Re: trsst microblogging

On 31 August 2013 17:59, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:

> On 08/27/2013 01:26 PM, Adam Levine wrote:
> > On the micropayment side, this is now the 4th implementation of the idea
> > not including my Watershed FOSS project to tackle this issue in
> > basically the same way.   Non-crowdfunded options that are already
> > available are bitwall.io <http://bitwall.io> bitcredit.io
> > <http://bitcredit.io>
> > bitmonet
> http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1jh8lh/bitmonet_monetization_platform_for_content/
>
> Neat, I had not heard about those projects. Thanks for the links!
>
> > The microblogging and encrypted communications are interesting, but
> > again there are lots of options out there for both that haven't taken
> > off.   I've been pulling back from crowdfunding projects like this
> > recently because there are so many hands working towards the goal
> already.
>
> It's difficult to pick who will be successful. The whole decentralized
> blogging thing is littered with successful implementations that failed
> to gain adoption.
>
> Diaspora and Status.net being two of the bigger, more long-running
> solutions. They have working systems and it wouldn't take much to graft
> some greater security onto them, or add the RSS feature described in
> trsst (which might be already installed).
>

Both diaspora and status.net run Ostatus which is a web 2.0 protocol that
has not proven to scale well

I think a good place to start is to mark up user profiles in line with web
standards such as RDFa and JSON LD

In traditional FLOSS you can write technical solutions to some issues, and
introduce patches to improve the system.  But often the challenge is not
only technical, but rather, to get patches accepted by the whole network,
which involves human elements, leadership and introduces new central points
of friction.

As it happens I've been talking to developers on two projects this week (
status.net and lorea) to do exactly this, with positive feedback, so
hopefully those two will be one step closer to federation

I also reached out to diaspora as they have said they want to federate
more, but I think that it's a project that while good on the presentation
layer, is less strong at the protocol level

>
>
> I think many of these project focus on the wrong thing. The technology
> is the easy part, it's the social aspect that's difficult. If you can't
> pull and push to Twitter, G+, Facebook, etc, then it's problematic. If
> you don't have a solution that people can just use w/o being technical,
> it's a problem. It seems like there are so many things that you have to
> get right in this space, and even when you get all of them right, people
> don't seem to be interested.
>

Integration with web 2.0 platforms is important, there are some systems
such as friendica working on this


>
> I've read a number of studies that say that people both young and old
> still do care about privacy. However, many are just unaware of what
> systems protect their privacy and which ones don't. Fewer are willing to
> pay or fund systems that protect their privacy because the existing
> systems seem to be good enough.
>

About 25% care deeply about privacy, according to studies ive read


>
> Take email for instance. It's a fairly terrible protocol, rife with
> spam. Many of the email solutions today are pretty terrible and unable
> to cope with the level of spam and size of our ever growing mail
> history. Gmail does a good job. It's also hooked up to the NSA in ways
> that have been surprising to people that use Gmail. However, notice that
> there hasn't been a mass exodus from Gmail and other hosted mail
> solutions. People care about privacy, but not to the extent that they're
> willing to absorb some pain to get some of their freedoms back. This is
> more of a societal problem than a technical one.
>
> I really hope that we can move back towards a more decentralized social
> Web. This group is working on a number of technologies that could enable
> that, specifically:
>
> JSON-LD
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vioCbTo3C-4
> http://json-ld.org/
>
> Secure Messaging (and identity)
> https://payswarm.com/specs/source/http-keys/
>

+1

We also need to decentralize payments so that developers are incentivized
to help grow the eco system with apps for example ...


>
> I'm not certain that projects like trsst will be successful in doing so.
> I do think that if we get all of them to start using certain messaging
> standards, like Secure Messaging and Activity Streams, that we will have
> a better chance of moving to a more decentralized messaging future.
>

+1 activity streams 2.0 which is set to be json ld compliant seems to be a
great way to do messagine


>
> Other projects in this area to check out:
>
> http://pump.io/
> http://app.net/
> https://joindiaspora.com/
>

App.net is a propriety paid twitter platform without ads.

pump.io I dont think will be that much more successful than it's
predecessor status.net as imho it has scalability issues.

Lesser known projects that use web standards such as my-profile.eu I think
are the kind of project that will federate well, especially when adding
payswarm for payments


>
> -- manu
>
> --
> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: Meritora - Web payments commercial launch
> http://blog.meritora.com/launch/
>
>