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The Internet I Knew (2014)

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Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#51

Post by inimino »

ukulele wrote: post #30
lyra_comms wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely hearbreaking to see the independence, critical thinking and self-determination that Western society has been building up since the Enlightenment, weakening under the forces of big data and targeted advertising. Communication should be open, profit should not be involved in discourse, and advertising should not corrode conversation. Viva la revolucion! www.hellolyra.com/introduction

> advertising should not corrode conversation. You really followed this with a link to your website?

You really can't see the difference between the kind of advertising this guy is complaining about and a link to a personal website / manifesto complaining about advertising? Really?

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#52

Post by throwanem »

jancsika wrote: post #25

> Those "social networks" were small, and never made front-page news (or any news at all), and were more concerned with keeping to themselves than recruiting new members. And I'm supposed to be convinced that those small forums weren't anti-social in their own important ways?

Such as? It wasn't that you never brought new people in. It was that you weren't operating under a perverse incentive to bring in as many new people as you could.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#53

Post by CM30 »

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 should probably be replaced with a simple logo link and hamburger button instead.

Secondly, forcing users to log in to view any content is not a good design pattern, and has been seen as a bad idea in the community management world for decades. Scrap it, let people view at least some content as a guest.

Stylistically it isn't too great either. It works on a functional level, but all in all, it just feels very... dated. Like, the site was made in 1995 type dated. That's probably because the colour scheme feels drab and uninteresting, the fonts all staid and the general structure of the pages is all so academic and formal looking. It reminded me of one of those 'guestbook' features Microsoft FrontPage used to have, and not in a good way.

So again, change that up a bit, since the vast majority of the population have design tastes that are a bit more up to date than Lyra's here.

Not sure the tour is a good idea either. Facebook, Twitter and others like them don't need one, and the way it's implemented here feels a bit overbearing more than anything else.

Do like how profiles let you add new fields yourself though, that seems quite useful (especially in an era where new social networks and their respective profile links keep popping up every day).

As for conversations, those just feel a bit awkward at the moment. I mean, are there any groups here? Any tags? Hashtags? Any way of categorising content at all? Cause at the moment, it seems like it's just a list of conversations about whatever random topic that you're somehow supposed to find and wander into. Not sure how user friendly that is myself.

Overall though, it's a mixed bag. There are some neat ideas here, and I admire you for creating your own social media site, but the design aesthetics and general setup just seem so dated it isn't a viable competitor to the likes of Facebook and Twitter for me.

Sorry.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#54

Post by [deleted] »

lyra_comms wrote: post #27
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.

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!

[deleted]

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#55

Post by snaky »

dijit wrote: post #23
nimbius wrote: post #11

call me nostalgic, but i refuse to let go of that internet. There are plenty of alternatives that dont get a multi billion dollar TV ad blitz, and theyre worth checking out https://freenode.net for a classic IRC experience, free of charge. https://mastodon.social/about for a distributed open source twitter-like experience https://diasporafoundation.org/ for an alternative to facebook that respects your privacy.

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…

Forums are alive and well. Just not for pointless 'social interacting' and selfies. To give you some examples.

Interested in electronics? EEVblog forums.

Audio? DIYaudio.com and Vegalab forums.

Mobile? XDA and 4pda forums.

Mobile audio? Head-fi and Doctorhead forums.

Mobile power? budgetlightforum and chongdiantou BBS.

Yes, a big amount of them is Russian and Chinese. Yes, there is something to think about.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#56

Post by brandonmenc »

waytogo wrote: post #8

OT: I don't get social networks. Till today, I don't see any value in real name social networks like Facebook. They should present content I want but they don't, they show upvoted content from my connections which is wrong from a consumer and entertainment perspective. My friends like or share mostly content of people because those people are kind of high-profile in their circles. Not because they post good content.…

> I don't see any value in real name social networks like Facebook

The value is that they're usable, least common denominator (not in a bad way) networks where you can keep in touch with your 80 year-old grandmother.

> The typical example, we all know, is some boring dude working at a VC that just raised a new fund who hourly posts really crappy content on FB

You're in a bubble. For nearly every Facebook user, this is not the typical experience.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#57

Post by rahoulb »

agentultra wrote: post #13

I recall being a bit confused about the terms, "social web," and "social network" when they were beginning to be bandied about to discuss Flickr and Facebook et al. The Internet was already a social network. You had irc, nntp, http, ftp, etc etc... communication protocols. For communicating with other humans. The only thing Facebook did, in my experience, was make the web anti-social . I distinctly recall when my gro…

> Most of these web services made quite a lot of interesting innovations and such but I can't help but wonder what the web would've been like if we'd stayed true to its roots and improved the protocols and infrastructure instead of centralizing everything behind walled gardens.

These walled gardens were built on top of the open web and they are winning (at least at the moment).

How would you stop them from taking over? Regulation?

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#59

Post by nitrogen »

ukulele wrote: post #30
lyra_comms wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely hearbreaking to see the independence, critical thinking and self-determination that Western society has been building up since the Enlightenment, weakening under the forces of big data and targeted advertising. Communication should be open, profit should not be involved in discourse, and advertising should not corrode conversation. Viva la revolucion! www.hellolyra.com/introduction

> advertising should not corrode conversation. You really followed this with a link to your website?

Tactful self promotion used to be accepted and encouraged on HN. (No comment on whether this comment fits that description)

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#60

Post by nitrogen »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #58

We had ad-free social networking in 1994, and 1984. Usenet, IRC, BBSes, MUDs… heck, remember The Well? The Internet has always had ways for people to get together and socialize. Ello invented nothing.

BBSes sometimes had full screen ANSI art interstitial ads, too, though.
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