
Show HN: Midnight.pub – Virtual Speakeasy - ms123
Midnight is a side-project I&#x27;ve been working on for the past year, but only released in alpha a month ago. It aims to be the web equivalent of your local pub: a place you can go to and talk about your day with strangers or friends. It&#x27;s heavily inspired by write.as (for simplicy) and Roam (for bi-directional linking). My hope is that it fosters creative writing as well as typical pub discussions.<p>You can read more about it and the concept on https:&#x2F;&#x2F;midnight.pub<p>Here are some example of interesting stories written:
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;midnight.pub&#x2F;e&#x2F;269435632215917061
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;midnight.pub&#x2F;e&#x2F;270853987488498184
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;midnight.pub&#x2F;e&#x2F;271216985664127501<p>Thanks for reading!
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35post
Congrats, this is a an awesome idea and well implemented. Especially the name
and domain is kind of welcoming and setting the right tone.

I just checked out write.as' and ResearchRoam's traffic and they have both
over 1-2M visits per month which isn't too bad and surprised me a bit. Do you
have insights into this market? Why does a simple editor (write.as) gets so
much traffic and is still growing? Is linking (Roam) not an overrated feature
and easy to accomplish with any other note taking tool? What kind of people
are using these tools? Isn't there not heavy competition on the native app
side?

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cxr
> Why does a simple editor (write.as) gets so much traffic and is still
> growing?

Write.as isn't an editor; it's a Medium (blogging) alternative.

> Is linking (Roam) not an overrated feature and easy to accomplish with any
> other note taking tool?

Roam is a supercharged wiki specifically for journaling and mind-mapping (i.e.
a personal wiki). People who don't understand why GitHub "wikis" aren't really
wikis will also have difficulty understanding what makes wikis
appealing/effective.

You can look through recent discussions here on HN about similar Roam-like
tools (like Obsidian[1]) if you want to see how people are approaching these
things.

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598)

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agent008t
As someone who doesn't frequent pubs - is going to pubs and talking about your
day to strangers actually a feature of pubs? How does that actually work?
What's the etiquette?

~~~
tarboreus
Usually it's something like you have a sports event you want to see, head to
the pub, and you're sort of half watching it on the TV, and there's others
around watching the same thing or chatting. If people are talking about
something a little ways away from you it's socially acceptable to butt in,
more or less. As you spend time in a local, you also get to know the regulars
and they'll wind up introducing you to other regulars, etc. Double all this if
there's more affiliation going on, like you're all immigrants or ex-pats or
whatever, or if you're all lawyers or something.

Source: Irish immigrant family.

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exikyut
The listed links (which are not automatically made clickable in text posts):

[https://midnight.pub](https://midnight.pub)

[https://midnight.pub/e/269435632215917061](https://midnight.pub/e/269435632215917061)

[https://midnight.pub/e/270853987488498184](https://midnight.pub/e/270853987488498184)

[https://midnight.pub/e/271216985664127501](https://midnight.pub/e/271216985664127501)

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whtrbt
The simplicity is really appealing! Your video was good too, very clear.

It's tempting to try it, but I prefer to host all my writing and works myself.

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cxr
MUSHes and MOOs are virtual pubs that aren't as fashionable any more as they
once were. (Most MUSH-oriented apps are glorified telnet clients, and tend to
reproduce the same aesthetics and design flaws/idiosyncrasies.) Real life pubs
are real-time, and MUSHes offer a good balance of real-time, networked
interaction and persistent objects. This project doesn't handle the real-time
aspect and is less like a pub than a blog with a wiki-like editing experience.

I'm convinced that with all the chat apps that are popping up, the Slack
killer will be the first one to reinvent the MUSH by bolting its most notable
features onto the "chat" space.

(When Keybase was still a thing, I thought they might do it by introducing
"bot workers"—chat bots implemented in a script bundle that's managed and
executed in the client itself—like a browser add-on, but based on Service
Workers a la Cloudflare Workers.)

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cammikebrown
This is fascinating and I’m not sure I quite understand it. I hadn’t heard of
either of the other two services so I’m looking at those now.

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Kye
Write.as is a minimal blog platform that federates over ActivityPub.

~~~
35post
Heard about ActivityPub the first time, just checked it out briefly. Ok it'
some social networking protocol, how does it relate to write.as?

~~~
Kye
You can see and comment on write.as posts from other ActivityPub (AP)
platforms that support it like Mastodon. It's up to the platform to implement
it since the AP specification leaves implementation details mostly up to the
implementor.

A recent discussion here on HN covers it pretty well:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23852036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23852036)

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Par_Avion
Great concept. Looking forward to seeing the community it forms.

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chacha2
Video is a bit quiet.

