Link tags: platforms

Network effect

Mastodon is not a platform. Mastodon is just a tiny part of a concept many have been dreaming about and working on for years. Social media started on the wrong foot. The idea for the read/write web has always been different. Our digital identities weren’t supposed to end up in something like Twitter or Facebook or Instagram.

Decentralisation, Federation, The Indie Web: There were many groups silently working on solving the broken architecture of our digital social networks and communication channels – long, long before the “web 3” dudes tried to reframe it as their genius new idea.

I’ve been a part of this for many years until I gave up hope. How would you compete against the VC money, the technical and economical benefits of centralised platforms? It was a fight between David and Gloiath. But now Mastodon could be the stone.

How to Weave the Artisan Web | Whatever

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a site that’s not run by an amoral billionaire chaos engine, or algorithmically designed to keep you doomscrolling in a state of fear and anger, or is essentially spyware for governments and/or corporations? Wouldn’t it be nice not to have ads shoved in your face every time you open an app to see what your friends are up to? Wouldn’t it be nice to know that when your friends post something, you’ll actually see it without a social media platform deciding whether to shove it down your feed and pump that feed full of stuff you didn’t ask for?

Wouldn’t that be great?

Get Blogging!

Your easy guide to starting a new blog.

A blog is an easy way to get started writing on the web. Your voice is important: it deserves its own site. The more people add their unique perspectives to the web, the more valuable it becomes.

I Replaced My Native iOS App with a Cross-Platform Web App and No One Noticed

It turns out that in 2022, for a lot of apps, the dream of write once run anywhere has finally arrived.

Every year browsers and web technologies become more capable and more powerful. Every year there are more kinds of app that you can make cross platform.

So before you start your next project, why don’t you take a look at cross platform web apps. Maybe they aren’t right for your project, but maybe, like me, you’ll discover that you can code once and run everywhere. And I think that’s amazing.

Notes from a gopher:// site - daverupert.com

The result of adding more constraints means that the products have a broader appeal due to their simple interface. It reminds me of a Jeremy Keith talk I heard last month about programming languages like CSS which have a simple interface pattern: selector { property: value }. Simple enough anyone can learn. But simple doesn’t mean it’s simplistic, which gives me a lot to think about.

The lost thread

Twit­ter’s only con­clu­sion can be abandonment: an over­due MySpace-ification. I am totally con­fi­dent about this prediction, but that’s an easy confidence, because in the long run, we’re all MySpace-ified.

What Robin said.

A Web Renaissance

Thanks to the mistrust of big tech, the creation of better tools for developers, and the weird and wonderful creativity of ordinary people, we’re seeing an incredibly unlikely comeback: the web is thriving again.

Smart analysis from Anil, though I’m not sure I’d agree with his emphasis on tools and frameworks—it’s the technology built into browsers that has really come along in leaps and bounds, allowing people to do more with less code.

But then there’s this:

So if we have the tech, then why hasn’t it happened already? The biggest thing that may be missing is just awareness of the modern web’s potential. Unlike the Facebooks and Googles of the world, the open, creative web doesn’t have a billion-dollar budget for promoting itself. Years of control from the tech titans has resulted in the conventional wisdom that somehow the web isn’t “enough”, that you have to tie yourself to proprietary platforms if you want to build a big brand or a big business.

True! Anil also points to an act of rebellion and resistance:

Get your own site going, though, and you’ll have a sustainable way of being in control of your own destiny online.

🐠 Robin Sloan: describing the emotions of life online

Obviously, no one does this, I recognize this is a very niche endeavor, but the art and craft of maintaining a homepage, with some of your writing and a page that’s about you and whatever else over time, of course always includes addition and deletion, just like a garden — you’re snipping the dead blooms. I do this a lot. I’ll see something really old on my site, and I go, “you know what, I don’t like this anymore,” and I will delete it.

But that’s care. Both adding things and deleting things. Basically the sense of looking at something and saying, “is this good? Is this right? Can I make it better? What does this need right now?” Those are all expressions of care. And I think both the relentless abandonment of stuff that doesn’t have a billion users by tech companies, and the relentless accretion of garbage on the blockchain, I think they’re both kind of the antithesis, honestly, of care.

“The internet wasn’t designed to breach national boundaries” - Rest of World

Say you’re into the indie web without saying you’re into the indie web…

The internet wasn’t really convenient in 1994 or 1995, but it was a very collaborative space.

There was a moment where we replaced this idea of the internet being a medium that we can all write to and participate in to one that is mediated. That happened at some point after social networks started to arrive and when the smartphone started to arrive. It’s a combination of the nature of those platforms and the prevalence of the technologies, which meant the economic rewards of getting this right rose significantly.

