Is Yarn.social dead or just too niche? (uyrrria) 🧐

@prologic@twtxt.net It’s always been super niche, but I think in the age of Twitter more people have been looking for free/libre alternatives than these days, because Mastodon is a big thing now and has mostly replaced Twitter. Mastodon is free/libre, lots of instances, lots of communities. I have a feeling that Yarn/twtxt is mostly appealing to us nerds and minimalists.

I still love the core ideas of twtxt. It’s great for hardcore minimalists. Yarn.social is great for people willing to run a server daemon. I still think all of this is a good thing.

We have certainly lost lots of momentum, though. Plus, there appear to be simpler alternatives to full blown Mastodon now. I think @abucci@anthony.buc.ci and @stigatle@yarn.stigatle.no are running snac? I didn’t have a closer look at snac (no intention of running it), but if that is a relatively small daemon (maybe comparable to Yarn?) that gives you access to the whole world of ActivityPub, then, well, yeah … That’s tough to beat.

Not sure what my point is. 🤔 For me, it’s easy: I’ll keep using twtxt because all I have to do is host a text file. Dead simple, I love it.

It all depends on what your plans for Yarn.social are. 🤔

I think @abucci@anthony.buc.ci and @stigatle@yarn.stigatle.no are running snac? I didn’t have a closer look at snac (no intention of running it), but if that is a relatively small daemon (maybe comparable to Yarn?) that gives you access to the whole world of ActivityPub, then, well, yeah … That’s tough to beat.

Yes, I am running snac on the same VPS where I run my yarn pod. I heard of it from @stigatle@yarn.stigatle.no, so blame him 😏 snac is written in C and is one simple executable, uses very little resources on the server, and stores everything in JSON files (no databases or other integrations; easy to save and migrate your data) . It’s definitely like yarn in that respect.

I haven’t been around yarn much lately. Part of that is that I’ve been very busy at work and home and only have a limited time to spend goofing off on a social network. Part of it is that I’m finding snac very useful: I’ve connected with friends I’d previously lost touch with, I’ve found useful work-related information, I’ve found colleagues to follow, and even found interesting conferences to attend. There’s a lot more going on over there.

I guess if I had to put it simply, I’d say I have limited time to play and there are more kids in the ActivityPub sandbox than this one. That’s not a ding on yarn–I like yarn and twtxt–I’m just time constrained.

@prologic@twtxt.net Like @movq@www.uninformativ.de said, it is a very niche thing. But that has always been a good thing in my opinion. And I do still think so. :-)

yarnd in particular is too heavy for me personally, I just like the simplicity of wacking a file on my server and voilà. But other than that, I still support that software. :-)

And I come back to twtxt.net every now and then to read up on conversations that seem to be incomplete in my own client. Like if a new feed appears that I don’t follow (yet). That’s certainly a convenience that I do enjoy. Thank you for that!

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

And I come back to twtxt.net every now and then to read up on conversations that seem to be incomplete in my own client. Like if a new feed appears that I don’t follow (yet). That’s certainly a convenience that I do enjoy. Thank you for that!

Indeed, I do that as well.

Well, I don’t use Yarn/Twtxt.net anymore, although I read the homepage a few times a week to catchup on anything interesting.

Nowadays I barely twt from my PHP instance. I got to say that is more “convenient” reading from twtxt.net that on my instance.

My current feeling is that is too niche to find something interesting, being about personal growth, professional or even entertaining. There is not enough people and/or interesting topics to be engaged on. The network effect of people making content is missing IMO. Although I have a similar feeling of any other microblogging, it’s too superficial to have a meaningful conversation.
Sadly in this ecosystem I’ve found no one twting on Spanish, and having conversations in English is not so easy to me.

And about local communities, I tried to invite friends and colleagues, but no one created their instance or joined to Yarn. Even the local Mastodon instance has 3 members (myself included), so I think creating a hipster microblogging is not as easy as looked at the start.

It’s again a decision between the involved time and the ‘reward’ at the end. If we are not getting good emotions or something bigger that ourselves, feels like ‘not worthy’ to belong.