A frequently asked question about RSS.chat. How about adding external feeds to the timeline. Of course we thought of doing this, and even started development, you might even find some traces in the code of that attempt. #
The thing about bootstraps is you can't anticipate all the questions in advance, and thus can't have answers prepared for them. #
RSS.chat is a group chat app that uses RSS and OPML to present its face to the world, along with an API that still needs more docs. It's similar to half of Mastodon, and we're going for something completely different. People will want to run all-size workgroups. I like having one with 20 or 30 people, friends who develop software. I don't mind doing a little bit of moderation, but I don't want to drive deliberately into a scale that only works if you have extensive and very expensive moderation. #
"Small pieces loosely joined" means we have a great writing app, and connect to feed reading apps, ones with a few new features to do the things people want to do with a social network that happens to use RSS and OPML to get stuff around the net. It would be a different kind of feed reader but the underlying technology is identical, because we built on a set of web standards, widely supported by feed readers. This is a UI exploration for them, primarily. #
Just to be sure everyone understands -- I already have such an app, called FeedLand. You can set up an account there for free. And read the docs. It may not have all the features we'll need, but it will be a good place to start. #
FeedLand supports a crucial feature that most readers don't -- subscribable lists of feeds. If you want a collection of things to read that you can reply to even if you aren't on the site, that's where we're going to put that feature, that's where all the RSS.chat and compatible apps can be in one flow, arranged however you like. And from a user interface standpoint, we can make it look like it's all happening in one app, thanks to the rssCloud protocol and the websockets firehose feature in RSS.chat FeedLand has the same feature. #
We decided there was a line there, that RSS.chat would be one of the small pieces as would FeedLand, and both would be replaceable which is the other fundamental value. And with FeedLand and dynamic lists, will come the user interface people ask for. Many different user interfaces I hope because another way we've been cheated by the dominatioin of twitter-like social networks is there's no room to try out radically new ideas. Software should move. But Twitter didn't live on the web, so it didn't have the ethos of small pieces loosely joined. I know Jack wanted to do this, I had lunch with him in 2007 when he described the protocol, and I was very enthusiastic. But it never got out because the juggernaut that Twitter became didn't leave any room for new architectures. #
I hope this clears it up. I want RSS.chat to be the coral reef for a new network of feed-based apps running on the web that does what social networks do, but with no one owning it, and everyone gets to play. #
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