CommYou Alpha open for LiveJournal users
Nov. 3rd, 2008 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurOkay -- it's time for me to bite the bullet, stop being quite so much of a perfectionist, and invite y'all to come play.
As of today, CommYou is now officially up to its Alpha release. It's by no stretch of the imagination done, but I think it's up to the point where it is getting both useful and stable enough for more than my current half-dozen semi-regular users, and I'd like to get more eyes on it. It no longer requires Facebook -- indeed, the LiveJournal version is considerably more advanced than the Facebook version at the moment, although FB will be brought in line soon.
There's quite a bit of documentation on the CommYou website, which can tell you all the nuts and bolts. This includes a Quick Start Guide, which covers all the high points briefly, as well as a detailed guide that goes through everything in deep detail.
A lot of people have asked me what CommYou *is*, and it's a little tricky to answer, because I'm pulling a bunch of things together. But the high concept is that we're trying to make conversations that are interactive (like IM) *and* persistent (like LJ). That is, you can be part of a conversation in real time via IM, but it's not transient: you can easily catch up on what you've missed and join in later, restarting the conversation. Whereas a blogging system like LJ is mainly about the top post, CommYou is focused on the resulting conversation. It separates things into distinct conversations in distinct communities, unlike most of the micro-blogging platforms (which are generally just a huge stream of messages).
I expect it to be most useful for cases where you are looking for a conversation: trying to get feedback, make plans, or simply chat with your friends in semi-real-time. It's not as strong as LJ for deep detailed thought yet (because it doesn't yet have threading), but it should get there over time, and I believe it's already stronger than LJ for full-community interaction. I'm not especially trying to replace LJ in peoples' hearts; rather, I'm creating a new tool that is probably useful at different times.
So please give it a try -- get into it, start and participate in some conversations, and tell me what you think. Talk about the election as it's happening. Spread the word to those who you think would like it: I'll eventually have to lock it down to invitation-only, but I'm not bothering with that until we seem to be straining the system. Tell me what you think, and let's talk about how we can make it really hum.
(And my apologies in advance if something goes wrong: this should be a bit of a learning experience for me...)
As of today, CommYou is now officially up to its Alpha release. It's by no stretch of the imagination done, but I think it's up to the point where it is getting both useful and stable enough for more than my current half-dozen semi-regular users, and I'd like to get more eyes on it. It no longer requires Facebook -- indeed, the LiveJournal version is considerably more advanced than the Facebook version at the moment, although FB will be brought in line soon.
There's quite a bit of documentation on the CommYou website, which can tell you all the nuts and bolts. This includes a Quick Start Guide, which covers all the high points briefly, as well as a detailed guide that goes through everything in deep detail.
A lot of people have asked me what CommYou *is*, and it's a little tricky to answer, because I'm pulling a bunch of things together. But the high concept is that we're trying to make conversations that are interactive (like IM) *and* persistent (like LJ). That is, you can be part of a conversation in real time via IM, but it's not transient: you can easily catch up on what you've missed and join in later, restarting the conversation. Whereas a blogging system like LJ is mainly about the top post, CommYou is focused on the resulting conversation. It separates things into distinct conversations in distinct communities, unlike most of the micro-blogging platforms (which are generally just a huge stream of messages).
I expect it to be most useful for cases where you are looking for a conversation: trying to get feedback, make plans, or simply chat with your friends in semi-real-time. It's not as strong as LJ for deep detailed thought yet (because it doesn't yet have threading), but it should get there over time, and I believe it's already stronger than LJ for full-community interaction. I'm not especially trying to replace LJ in peoples' hearts; rather, I'm creating a new tool that is probably useful at different times.
So please give it a try -- get into it, start and participate in some conversations, and tell me what you think. Talk about the election as it's happening. Spread the word to those who you think would like it: I'll eventually have to lock it down to invitation-only, but I'm not bothering with that until we seem to be straining the system. Tell me what you think, and let's talk about how we can make it really hum.
(And my apologies in advance if something goes wrong: this should be a bit of a learning experience for me...)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-03 10:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-03 10:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-03 10:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-04 04:25 pm (UTC)The account has been around for a little while, and may have pre-dated the OpenID standard, thus may not fit in its requirements.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-04 06:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-04 12:53 am (UTC)I *had* thought that one of the important features was that it tied together FB and LJ (with other tools expected to come on line in the future); did I misunderstand, or is that simply not as important as the features you've stressed in this alpha announcement?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-04 03:55 am (UTC)By threading, I mean the ability to reply directly to specific past messages. (Eg, the way I'm responding to you here.) At the moment, CommYou doesn't have that: each conversation is a simple linear thread with no branching, the way many forums and all IM systems have. There are specific reasons why I haven't implemented threading yet (mostly due to UI), but it's in the not-too-distant plans. Indeed, that's going to be one of the radical things I'm planning in the new client: IM-ish realtime conversations with threading, which I don't think I've ever seen before.
I *had* thought that one of the important features was that it tied together FB and LJ (with other tools expected to come on line in the future); did I misunderstand, or is that simply not as important as the features you've stressed in this alpha announcement?
It's intended and important, but not technically simple: I have to do a bunch of rewriting of the FB side to make it internally consistent, and wrestle with some fairly tricky identity-management issues. (This isn't quite uncharted territory, but very few services have yet tried to do identity merging as seriously as I'm planning to.) It's in the plans, but since essentially all of my initial user base seems to not only be on LJ, but prefer that identity to FB, it's wound up a bit further down the priority queue than I'd originally planned.
It's not forgotten, by any means -- you'll see that it's one of the major stories in the Things To Come page. But it's looking like other things (like a better client) are *probably* higher priority than identity merging, so it may be a little while before I get to it.
And mind: both FB and LJ are already working together, in *essentially* the same framework. There are some inconsistencies in how FB currently works, but they're pretty compatible already -- witness the fact that conversations in CommYou Discuss already cross cleanly between the two social networks. What we don't have yet is the ability to say, "I am this person on LJ *and* this person on FB, use the same IM for both, and want to be able to post conversations that span these systems". The internals for that are about half-implemented; I'll finish it and really get it humming when it floats to the top of the stack.