Gregory's ServerOne caveat: I think it's important to bear in mind that what's exciting about these projects to tech nerds is not exciting to the average person who's fleeing Twitter. In fact, I've watched many an eye glaze over when someone (occasionally myself) starts expounding on the benefits of federation. I've also been seeing tons of memes going around about how confusing and alienating it is, some of which are pretty funny and not without a kernel of truth.
The average user doesn't want to think about what's going on under the hood. He certainly doesn't want to sit through a TED Talk before he can start engaging with a product that should already feel familiar. The big companies know this, and that's why when they market to mainstream audience, they don't prattle on about their cutting edge server infrastructure or the custom MVVM framework they're using: they focus on how it will connect them with people and enrich their lives.
I'm not saying federation isn't awesome or that we shouldn't be excited about it or share that excitement. But if the goal is to seize this opportunity to drive adoption, it's important that we tailor the message to the audience. Once they've been here for a while, they'll inevitably be exposed to some of the underlying structure, and since they'll have some personal investment at that point, maybe they'll even find it interesting. But in the meantime, too much technical jargon is likely to send people running in the other direction.
The average user doesn't want to think about what's going on under the hood. He certainly doesn't want to sit through a TED Talk before he can start engaging with a product that should already feel familiar. The big companies know this, and that's why when they market to mainstream audience, they don't prattle on about their cutting edge server infrastructure or the custom MVVM framework they're using: they focus on how it will connect them with people and enrich their lives.
I'm not saying federation isn't awesome or that we shouldn't be excited about it or share that excitement. But if the goal is to seize this opportunity to drive adoption, it's important that we tailor the message to the audience. Once they've been here for a while, they'll inevitably be exposed to some of the underlying structure, and since they'll have some personal investment at that point, maybe they'll even find it interesting. But in the meantime, too much technical jargon is likely to send people running in the other direction.