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I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

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Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#141
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PWA has access to bluetooth (BLE on all platforms) and NFC on Android

> PWA has access to bluetooth (BLE on all platforms) and NFC on Android This (EDIT: this app) is iOS only right now. And I hate the normalisation of giving websites access to Bluetooth and NFC.

I managed to make an ESP32-controlled RC car move by sending it commands from a webapp running on my Android phone last year. I don't believe I have telekinesis magic power, so I'd rather believe that this is not in-fact iOS only.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like that was what made Google Plus better and yet because it was Google shoving everything into Google Plus itself to force numbers… it failed. Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen. You can basically group friends under specific labels, so if you want to only share some posts / photos with family, only family will see it, wanna share posts with former and current coworkers? Hav…

Apparently Facebook does/did support posting to certain groups? Maybe the UI isn't great as I never knew it was possible but a workmate told it was.

As I understand my FB account, I can easily post to a group. But I can't easily adjust the membership of that group. Otoh, I post maybe once a year, so who knows.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#143
Wow, the phone tap requirement, love it! And your ethics, the best part.

Constructively, of course (if you care for feedback devolving ramble-y):

Could almost see myself using a web app version of this for kicks. But can’t sign up for another network (though would be happy to link a self hosted project, if I could stumble through setup). Apps don’t feel private (Apple neglects to offer basic firewall/other features), and not sure how someone would look at me trying to get them to register somewhere… maybe the phone tap pitch is enough? (Especially if it’d allow one-tap registration for friends inviting new friends, because the phone bump allowed for some data transfer.)

Anyway, understand self hosting is ostensibly permanently destined to be unpopular but somehow feel if the pitch were “be your own network, tap the phone, use this Friendster infrastructure/instruction set to link your networks”, I’d be more tempted.

Thank you for keeping it not evil!

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#144

I really wish more social networks would have a "fading connections" limit. So many social networks suffer from stale connections and networks, and these connections should expire after a year. Otherwise, it will permanently define a social network's content and editorial direction without algorithmic control. For example, Selena Gomez will always have 400million followers on Instagram, but she's socially irrelevant…

I feel like that was what made Google Plus better and yet because it was Google shoving everything into Google Plus itself to force numbers… it failed. Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen. You can basically group friends under specific labels, so if you want to only share some posts / photos with family, only family will see it, wanna share posts with former and current coworkers? Hav…

i think it was just poorly implemented. i didn't use the circles feature because all my friends would be in one circle and my family were all offline, but i still had to deal with it for no personal benefit

opt in probably would have been better, like just default everyone to one circle and make it obvious how to split them up after you're a bit more comfortable with the platform

they made a bunch of other obvious blunders like attempting to force real names and spread them to youtube, mandatory account linkage etc etc but i think there were probably just too many conflicting high level voices at google trying to set direction

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#145

I really wish more social networks would have a "fading connections" limit. So many social networks suffer from stale connections and networks, and these connections should expire after a year. Otherwise, it will permanently define a social network's content and editorial direction without algorithmic control. For example, Selena Gomez will always have 400million followers on Instagram, but she's socially irrelevant…

I feel like that was what made Google Plus better and yet because it was Google shoving everything into Google Plus itself to force numbers… it failed. Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen. You can basically group friends under specific labels, so if you want to only share some posts / photos with family, only family will see it, wanna share posts with former and current coworkers? Hav…

Circles was a lot of busy work though

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#146

I really wish more social networks would have a "fading connections" limit. So many social networks suffer from stale connections and networks, and these connections should expire after a year. Otherwise, it will permanently define a social network's content and editorial direction without algorithmic control. For example, Selena Gomez will always have 400million followers on Instagram, but she's socially irrelevant…

I feel like that was what made Google Plus better and yet because it was Google shoving everything into Google Plus itself to force numbers… it failed. Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen. You can basically group friends under specific labels, so if you want to only share some posts / photos with family, only family will see it, wanna share posts with former and current coworkers? Hav…

WeChat in China was early to implement friend group-based posting

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's been working on social networking and adjacent services for over 15 years, hard disagree. An ideal social network should not have any agency of its own, period. If your feed is too crowded because you follow too many people, then so be it. It's your problem, you did this to yourself. Only you know how to fix it for yourself, if you do even want it fixed in the first place.

real world social networks have agency if you define ephemerality as agency. It's an accident of digital platforms that nothing is ever forgotten, not a feature inherent to normal human relations. In the real world you drop phone numbers, you forget events, unused relationships atrophy. And that's not a bug, forgetting is a feature. For anyone who isn't convinced of this, Black Mirror did an admirable job in its firs…

It can be argued that humans actually hate forgetting things. That's why we invented writing. Spoken language lets us share arbitrarily abstract thoughts with others. But human memory is imperfect, so spreading knowledge or memories through word-of-mouth is unreliable. Writing lets us preserve that information as intended by the original author, potentially indefinitely. That's also why we always wanted to be able to record and play back what we hear and see, and our civilization only fairly recently, in terms of history, got advanced enough to have technologies to do that.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#150
This sounds cool and similar to something I’ve been building! I say similar as we have different ideas and target audiences — What I’m building is a niche network specifically targeting people who are travellers or friends that like holidaying together. I don’t want to seem like I’m spamming or self promoting so will keep the link out but will share if people want.

Anyway, I digress, it would be great to connect and exchange ideas if you have the time? I really like the idea of fading connections.

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