PaybackTony

This is a UI bug due to formatting meant for mobile devices . The scrollbars are tiny in these instances. This isn't by design on desktop and is getting fixed as we speak.

The issue in my eyes is that things like Mastodon are pretty well designed for what it is. A main feature of ours is the personalization and separation which we could have hacked into such a protocol but ends up being a worse experience for the majority of the users. Personally I wouldn't want to use a fragmented network to connect with people I know in person (Friends, family, co-workers), but I have no issue with it for online communities. In the end though, I think fragmentation doesn't help simplicity and simplicity is what the majority general social network user is looking for.

A YouTube premium but without the data collection type model is something we've talked about. Hopefully the users will guide us in the right direction with this. We have to worry about fighting the stigma that there is even a paid option for it, and would that stifle growth? Not answers we have but something we've questioned.

There couldn't be more truth to this. Ads are such a slippery slope. If for arguments sake Slyde grew to be something, it would be due in no small part to the "take it or leave it" approach to ads, if they ever become a thing. Any deviation from this would essentially be biting the hand that feeds you. I can't say we have all or many of the answers to combat this problem but I can say we are weary of it and is the primary reason we want to develop other monetization strategies that are a win-win for us and the users.

I see the satire in this. Things like the "Can we make people more sad or happy by being selective on the feed" experiment facebook did is just one of the many reasons we wanted as pure a social feed as possible. People you know ordered by who's posted most recently and a way to traverse their posts if you wanna know a little more. I don't think a "Top" algorithm has a place on a social feed, or you end up with satire but in real life.

Our idea at the moment is to act like reddit ads do. Advertisers essentially make a post without anything more than a title, description, image / video and a url, with the image / video hosted and scrubbed by us. This will most definitely take careful design but your point is valid. Right now it's a delicate balance of not getting ahead of ourselves but also not setting ourselves up for failure due to poor planning.

Premium things is something Snapchat tried out for a bit with bitmoji, though to be honest I haven't looked deeply into any available data on how that worked out for them.

We've tested on a number of browsers but not often enough on some of them - like Firefox. We don't like all the data Chrome collects on it's users, but it makes up for the vast majority of usage on desktop and Android so it's important to test it most thoroughly on the most thoroughly used browser. We did the same on Safari which is a bit more private than Chrome, but not totally. We need to test more, perhaps something like browserstack needs to make it's way back into my toolchain.

Thank you for this. Will make sure this is addressed asap. We previously far overused divs (and still do) and have been going over everything making them buttons but still need to do a lot of work in making it more accessible.

I think that's an apt comparison. Our goal is to make something that could replace facebook but not by being a facebook killer. Instead of focusing on being an anti-facebook we tried to take a fresh look and make up for some of the discrepancies between how we live life in real life and how we do it online without being idealistic about it. The success of slyde hinges on being a better tool for the job (among other things). Our hope is if we focused only on the job that needed to be done, and not what other tools people were using, we could make something different and useful.

We have a slightly outdated one, it's just not as obvious on that page as it should be. If you click the "Watch Slyde in Action!" it's actually a button. We have a pending update that embeds an updated version of that video.

When we started building this we were adamant about making something we wanted to use. There are a number of open and successful options out there, they just didn't work the way we wanted it to. Building a general network that appealed to us and our parents / co-workers meant we had to make sure the experience was just right and is why we went for a ground up approach. Unfortunately that puts users in the position that they have to just trust our words when it comes to privacy. Trust is earned and we just got started. I can make promises about not selling out but until we prove it they will just be words. We are users ourselves, we don't want to feel like we're being watched and have every grain of data out there for advertisers to see. In time we hope to prove we want that for everyone else too.

This is not to say we haven't been actively looking at ways we can open up or become compliant with a few of the open protocols that already exist as long as it fits with the personal privacy we want for our users on top of the data privacy.

This is in the air but there are a couple things we are keeping in mind. Ads are still on the table, just not hyper targeted ones. The only targeting being to people who follow certain subjects on slyde (cars, weather, etc). Outside of that, not much more. This will limit the amount of advertising revenue for sure, but this leads to the second point. We want to also allow creators of premium content to create premium channels on slyde, which would be a way for content creators to fund themselves, similar to how YouTube does it. Ultimately we have to accept the fact that we just aren't going to be able to monetize users to the same extent as facebook or google does, and that's okay with us.

Or at least willing to try it out. Critical mass is THE issue and we have a couple ways we're looking to get past it. Ultimately people will have to want to connect with people the way slyde lets you, and want to share it with those people to boot.

Our terms are the standard termly terms for a social network, however, we have content rating and filtering. Pretty much we only care about public content and reported content if it is breaking government laws that we know about. Otherwise, what's private is private and we'd like to keep it that way.

