As much as I really liked using IRC back in the day, I still think I spent way too much time on it. I mean you got to know the people there, and after a couple of years most discussions were like office conversations. Plus the takeovers, the trolls, the noobs, the never ending screwing around with the bots, etc.
I've never done much newsgroups because I didn't like public speaking without anonymity.
ICQ and others were like today's WhatsApp and hangout. I didn't use a single interface for them at the time, and still don't today, I don't see a big difference.
Today, I'm off Facebook, I barely follow twitter at all. I'm fine with reading hacker news, and other tech news aggregators.
I think you can lament on the disappearance of RSS, but to me, that's just about the main issue.
I guess the big difference between then and now is that we used to control better what we opted in. Now we're more force fed.
I think a lot of the nostalgia is a result of being uncomfortable dealing with people now being the "insiders" rather than the users. It's much easier to call out the new generation of users or large companies and praise old things than actually creating something relevant for today.
I've played around with creating a relevant version of things like usenet, but at the end of the day it wasn't something I wanted to work on. A large part of the work is correcting for flaws of the Internet that most "hackers" won't recognize. And while you could certainly overcome those problems, I don't think the end result would be worth it. Much of the "hacker crowd" these days aren't, in my opinion, motivated by naive curiosity and shallow idealism (like it used to be), but forced nativity to further their own interests and a opinionated demeanor. That's why many of these alternative services don't work out. Because they aren't motivated by creating something that is nice to use, but to satisfy the convoluted criteria of the creators.
Good points, especially the last point. I approach "internet" differently these days.
I have twitter for high freq thin data, reddit for a bit more dense information~. For deeper information I could read serious journals, books. But I rarely need that, or am not capable of digesting it.
The force fed thing is inherent to the change of importance and structure of the web.. Remember when Google was an entry point to the mess and not the conductor ?
> ICQ and others were like today's WhatsApp and hangout.
That's why they were awful. When they died or stopped being popular you lost all your contacts and had to start from scratch somewhere else. With open protocols you don't have that issue at all.
> As much as I really liked using IRC back in the day
You don't have to speak in channels to make use of IRC. I use it for private chats (I know it's not "private", but that's better for me than using any proprietary client and IRC has clients on every platform).
The other problem with IRC is that it's not very user friendly: there are many different networks, which implement different rules. Your IP may be banned for some reason. People can steal your nickname, etc.
While this is totally fine for internet-savvy people, I can see why regular people who just want to chat turn to alternatives.
My cousins, who are not tech people at all, moved to Ecuador in the 90's and apparently everyone there used mIRC over AOL. It seemed to be the default messaging platform for most people in their country at the time.
A 10 second look isn't really enough to evaluate a service, now is it? Quip and Discourse are subscription products targeted at teams. They aim to make money.
Lyra is a discussion platform targeted at a general audience. We're a nonprofit and aim to improve the quality and attentional demands of online conversation.
10 seconds was tongue in cheek, a longer look didn't show anything I missed the first look. Your platform isn't complicated or detailed.
It doesn't take long to determine that while you have laudable goals, there doesn't appear to be a significant differentiation either technically or realistically that makes your product worth spending more time on.
For one, the quality of conversation isn't a technical or platform issue, but an audience/participant problem. I didn't see anything particularly unique that would make Lyra better as a conversation platform, or at achieving your stated goals, than any other services, open or subscription. An open forum with conversations isn't a "new" idea. A tree based conversation threading system isn't "new" or "novel" or "unique". Having Private and Public chats, groups and profiles etc.. are far from new or unique features for a conversation platform either.
So yes, "10 seconds" was enough to determine that you've got a great idea with crappy execution, no audience, are trying to solve social problems with "technical" solutions (and those technical solutions are not new or unique to the problem space). You don't actually provide anything of value, and my initial assessment that you've just gone and re-invented the wheel looks pretty accurate.
Also, your branding/naming is horrible. A search for Lyra shows multiple other products and services, I gave up looking for you after 5 pages of search results for everything but your product. That's a black hole.
Your persistence in trying to advertise this service in a post basically pointing out how people like you re-inventing the wheel in your own platform to solve the same problem over and over again is the problem is actually highly entertaining for me.
The fact your a non-profit only further makes me laugh. You've got no product differentiation, only philosophical ones (that aren't even unique), and no mature funding model, and you want people to use your product?
I expect another downvote for this, because you don't seem to like someone pointing out sense. I can't think of a better example of the xkdc comic/protocol joke than this in recent memory and I work with software engineers daily.
Lyra is a discussion platform targeted at a general audience. We're a nonprofit and aim to improve the quality and attentional demands of online conversation.
There's nothing like this in the space.
We did not claim to be "new," "novel" or "unique."
If you would like to elaborate on what is "crappy" about the execution, we will be able to address your concerns more directly.
We're not aiming to be findable on Google via a search for "Lyra." Our execution of this requirement may be "horrible," but as it's not one of our requirements, we're fine with that.
We're already sustainable, which is in our opinion a mature funding model.
We would finally like to add that "sense" has a different meaning for each of the billions of people on this planet.
I've never done much newsgroups because I didn't like public speaking without anonymity.
ICQ and others were like today's WhatsApp and hangout. I didn't use a single interface for them at the time, and still don't today, I don't see a big difference.
Today, I'm off Facebook, I barely follow twitter at all. I'm fine with reading hacker news, and other tech news aggregators.
I think you can lament on the disappearance of RSS, but to me, that's just about the main issue.
I guess the big difference between then and now is that we used to control better what we opted in. Now we're more force fed.