Regarding the aforementioned problem. Every single social service that has been successful had at least one of the two ways to bootstrap your social graph:
- Import an existing contact list, either from another service or your phonebook or your email contacts (Twitter, LinkedIn, Path, Foursquare, most IM apps)
- Global user search and profiles with lots of fields (Facebook, VK)
Most fediverse projects have none. I want to fix that. I have some ideas that need experimenting.
I don’t really know what Smithereens is, and I feel like I should know what it is to discuss what you’re doing (especially "you’ve got an account, now what"); neither your profile nor Ecosia seem to give me pointers.
As you mention, the stretch that is required to involve in different communities is so large that people might just see the barebones #microblog use case as a sort of bliss. It’s possible to build your own community by being followed by the right people, and it’s happened to me, by accident, on an account that I don’t control anymore (I can’t reset my password), but various settings are involved, among which there’s a sort of social meritocracy upfront.
Trying to grasp the attention of people who merely don’t give it to you is a sort of involuntary (or not) self-harm, but it might also expose users to accepting harmful relationships as a normalized habit. We could discuss about the toxic side effects of #SocialMedia for a long time…
As I don’t use ActivityPub so much these days, would you be so kind as to tell me what’s Smithereens? Humane Tech seems deeply interested into this.
I don’t really know what Smithereens is, and I feel like I should know what it is to discuss what you’re doing (especially "you’ve got an account, now what"); neither your profile nor Ecosia seem to give me pointers.