👋🏼 I'm Kenny
I've been creating Press (The Internet Press), an exclusive profit sharing social network. I see a lot of posts out there advising to not "go after a billion $ unicorn" but are we really going to be stuck with Meta forever?
I want to make what people want! I intend for Press to have limited curated ads to enable profit sharing and people can buy their profile names like a .com for $14 / year and resell at any amount, any time. Posts are crafted with a WYSIWYG editor to post anything from plain text, to your flyers' wildest dreams.
What are your thoughts? Should I kick dirt?
Replies
nice in theory, will be very hard to make it work tbh
@taniabell Any suggestions or specifics? I have other plans to help the business model succeed but the platform is almost complete :)
@kenny_hawkins
assuming you want to make some meaningful progress, contribute to the world and make some money...
then my honest suggestion is better find something else to focus on and let this be a side project. unironically. I mean this in the kindest way possible.
why? you're dealing with inertia here. yes there's been a mass exodus off of FB, first, and, more recently, Twitter. we're probably seeing early stages of fragmentation of socials platforms so smaller players have a chance. the likes of bluesky have a chance. it's worth looking into how long it took them to get to this point, who their founders are, who funded them etc.
hope that helps
@taniabell 100% agree- and it will certainly be a side project for a while, just floating ideas out there. The website is almost complete but have many little things to tidy up before trying to make an app. It'll be fun to see where it goes and I think it's a good time to start building.
Thankfully I have a 9-5 so not concerned about any costs yet. Like any other developer I have other things I've been tinkering on too.
@kenny_hawkins cool. it all depends on what you're trying to achieve. if it's just a few side projects - why not?!
Purposeful Poop
I hope this works, seems like a cool idea. I would imagine it will be hard to get off the ground, but maybe you can find a small community that would really benefit from a feature that wouldnt be hard for you to support that other networks wouldnt be willing to support, then you can grow from that community specifically.
are you building on top of an existing protocol, like https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/atproto ?
It would be less riskier of a proposition if it was easier for me to migrate away if you choose not to maintain the platform at some point.
I'd be curious to know how you plan to grow the user base, as I have a lot to learn in this space too.
@catt_marroll No special protocol for posts at the moment but using ssl/encryption ofc. Using Signal for messaging. I like the idea of decentralized socials but it removes the 'globalization' aspect if you will (for better or for worse). People can download all their data if they decide to leave. If they want to make Press their home, Press offers backdating posts to paid members to make migrating content easy.
You'll be able to refer up to 7 people ($1 / person) to get half off for the first year. Personally inviting and comping small business that impact their local community and attend any local events to share Press. I live in Cincinnati, so I'm about to party it up here when Press is done :). Run a few ads, build a small community, pursue donations/investment, maintain capped profit model. It's a start.
Purposeful Poop
@kenny_hawkins nice thanks for the reply! intersting wrt using signal, hadn't ever internalized that I could use their tech.
I think the referrer program makes sense, as well as using your local community. I hope it gains some traction, i wonder how well ads would perform for something like this. I kind of assume ads only really start to work at a large spend, but maybe that isnt the case.