Ping: the atomized social media network | Hacker News Reader

Ping: the atomized social media network

ping.hz.tn

This is just a static web page, the 'like/reply/re-ping' buttons are just divs. IMHO announcing an ActivityPub implementation when it's not at the point where you can even follow the project's account via AP is kind of premature.

Tbh I would prefer static pages over a spa by a factor of about ten. Way easier to work around the service provider to get a decent experience.

it lacks the functionality of a social media page. its just a static page. not in a spa / ssr way, but in a sftp html to a server way.

That social network for music lovers that Apple launched in 2010 and then retired in 2011 is back?

I'm still baffled that anyone thought that this was a viable idea. A social network based on your taste of music? Too bad your friends aren't into techno.

It wasn't too far fetched. A lot of generations defined their social circles by tastes in music. In my youth at least it was very common.

I think that it just doesn't scale beyond angsty teenagers.

There are fans of "niche" genres that could find value in this. In the late 80s an acquaintance dropped almost all of her friends, based on their tastes in and dedication to music. I could see her using something like that to help generate a new friend group.

I take it you missed Last.fm selling for ~$300m in the '00s?

Wasn’t that the point of MySpace?

It's a good idea, and a good name, but I can't help but to be nostalgic about Apple's Ping, the half-baked musical social network that went nowhere. (And for that era in the early 2010s when Web 2.0 and the first app stores were taking off but haven't been quite figured out yet, leading to a lot of silly experiments.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping

Ping me when it's actually released ;)

The decentralized domain is interesting to observe. I find this try ambitious. But as others state it, technicalities to run something on your own, are not yet just as simple as having an app on your device, underlying factors make it inpersistent for any individual.

There are strides in UX around self-hosted domain. Just look at homeassistant as an example.

The average internet user doesn't know how to run a home server, safely expose services, or configure a domain name. Even Home Assistant has a fairly high barrier to entry in that you need somewhere to run it, and even then a good chunk of their users rely on Nabu Casa to do the networking bits because they can't manage it themselves.

This just ain't gonna work for social networking, unless you want that social network to consist only of the small minority of internet users that know how the internet works - and then we could just hang out here on HN.

I think this is a spectrum rather than either or..

for example, my mom is 70 and runs two vps servers, a dozen domain names just fine.. OF course there is a huge difference from a blank box and a cpanel/shared hosting type deal where the hosting co applies all the patches for you.

Back in the day average internet users were finding how to hunt for and add custom css to make myspace pages do glitter effects.. just because facebook ruined that and make social harder to bog down doesn't mean average people couldn't figure out a few basic things with help from internet, friends, or a hosting company that does patches and backups for you as a service.

I've long thought it would be a popular business to run such a service, but for different reasons that are not often considered I guess.

+1 for home assistant though.. I bought some bulbs that said we automate with Google Home.. got home, couldn't get them to work, realized there is another app or ecosystem that includes maybe this thing.. put them back in the box and now that is in another box..

Just DDG's home assistant and realized it is not Google Home assistant..

Dig some digging last month on the new 'works everything thing' - found some bulbs that are 'matter enabled' - got friend to get some..

Two weeks later I start seeing articles about why Matter has failed.

Nobody cares and this will not work because whoever built this thinks that using a thousand words on the page will make a social network grow. It won't. It's a hosting service at best. For a social network to work you need to be able to see what the society is up to.

> It's a hosting service at best.

First sentence of the article (emphasis mine):

> Ping represents a network of individual, self-hosted social media accounts.

So it doesn’t look like a hosting service at all.

> this will not work

I guess that depends on your definition of “not work”. Seeing as the goal seems to make it open-source, self-hosted, and additive to other networks, success to them may be measured in niche numbers of very active users.

It’s certainly a possibility they won’t even launch, but that doesn’t seem to be what you’re suggesting.

I just really want these projects to succeed.

So this is just linkback but over ActivityPub?

Also, this name has already been used in a social network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping

Someone came up with a name and didn't do much else =P

Sarcasm aside, Havn't we seen that most people do not know how to run their own hardware? I am capable and STILL would not want to due to security, scaling, power, space, etc.

This is exactly the model of communication I want to succeed :joy: Then I have full control over all my social media activity -- posts/messages and metadata (likes, and what not) and can save them and slice and dice them however I want! (without worrying about crappy interfaces on most social media products)

Self-hosting could be as simple as running an app or service on a tor-like virtual network, especially if there's good peer caching / pinning / routing to loadbalance popular content. That's a bit like what Tlon attempted with Urbit.

How does the idea differ from a network of (possibly single-user) ActivityPub instances, perhaps with boosting removed (which is considered a feature)?

Not sure about other activitypub implementations, but mastodon is notoriously difficult to setup and maintain. A lightweight single user instance seems like a good idea to me

I came here expecting atom syndication for social media and was disappointed.

I just don't have time to learn or care about another social network.

How many bytes/s can be realistically sent by pinging a machine?

It's adjacent to ActivityPub...

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