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. 🤔
@prologic@twtxt.net Niche I think. Not a bad thing!
@shreyan@twtxt.net True! And I agree 👌
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.
@abucci@anthony.buc.ci Fair 👌
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.
@eapl.me@eapl.me Is self hosting an instance (Yarn or Mastodon) just too hard for most? 🤔 I know standing up ‘as to don is a biatch for sure 🤣