[Edit] To clarify, we don't moderate based on opinion. Only when we are legally required to, otherwise we let dislikes / downvotes from other members do the talking.

Thank you for the screenshot. Will get these kinks worked out asap.

I think mastodon is a great concept, and I like the idea of a community of communities. I think the difference is mainly that slyde was built to have a little lower barrier to entry -- you don't have to pick an instance, for example - and that it's core principle is to get you to connect with everyone you know and share freely with them as opposed to be selective or have to add them to arbitrary lists.

1. Slyde was built mobile first, and there is still some work to be done on Desktop, this is definitely a big need and has been getting a lot more attention recently. We're definitely working on it.

2. Yes, for iOS and Android "Slyde Social" on the appropriate app stores.

3. That is exactly how it works. Instead of seeing someone's posts throughout your feed, you can browse through their feed from most recently active connection down. This feels much more natural on mobile, and getting tweaked and adjusted for desktop users.

They did, and we felt like it didn't work because it gave people too many choices. They had some suggested circles, but we felt that if we simplified the logic of separating your life, it would make it easier to use and require less thought when connecting with people.

Exactly, we realized right away that we all already have a built in personal privacy policy. We just had to turn it into a UX.

Tl;dr; We built a new social network called Slyde where you categorize connections based on who they are to you: friends, work, family or public. It has anonymous likes / dislikes and profile customization among other things. We launched to friends and family a month ago and just opened publicly. Story is below.

---

Around a year ago a few friends and I were talking about how we disliked social media. We came to a quick realization that we kept our accounts for the same reasons we never post on them; our friends, family and co-workers were there and we had no way to express our personality. We couldn’t share some things with friends because of fear of family members or work friends seeing. We could use groups or filters but those were cumbersome so we just opted not to post at all. Turns out we weren’t alone.

I floated the idea to them that maybe we should make our own. It was clear that there was a need for something new. But how could we give people an outlet to display their personality and still maintain that privacy?

It didn’t take long for us to determine that in most cases we all have 4 different personas in our day to day life: Friends, Family, Work / School and how we are in public. This would be the base of Slyde; it was the natural way we already maintained our social lives, we just needed to bring it online. Keep it simple. Give people 4 categories they can put people they know into, and allow them to share with those categories. Google Plus was something we looked at as an example of how giving people too many options can be a bad thing.

We got great feedback across the board on those assumptions, but we still wouldn’t use something new just because we could separate our lives easier. Through all the faults of MySpace there were a couple pieces that always made us feel like we got to know someone better. Music and Style. If we could show people a little more about ourselves instead of just writing an about me, our profile would better represent us. Especially if we could adjust it based on who was looking at it.

Being the only engineer -- I have previously worked as a lead architect and senior engineer at Vacasa and Nike -- it was going to be a large task. The biggest elephant in the room was critical mass. The value of a social network is the network. Our critical mass answer wasn’t exciting, but early results may be showing it to be true: Make something people want to use.

If we made something we would want to use, others might too. Once they’re on they aren’t likely to just delete their account. If the appetite for something new is as big as we thought it was we would see small but steady growth, and on a micro level these pockets of people would reach their own critical mass and begin sharing it at a higher rate. We’re already starting to see this happen.

We knew at the beginning the best way to get to a critical mass was to target a smaller mass. We spent a good amount of time theorizing on how we can adapt our ideas to fit a smaller niche. The more we developed these ideas, the less we found ourselves wanting to use it. We didn’t personally have a need for something new in a smaller niche community. The product that we wanted was a general social network that all our connections could join that gave us our personalities and privacy for self-expression. That idea lost it’s value if it only pandered to a niche audience.

When we released it to friends and family we weren’t expecting much. We figured a few people would sign up, we would get some feedback and then iterate. Instead, we had hundreds of them sign up and share it, and received overwhelmingly positive feedback on the overall concept. This seemed to validate that there is a need out there, and that we might have even executed on that need.

Our biggest tell that we were possibly hitting a sweet spot was how many people signed back in every day. It was initially perplexing. Even with little content during our closed test and an average anywhere from 10 to 40 connections per user, nearly 40% of our users were signing in every day, with most of our users signing in every other day. After opening it up publicly a few days ago we had our answer. We might have built something people want to use. We’ve received the same positive feedback our friends and family gave us, from complete strangers. So far we’ve only had a small reddit post to test the waters. Starting with this HN post we’re ready to start telling the rest of the world about it.

