Hubzilla has an interesting opportunity right now.

Scott M. Stolz

Hubzilla has an interesting opportunity right now. Due to the recent controversial changes made by #Facebook, many people are looking for a Facebook alternative. Well, Hubzilla is a #FacebookAlternative and this could be a great opportunity to attract new users to the Fediverse.

This is perfect timing, since we are launching several new things this month. We will start with some public servers that people can sign up for.

The first ones will be Hubzilla.Monster, Loves.Tech, and Conversation.Space. Then we will launch Mostly.Social and Infinity.Cafe after that. We are also working with some others that want to run their own public servers. So lots of new sites coming soon. And if you want your own domain, we offer Managed Hubzilla as well.

It is great that the fediverse has grown with Twitter-style platforms. But not everyone wants that. Some people want a Facebook alternative. And that is what we do. It's our time to shine.

#Hubzilla

Marshall Sutherland

I hope they aren't coming here expecting that we have official fact-checkers.

Alexander Goeres

@Scott M. Stolz that is a great idea! i'm curious, who is organizing this, aka paying for it?

Jupiter Rowland

@Scott M. Stolz Chances are that I may have converted someone from Facebook to Hubzilla this morning. He is already on Mastodon, though.

Scott M. Stolz

@Alexander Goeres I am currently funding this out of my own pocket. but I will need to start earning some revenue to sustain it.

My open source project Federated Works is accepting donations, and the fediverse servers will have membership tiers ranging from free to premium. Hopefully the funds from that will be enough to pay for the servers.

If not, I will be offering Managed Hubzilla and custom web design services for people who want a fediverse-enabled website or app. I can divert some of the revenue from that to funding the fediverse servers if the donations to the fediverse servers isn't enough.

Bill Statler

I stuck my nose into a discussion yesterday. Somebody asked:

Hey Mastodon peeps who are FOSS enthusiasts, Is there any alternative comparable to Facebook groups in functionality? So sick of Meta but those groups are a lifeline.

Three people suggested Friendica. I added this:

Friendica is one of three active branches of the same software family tree. The others are Hubzilla and Streams. Groups operate more or less like an e-mail mailing list: you start a thread by sending a Direct Message to the group, and it gets forwarded to other members. There is a good set of permission settings to control who can view the group's content, and who can post or comment (and the posts/comments can optionally go into a moderation queue for approval).

The response, a few hours later:

Well, I tried out Friendica. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s user friendly enough to get the average person to migrate over to and use for groups. Thanks though, everyone!

I assume they'd say something similar about Hubzilla and (streams). So what is it that makes us look user-unfriendly? Is is just that we don't operate like Mastodon? Is it too many settings? I dunno.

hosh

@Bill Statler ask them (?)

caos

@billstatler @scott I have just discovered a video series whose creator @anubis2814
presents the functions of #Friendica very nicely and also compares it with #Facebook: peertube.stream/w/p/4K4MWYXMEY…

I don't know Facebook from my own experience, but when I see the interface and the range of functions, I can imagine that you can also spend a bit of time getting to know the functions on Facebook. And then you can't customise anything visually for yourself and have to differentiate between the bloatware and the relevant functions.
You also have to spend a bit of time familiarising yourself with Friendica and even more so with Hubzilla.

With #Hubzilla, the control of who can see what is certainly much more differentiated than with Friendica. Friendica has public groups (forums), private groups, circles and direct messages.
I had tested a bit: the public forum also federates very well with other software (tested with Mastodon and Sharkey), with the private forum it probably only works properly within Friendica.

Scott M. Stolz

@Bill Statler The problem is navigation. It is hard to find stuff. My sites will have modified navigation that is tailored for new people coming from Facebook and other platforms. Hopefully some of my ideas can be added to Redbasic.

Jupiter Rowland

@Bill Statler Grab your iPhone, load an app named "Hubzilla" from the App Store. Open it, enter name, enter password, there you go. Native mobile UI that looks almost exactly like the official Facebook app.

That's user-friendly.

Scott M. Stolz

@Jupiter Rowland Not having a native mobile app is a major disadvantage.

I am talking to some people about getting one built, but such an endeavor would cost thousands of dollars in development costs.

Too bad we don't have anyone who can maintain the existing F-Droid version. I wonder if it could be converted to work with Google Play. At least that would put us in one of the major app stores. Possibly two if we also submit it to the Amazon app store.

caos

@jupiter_rowland @billstatler How do you think most Facebook users use it? Do most of them use it exclusively via the app in the mouse cinema

or (also) in the browser or on desktop/ laptop?

Scott M. Stolz

@caos Back when I was on Facebook, I used both a lot. The fact that I could switch back and forth was an attractive feature. It meant that Facebook was always there.

We do have a Progressive Web App (PWA). It's just not listed on Google or Apple or Amazon.

Scott M. Stolz

@caos Back when I was on Facebook, I used both a lot. The fact that I could switch back and forth was an attractive feature. It meant that Facebook was always there.

We do have a Progressive Web App (PWA). It's just not listed on Google or Apple or Amazon.

Bill Statler

Novel idea.

I asked.

Bill Statler

Scott M. Stolz wrote:

We do have a Progressive Web App (PWA). It's just not listed on Google or Apple or Amazon.

Okay, here's a thought. Can PWA installation be made more obvious? It shows up somewhere in the browser menu, but it's different for different browsers and different operating systems. The description isn't obvious (for example, I'm looking at Firefox on Android, and it just says "Add to Home screen").

Is it possible to create a single icon for a Hubzilla (or streams) homepage that just says "Install as an app", and always works on every browser and OS?

hosh

I use the PWA quite successfully. Does it cost a lot, or is it difficult, to produce an electron app? - I have no idea. If I remember rightly (which is questionable after so many years ), part of the success of the FB is that it is able to check your address book to find other contacts that are on FB, and, in the case of Hubzilla this would be zero.

Scott M. Stolz

Supposedly you can get a PWA listed in Google Play and the Apple Store. But it requires jumping through a lot of hoops.

Bill Statler

And I think it would have to be a PWA for a single instance, not for Hubzilla in general.

Marshall Sutherland

If you tried to make a Hubzilla app that rummaged around in your contacts, you might have an insurrection on your hands among the old guard since privacy is considered a key feature.