Call for a Better Web
callforabetterweb.org
Call for a Better Web
1–10 of 68 posts
Re: Call for a Better Web
#2We should act now. It should be done independently from the big Internet companies
Here's where OP may have difficulties. He wants to make a major change that affects a lot of people. Better to dance with the elephants than in spite of them. Just ask Loopt.
Re: Call for a Better Web
#3Why doesn't FB do most of this?
Re: Call for a Better Web
#4Hiya. Mind if I make some suggestions on how you can write better in professional communications?
Lead with your strengths. Your first paragraph, which is the most important one you will write because it is the one that determines whether the rest of your piece gets read, is filled with self-inflicted strikes against you.
English is not my mother tongue and I’m not a great writer, so I am borrowing the words JFK used in
There is a place for modesty and self-effacement. It is not during proposals.
The quote from JFK does not give me a reason to entrust you with money. That suggests cutting it. Ruthlessly eliminate any distraction from the goal.
First of all: I to say I have applied for Winter 2010 YC funding with this idea (still have to make a video). The problem is I don’t think this is gonna get funded for two reasons: I have no team mates (YC tends to fund teams composed by 2-3 people) and I don’t have any solid idea on how to make it profitable.
Here you are again telling me how you're not the right man for the job.
So since my desire for a better Web to live and work in is kinda huge I am writing this article hoping that maybe it’s going to be an inspiration for someone else, or act as a catalyst. Or just to state the obvious. Whatever.
In addition to not being the right man for the job, you're diffident about even wanting to do the job. You are not projecting the image of a driven, with-it individual who is going to take a difficult technical, social, and marketing problem and solve it, making very rich rich men out of everyone associated with the project.
Look how differently your first paragraph reads from my reimagining of it:
The Internet as we know it is broken. Dozens of accounts per user -- broken! Web services that can't speak to each other -- broken! Our lives and friends scattered over a hundred web sites -- broken! Our identities owned by service providers -- broken!
We can fix the Internet. It will not be easy. Worthwhile things rarely are. The fix is a federated identity gateway, built out of technologies which are already accepted and in common use. The rest of this proposal will outline a sketch of what the federated identity gateway is, how it fixes the Internet, and why the first group who succeeds in building it will realize profits beyond the dreams of avarice.
Commentary: start with the problem, offer a solution, whet people's appetite for reading about the solution. Don't focus on yourself, most particularly not on your faults.
Re: Call for a Better Web
#5Sigh...where to start?
First, I applaud your passion for making the web a better place, and for being willing to put yourself out there and be open with your views.
That said, there's a number of problems with what you're saying and the proposed solution, but let me point out just a few:
1. Normal people don't care. Seriously, my mom uses a handful of websites and doesn't really care about any of the problems you mention. If a solution were offered and it was more convenient, she might use it, but it's just not a big deal to her.
2. Identity and data centralization seem to offer a lot of security risks and the philosophical problem of putting all that data into the hands of one company, or even just a few companies. Making an open, distributed standard sounds good, but in practice, I think a few companies (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon) would end up handling the gateway role for 95% of users, which puts you in an even more dangerous position.
3. The big players have little incentive to lower barriers to entry, and you have a chicken/egg problem in trying to force them to 'adapt or die'. Also, see #1.
4. If OpenID and OAuth aren't working (agree on the 1st, not sure on the 2nd), why not, and why would this be any different?
5. I don't see any way of implementing something like this over the next 50 years without either a) government mandate, or b) every internet giant getting involved. As I pointed out above, the internet giants are unlikely to do this, and the government getting more involved in the web is the last thing we need.
I think some of the problems you pointed out are legit, but I'm not sure that this kind of a system is really any better. It seems you'd be swapping one set of problems for another, and the new set of problems would seem to make the web extremely vulnerable to being controlled by a few large organizations, or the government. Over time, I see this kind of centralization and "perfect system" model resulting in stagnation and oppression.
Re: Call for a Better Web
#6Let's play dress-up for a moment. I'll put on my investor's hat.
You are going to have problems with funding for two reasons (you mentioned one, and I'll disregard the no co-founders thing for a moment):
A) No clear path to monetization and
B) I can't see a reason for any site to go through the effort of adopting the technology you're suggesting, even if it was already written and easy to use. NIH syndrome is very big amongst companies for good reason - if they own all the technology front to back, then they can change it any way they see fit, and not have to worry about someone else's changes.
Re: Call for a Better Web
#7I think you are conflating a call for action with an idea for a startup. To be more effective you should focus on one of these only.
As for your proposed solution, such services already exists, i.e. webfinger which Google may be supporting in the future.
So the challenge is really, how to enable widespread adoption for webfinger or something similar. If you have an ingenious idea how to support that, lets hear it. Because you are right, it would mean a lot of progress for the web.
Re: Call for a Better Web
#8For this to work you would have to convince all (or at least a lot) of established players to do things differently than they do now. They will only do so if they see other major players doing it. It's a classical chicken and egg problem.
The technology is the easy part.
Re: Call for a Better Web
#9Basically you're proposing a much more involved OpenID. I'm sorry, but beyond everything that was already pointed out, you also clearly don't know enough about the space that you want to "revolutionize".
Hint: what you propose isn't all that new, you're still suffering from the same chicken and egg problem.
Re: Call for a Better Web
#10Sigh...where to start? First, I applaud your passion for making the web a better place, and for being willing to put yourself out there and be open with your views. That said, there's a number of problems with what you're saying and the proposed solution, but let me point out just a few: 1. Normal people don't care. Seriously, my mom uses a handful of websites and doesn't really care about any of the problems you men…
"1. Normal people don't care. Seriously, my mom uses a handful of websites and doesn't really care about any of the problems you mention. If a solution were offered and it was more convenient, she might use it, but it's just not a big deal to her."
+1
The OP says why YC won't fund him (single founder, no biz model), but he's overlooking the doozy. YC has freakin' T-SHIRTS that say "Make something people want". Not is this addressing a problem that 99.9% of people don't have, but it's also something that the big web properties don't want (for a number of reasons).
Solve problems. Solve painful problems. Or, if you're more consumer focused, get smart about dopamine.