Finally!
Doonesbury is my favorite strip. Once discussed Asterix with Trudeau at a festival; a high point. I'm sad that he's slowly winding it down.
John, thanks for this post! A couple of things are worth mentioning:
Application setup with Facebook (etc) won't be required using the Known hosted service, or with the software that we'll be making available to institutions. If you want to roll Known out to your users, you'll be able to give them a seamless experience, with friendly setup and no need to mess with the APIs on third-party services. And you can do it on your servers or ours. (Full support and customization services are also available to institutions.)
Meanwhile, the latest version of <a href="http://withknown.com">Known</a> has a full WYSIWYG editor for posts. In our forthcoming release, this is going to have full photo uploading built in, so you can add images and resize them as required.
There are also some new, customizable themes in the latest version of Known, which it looks like Reclaim haven't upgraded to. <a href="http://werd.io">My Known site</a>, for example, uses the Cherwell theme, which allows you to use your own background image.
As soon as you get out of the Bay Area the landscape changes a little.
Yet more chocolate for breakfast!
@tcarmody And as you point out, it is the fucking antithesis of social.
@tcarmody It's a great framing, and I think you did it the most succinctly. Definitely something we should all pick up and run with.
@tcarmody I wrote a follow-on: http://werd.io/2014/the-problem-with-okcupid-is-not-a-problem-with-the Trying to solve this problem.
Loving @Streak's non-CRM features at least as much as their CRM features. They've done a good job.
That looks pretty badass. I think if everything goes wrong on Known I want to start a community site where people post pictures of their cooking. Like Foodspotting but for people who can actualy cook for themselves.
Blasting Knife Party and sending a ton of emails. Why, what are you doing with your Friday night?
Guest-posting on Jason Kottke's blog, Tim Carmody argues that the problems with Facebook and OKCupid's involuntary human testing are problems with the social web at large:
Still, for as long as the web does work this way, we are never only
these companies' "products," but their producers, too. And to the extent
that these companies show they aren't willing to live up to the basic
agreement that we make these things and give them to you so you will show them to other people
-- the engine that makes this whole world wide web business go -- I'm
not going to have anything to do with them any more. What's more, I'll
get mad enough to find a place that will show the things I write to
other people and tell them they shouldn't accept it either. Because,
ultimately, you ought to be ashamed to treat people and the things they
make this way.
It's a great piece, and I agree, with a major caveat: this isn't how the web - or even the social web - works at all.
What Tim is referring to is a silo-centric version of the commercial web that we've come to accept as the new normal. The accepted thinking right now is that of course services and applications are running psychological tests on us without our permission. Of course they're using opaque algorithms to monetize our ability to communicate with our friends and family. Of course they're mining our private communications in order to display advertising.
There's no of course about it. We founded Known because we know that these policies harm independent content creators. We're not alone: projects like Indie Box and Sandstorm, not to mention the entire indie web community, are springing up to provide more empowering, respectful software and services. Before long, taking advantage of your users will be a market disadvantage, and businesses that have built themselves up by disenfranchising the people who use their products will find themselves in a tough spot. Even today, though, the social web doesn't have to mean being taken advantage of, and we're proud to be building a more respectful alternative.
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@npdoty Wait WHAT?! Well, gosh, it sounds like I'll do both!
@jon_melville On the other hand, how much does a book cost ...?
@elgg Do you have an actual end-user's guide somewhere these days? Someone's asked me for one & I'd love to help them out.
If you'd like to run @withknown on campus, I'd love to have a quick chat with you. #edtech #reclaimyourdomain
While I can believe that a blogger posted without oversight, probably not worth keeping someone who used your masthead to justify genocide.
Werd I/O © Ben Werdmuller. The text (without images) of this site is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
