Re: Mosaic Intro

Hi Melvin,

Thanks for the input, replies are inline.

On 2/10/2019 9:16 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, 10 Feb 2019 at 01:25, Adam Lake <adam@mosaic.social> wrote:
>
>     **
>
>     *Hi All, *
>
>     *
>
>     It is great to see so many passionate and capable people in this
>     group. I am sorry to have missed the kick-off call but hope to
>     make the next one.
>
>
>     My interest in Solid is the power of its principles to enable a
>     more free, open, and cooperative Web and world. To me it
>     represents the promise of coming closer to the original vision for
>     the Web, a platform that would increase human capacity, our
>     political and economy health, and our collective intelligence. My
>     assessment is that individual sovereignty on the Web, an extension
>     of civil rights in the digital age, is a fundamental requirement
>     to achieving these broader social ends. Solid’s data ownership and
>     data portability architecture are critical pieces of the puzzle. I
>     am probably preaching to the choir!
>
>
>     My role is to help “bring people together to build the next
>     generation Web”. You can learn more here https://mosaic.social/.
>     The objective of Mosaic is to connect teams, technologies, and
>     financing to bring user-centrc (“Self Sovereign”) P2P apps to
>     market. My hope is to facilitate the connection between disparate
>     parties that may not know about each, but who together can provide
>     all of the necessary ingredients required to brings Solid apps to
>     market, have a sustainable business model, and designed to
>     maximize social well being. The technology is critical, but so are
>     funding, business models, marketing, and psychologists who
>     specialize in human-centered design.
>
>
>     The Mosaic website was launched to communicate a basic technology
>     framework*(very much still open for debate)* and some app concepts
>     to spark the imagination and get dialogue going about what app
>     ideas have the most support (e.g, existing technology, funding,
>     and public demand). I am heavily leaning toward starting with a
>     decentralized Facebook application because it exemplifies the
>     struggle for the future of the Web and because an alternative, or
>     anti, facebook is a simple concept for people to understand.
>     However, choosing this app presents some challenges as there are
>     deep problems around distributed search, fake news, and identity
>     to solve. These issues may prove to be intractable problems but I
>     think it’s worth systematically exploring whether a good
>     decentralized and Solid-based Facebook could be designed. Opinions
>     on these topics are most welcome!
>
>
>     I would gladly engage with others in this group around these high
>     level design considerations as well as sustainable and equitable
>     business models for bringing Solid apps to market.
>
>     *
>
>
> Looks very interesting.
>
> I've had done some work on a timeline app but I never got a chance to 
> complete it, as focus shifted to the server.  The auth doesnt work 
> with the node solid server in OIDC mode yet, tho.
>
> demo : 
> http://solid-social.github.io/timeline/?date=recent&profile=https:%2F%2Fmelvincarvalho.com%2F%23me
> code : https://github.com/solid-social/timeline
> screenshots : 
> https://melvincarvalho.gitbooks.io/solid-social/content/appendixa.html
Thanks a lot for sharing your previous work. I will certainly reference 
them as I create screen mockups
>
> I believe darcy is also looking at this route :
>
> https://darcy.is/
I will be reaching out to Darcy shortly to see if there are 
opportunities to collaborate. The more of us working in a concerted 
manner the better.
>
> So, it helps to understand what facebook did well.  They created their 
> system based on the idea of giving everything an HTTP URI and growing 
> a graph around that.
>
> Porting this idea to solid I think is an excellent idea, and would 
> allow a cross origin social network with strong privacy and everyone 
> controls their own data.
>
> Seems like a compelling use case, so the question arises as to why no 
> one in open source has done this yet.
>
> The answer is that resources are scarce.  And those that have tried 
> inevitably have taken on too much.  Such the very common idea of 
> making it P2P or creating a new DNS.  Such premature optimizations 
> have never worked, and if we have learnt from history are not the best 
> strategy.  It becomes tougher still because advocates of protocol X 
> are widespread trying to promote their system, whereas solid is just 
> the web with more cross origin features unlocked.
I think that resources are scarce in part because Web 3.0 does not have 
clear business models. Decentralized systems are hard to fund because 
it's difficult to build in an ROI for investors without introducing new 
fatal problems, like token speculation. I think there is a middle way, 
to attract investors without sacrificing the mission of the effort. My 
current theory is that a good design, communicated well and back by a 
solid team, can raise the requisite funding. There are also many 
unconventional investors that actually care about making the world a 
better place. These investor communities, for the most part, likely 
don't know much about the Web3 movement and have likely never heard of 
Solid.
>
> Doing one thing well which is porting social network functionality via 
> a graph of URIs can be easily realized if we have someone to code it.  
> A small team, or even a single person, could realize this in a few 
> months.  The prototyps of facebook was apparently coded up in about 2 
> weeks.
>
> Solid is an ideal technology to achieve this. But the danger is going 
> off piste and tagging on the latest social protocol du jour and ending 
> up with an architecture inferior to facebook.  There was a massive 
> opportunity missed by the social web working group imho when I 
> suggested this route, that the social web about people, friends and 
> connections. Whilst I thought this was self evident, it idea was 
> rejected, in favour of building a microblogging system.  Well that 
> worked, but we sacrificed social networks on the altar of the micro blog.
>
> Id suggest doing one task well ie porting social networks to solid, 
> then think about adding more protocols.
It absolutely makes sense to avoid scope creep. On thing I am currently 
fairly attached to is useful and user friendly group/community 
functionality because I think it could be key to scaling. It might not 
belong in the MVP, but hopefully the design can lend itself to adding 
group/community functionality for V2.
>
> What is needed?  You need a timeline, you need profile management, a 
> friendship graph.  You need friend requests.  Messages, replies and 
> likes.  It can either be done as one system or in modular parts where 
> different groups work on different aspects and then a team ties them 
> together in a single app.
>
> Id suggest working out what is in scope and what is not, and trying to 
> make something as minimal as possible.  Then trying to achieve a rapid 
> prototype.  Perhaps work together with darcy if they are going to 
> build a solid solution
Yes, all makes sense, thanks a lot for the input Melvin!
>
>     *
>
>     Kind Regards,
>
>     Adam Lake
>
>     *
>