

A New Kind of Platform for Building Actually Social Apps. - EGreg
http://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/a-new-kind-of-platform/

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apalmer
Its really hard to get any idea of what this platform actually is. I had to
read the whole blog post to even get a hint of what the platform is supposed
to do for me, and was left with more questions than answers:

1) Is this a centralized platform hosted in your 'cloud'? 2) Is this a
decentralized set of libraries/framework/libraries that I deploy myself? 3) Am
I still in the situation of building my business on your platform and when
your business goals change I have to worry about you disabling my application?

I really should be clear on at least these main points after reading the blog
but I am not, I am guessing that all three are true, but I really am not 100%
sure.

~~~
EGreg
OP here. Well, first off I should say that there are many sides to a platform.
The blog post was meant to give an overview of what today's social apps have
in common, and how things could and should be done better. You'll hear a lot
more about it in the coming weeks.

The list there is just an overview of what sets our platform apart from
everything else out there, and what makes our team excited to work on it for
the past 2 years. We believe we're making a difference. And the size of our
user base lets us really test if we're right, and iterate until we hit our
goals.

If you want to learn more about our business strategy and what our long term
roadmap looks like, get in touch with us, or follow us. We are not yet at the
stage where we are inviting other developers to build on our platform. We are
building it out for ourselves and our users.

That said, you're correct. These are valid concerns and you can only learn
about these kinds of things as the platform gets opened up and policies get
put in place. Pay attention to the incentive structure of the platforms you
are building on, and you will have answers as valid as ones the platform
developers themselves can tell you. The short and simplistic answer to your
question is that, IF everything goes as we plan, in a few years this will be a
completely decentralized social network (think Wordpress of social networks),
that does right by its users and developers.

~~~
troymc
These ideas are similar to the 'personal cloud' concepts being advanced, for
example, by members of the Respect Network [1]. Are you associated with them
or a similar organization?

[1] <http://respectnetwork.com>

~~~
EGreg
I've seen a few personal cloud startups present, but I haven't had a close
look at Respect Network. I think personal cloud is in its infancy, and in a
few years we'll have redundant encrypted data stored on many different servers
where only we can access it using our key.

When that happens, we'll want to integrate it with our platform, but until
then, we're focusing on the other aspects: user signup, contact management,
invitations, granular access controls, subscriptions and filters, offline
notifications, realtime collaboration, scalability, working on any device,
etc. These are hard problems to solve and now that we've built something that
solves all of them in one place, we think we have something valuable.

------
enraged_camel
Seriously? Do we need _more_ social apps?

This isn't directed at the OP, but rather the general trend where everyone and
their mother wants to develop social features. I can't wait for the day when
it actually disappears (and gets replaced with another fad, presumably).

/le sigh