We know that for true data privacy we have to give up ad retargeting and tracking. Privacy vs profit is a real discussion, however we believe we can have a viable business model without giving away data privacy. Less targeted advertising and things like premium channels are things we’ve discussed. Privacy is a core principle and guides us in every decision, however right now it’s about building something people want and worrying about business model if we’re lucky enough to get to worry about it.

We’ve possibly stumbled upon a couple of right answers, but we surely don’t have all of them. We wanted to post on HN for two reasons: to show others what we’ve done and to get feedback on our execution. Please fire away!

We are most definitely not facebook algorithms. We actually posted a video on YouTube, hastily put together about why we made it. Though I can't really argue your logic.

Most of that is boiler-plate from Termly, who we used to make a terms and conditions that were acceptable to Apple and Google. None of us are lawyers and those platforms have some level of requirements for acceptable terms. We wouldn't try to stop anyone from saying what they thought about Slyde, I will remove that clause, it goes against everything we stand for.

As for us being in the US, it's because that's where we live.

To speak to the centralized part, for me and my own use, that is something I want. I don't think that's what everyone wants but I do believe it's what the majority of people want. The problem is, the places that centralize that for us don't always do it with the best of ethics in mind. Maybe we can change that.

This does need to be easier. Up until now we've just had people e-mail deleteme@slyde.network and we take it down. This isn't displayed anywhere, as it should. We promise to have a self service tool within 48 hours to do that. We want to build something people want to use, and we most definitely don't want people feeling like they can't leave if they want. GDPR doesn't want us to want that either!

In my opinion, it's a nearly impossible feat, but possible. I think the only way to get it to work is to generate an organic base that loves it and shares it in that same ilk. It had to get started somewhere and we got there. Our first concern was, once people got on would they like it? The answer thus far was yes, our percentage of daily actives was nearly triple what we thought, given no critical mass. The next question is, getting more people on. It's been growing well enough organically the last 24hrs but this very question is really one I don't know if there's an answer to yet, and maybe we're going to answer it here.

Basically means that if you upload content for your connections or the public to see, we can show your friends / connections or the public (based on your settings) that content without paying you for it.

The critical mass problem is the most difficult social problem to solve. Just have to make something people want to use and if they want to use it, they'll share it. That's the idea anyway.

The website is available everywhere. The iOS is temporarily US only until Apple approves the region updates we just made. Android should be available world wide as well. I was able to still access it myself. Where are you accessing from, if you don't mind my asking?

Social media hasn't changed in over a decade but the way we live our lives, especially digitally, has. We've grown up but our social media hasn't. Slyde isn't meant to be an idealogical anti-facebook. Slyde is meant to help us connect more meaningfully and privately with the people we know. Privacy doesn't have to be an idealogical decision, it can be a design decision from the beginning that could still result in a viable model.

Myself -- an ex lead architect and senior engineer at Vacasa and Nike -- and a few of my non-engineering friends got together and decided to build the next social media platform. We just made it public late last week and have received overwhelmingly positive feedback both from our closed testing (with just friends and family) and our single post about it the day we went public on Reddit. We had more people check it out and get accounts than we anticipated; it feels like we've hit the right nerve. We made something we wanted to use and we already have a lot of people who have never had social media who now have a Slyde. We hope you all on HN will like it too.

There is a video on the front page you can watch that is only 2 minutes long but explains the basics of how it works.

Absolutely. I took the question as to why a percentage is charged for card transactions at all. The additional 0.5% is most definitely a "because they can" type of pricing and that's more an economics theory discussion. The market has shown a willingness to put up with that pricing and therefore a value proposition is set so until something changes no reason to price differently if the market is willing to pay a model with a much higher margin. I don't necessarily agree but that's a sound short-term business decision. I know from experience that sometimes going into a market with an established pricing model, however unfair, with a better pricing model for the customer can be bad for business and result not only in less profit per sale, but fewer customers making the buy decision because of the pricing model expectations that have already been set by the market. It baffles me, but I'm no economics major.

Much of the interchange rate is charged directly by Visa / Mastercard. The merchant bank will then add basis points to that, and often you get another mark-up by the individual ISO (independent sales organization) in a typical set up. So, then, why do card processors charge percentage? Well, when you see those Capital One commercials where you get 1% cashback on this type of purchase or 2% cashback on this, that's where the money is coming from.

Companies like Stripe shield you from the intricacies of interchange pricing but if you operate on interchange + (meaning, the merchant account provider is charging you interchange + X %), you see that processing corporate rewards cards are the biggest killers, because you are essentially covering their 2% cashback programs. Additionally, some of that cost is insurance. If you have a fraudulent charge on your card processors work with your banks to cover some of that money, which they make from the overall % of total volume.

Not saying any of that is right, or an ideal situation, that's just the why.