feels like everyone is missing this tool to manage life in a community setting.
Main thing I want to self-host for friends, that's not served by any of a hundred chat apps: A place to share media reviews and recommendations. Wiki-like is OK, as long as table support is great. Difficulty: it should be able to helpfully look up and create entries for any new media it encounters, using various online sources (IMDB, The Movie Database, TVDB, maybe the Musicbrainz DB, something else authoritative-ish…
Chat is a very bad flow for this, because chat is a stream, not a garden. It's made for quick feedback. What you want is closer to a wiki, but I understand you need to share it with other people and discuss about it. I don't know of any software that does that, but the good thing is that maybe you don't need a new platform. Creating new platforms just splits the communities and is against the Unix philosophy we hold…
Yeah, I've considered slapping something together in Django or what have you—libraries exist to make a lot of this not that hard—but... kids. And the new Zelda, for that matter :-)