Peacenik

@bogomep here you go!... 1) What makes you different from other similar-ish solutions? There are open source distributed networks like Diaspora and Mastadon that feel more like Twitter to me than Facebook. I prefer the Facebook model to share more personal things (photos, personal thoughts, etc) with friends and family rather than the Twitter model of "followers" who you may not know personally. There are also non-distributed, closed source alternatives that are more like Facebook, but are commercial, failing (or failed), or focus on things that seem unnecessary (to me) such as how Steemit incentivizes posting by offering their own crypto currency. Finally, I find most (not all) of these projects, especially the open source ones, fail the grandmother test. As an experiment, I asked my 84 year old mother, and some of her friends, to sign up and use Diaspora. None of them understood how or where to start. But they can, and do, use Peacenik. They got a friend request from me, just like Facebook, and signed up with little friction nor confusion. 2) How do you plan to monetize it (if any)? The plan (with no timeline, of course) looks like this. First, get it out there, quietly, and see what people think. That's where I am now. Next, after making changes based on user feedback, etc., be a little louder about it and focus on adoption, to see if the network can attract people and get some momentum without making any money (yet). Finally, if these things have gone well, monetize it using the Wordpress model (paid hosting). An early version of Peacenik included a button for in-app purchases ($5 a month or so) to deploy a message / photo server on a user's behalf in case they are not nerdy enough, aren't friends with someone nerdy enough, or just don't want to waste time. I removed this button and decided to just host a default message / photo server for those who don't have their own, in order to, again, make it super easy to use until adoption is stronger. There are a lot of ways this Wordpress model could go, including reseller partnerships with hyperscalers (big and small), who would sell CPU, memory, and storage as we put more workloads on their clouds.

@matt_reider Thanks!

@bogomep I have! Just involves precious time :)

@matt_reider maybe you can opensource it and some people would be happy to help

@bogomep it's open source: https://github.com/KotoLLC/peacenik