We start with the core of Twitter, with some minor tweaks, just a simple microblogging platform. And then, we make it into an everything app.
"Isn't that what Elon is doing?"
failing to, yes
"Why are you making WeChat"
fuck wechat
I am not going to make wechat or excks dot cum.
We start with Twitter, like, back when it was good. People can make posts, posts have character limits, and there's nothing you can do to bypass the limits.
This Twitter clone is called Dere. This is a double entendre, in Japanese dere means "to be lovestruck", and in Turkish it means "stream". It's also a word that exists in several other languages, which suggests it's excellent for i18n.
We add some things to Dere that are not in Twitter. Small things like reactions, shareable post lists, and the ability to upload emojis. extensive profile customization, etc. But also collaborative features; Circles, Collab Posts, Remixes. Things that encourage people to work together. We also add features that enable non-invasive monetization like user storefronts and subscriptions.
So far pretty milquetoast. Maybe kinda neat, but no one would move over. The next step is where all the magic happens.
For you see, this platform, is federated! (kind of, end user federation is not in scope because that's hell to implement, but our internal architecture will be) But not in the same way as any of the others. Whereas traditional federation like Mastadon or Bluesky attempts to federate a single service, we instead have a trunk service, Dere, which handles authentication, follows, storage, direct messaging, and most importantly multimodal discovery, (more on that in a bit); this trunk then connects to a bunch of Piconets!
What is a Piconet? Piconets are tiny (not in size but in scope) social media networks that do one thing and do it well. They focus on one type of content and work to provide the best possible experience for that content without dragging down other types of content.
Piconets (aka picos) only worry about content and discovery; everything else is handled by Dere, with profiles shared between all picos. This means all picos also automatically support features like Collabs, Circles, and Remixes provided by the trunk network. Remixes also work across picos, allowing for e.g. taking a song someone made and creating a fan MV as a remix of it, with both versions being discoverable from each other.
Planned Piconets:
- [[Root]] - music e.g. soundcloud, bandcamp
- [[Quarter]] - itch/newgrounds style stuff
- [[Screentone]] - manga/comics
- [[Ink]] - art/photography
- [[Type]] - blogs and other longform writing
Possibly:
- code sharing
- arxiv/hypothes.is
- anilist/imdb
- wikis
- last.fm
- q/a e.g. marshmallow
- podcasts
- something like a giant voice chat that a bunch of people can get in on or something
- [[Community Notes]]
The final piece of the puzzle is Imbeds, which are just internal embeds. These allow picos to feed back into Dere, enabling discovery across all mediums from one feed, without ever compromising on the experience for each specific medium.
I believe that by encouraging collaboration across people and mediums, we can start to tear down the echo chambers and polarization social media has given us. Let's make everyone hug!
How will you get users??????
Trade secret but I do actually have it figured out. It exploits Discord, (no spam/tos violation/anything like that, just a massive loophole to do with other applications that connect with discord) and that's the only hint I'll give for now, but it will be an extremely useful feature in its own right. We'll also sponsor artists to go to artist alleys because hell yeah!