And so there’s a really distinctly different feel in the 2013, or 2014, internet to the one that you might have had in 1997, or 1998. It’s not just that it’s easier and I’m yearning for a world of cars with manual choke and manual transmission and crank-up starter handles, but it’s that the programmability of the internet and its endpoints has turned into something that is increasingly permissioned by major platforms.

Idle Sunday thoughts about web trends | Studio Tendra

Six years old. Still very astute. Still very true.

Kissa. Book. Launch. — Roden Explorers Archive

Own. Your. Nook. There’s power in owning your nook of the ‘net — your domain name, your design, your archives — and it’s easier than ever to do so, and run a crowdfunding campaign at the same time.

Why Medium is Not the Home for Your Ideas – The Hulry

Some good blogging advice.

Building a blog for the long run? Avoid Medium.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s Keynote Address at ADL’s 2019 Never Is Now Summit on Anti-Semitism and Hate | Anti-Defamation League

On the internet, everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart resembles the BBC. The fictitious Protocols of the Elders of Zion look as valid as an ADL report. And the rantings of a lunatic seem as credible as the findings of a Nobel Prize winner. We have lost, it seems, a shared sense of the basic facts upon which democracy depends.

Always Own Your Platform

Stop giving away your work to people who don’t care about it. Host it yourself. Distribute it via methods you control. Build your audience deliberately and on your own terms.

Oh God, It’s Raining Newsletters — by Craig Mod

After musing on newsletters, Craig shares how he’s feeling about Instagram and its ilk:

Instagram will only get more complex, less knowable, more algorithmic, more engagement-hungry in 2019.

I’ve found this cycle has fomented another emotion beyond distrust, one I’ve felt most acutely in 2018: Disdain? (Feels too loaded.) Disappointment? (Too moralistic.) Wariness? (Yes!) Yes — wariness over the way social networks and the publishing platforms they provide shift and shimmy beneath our feet, how the algorithms now show posts of X quality first, or then Y quality first, or how, for example, Instagram seems to randomly show you the first image of a multi-image sequence or, no wait, the second.8

I try to be deliberate, and social networks seem more and more to say: You don’t know what you want, but we do. Which, to someone who, you know, gives a shit, is pretty dang insulting.

Wariness is insidious because it breeds weariness. A person can get tired just opening an app these days. Unpredictable is the last thing a publishing platform should be but is exactly what these social networks become. Which can make them great marketing tools, but perhaps less-than-ideal for publishing.

Signal v Noise exits Medium – Signal v. Noise

Traditional blogs might have swung out of favor, as we all discovered the benefits of social media and aggregating platforms, but we think they’re about to swing back in style, as we all discover the real costs and problems brought by such centralization.

Why the Web Will Win || Matthew Ström: designer & developer

The first 22 years of the web platform were revolutionary. The open, accessible, and feature-rich applications that exist on the platform continue to drive the global economy. The next 5 years look like they’ll be filled with more innovation and growth than ever.

The web will be the platform of the Next Big Thing. Not just as the distribution network many see it as today; the web platform will deliver the most innovative experiences. They’ll be innovative not just for how they use new technology, but also because of how easy it will be for new users to experience.

Facebook and the end of the world

I’d love to see some change, and some introspection. A culture of first, do no harm. A recognition that there are huge dangers if you just do what’s possible, or build a macho “fail fast” culture that promotes endangerment. It’s about building teams that know they’ll make mistakes but also recognize the difference between great businesses opportunities and gigantic, universe-sized fuck ups.

The web is under threat. Join us and fight for it. – World Wide Web Foundation

What was once a rich selection of blogs and websites has been compressed under the powerful weight of a few dominant platforms. This concentration of power creates a new set of gatekeepers, allowing a handful of platforms to control which ideas and opinions are seen and shared.

Tim Berners-Lee on the 29th anniversary of Information Management: A Proposal.

Two myths currently limit our collective imagination: the myth that advertising is the only possible business model for online companies, and the myth that it’s too late to change the way platforms operate. On both points, we need to be a little more creative.

While the problems facing the web are complex and large, I think we should see them as bugs: problems with existing code and software systems that have been created by people — and can be fixed by people.

On Weaponised Design - Our Data Our Selves

A catalogue of design decisions that have had harmful effects on users. This is a call for more inclusive design, but also a warning on the fetishisation of seamlessness:

The focus on details and delight can be traced to manifestos like Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think, which propose a dogmatic adherence to cognitive obviousness and celebrates frictionless interaction as the ultimate design accomplishment.