[HN Gopher] Show HN: Multiverse.plus - what if blogging was more...
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Show HN: Multiverse.plus - what if blogging was more collage-like
and colorful?
Author : kickscondor
Score : 184 points
Date : 2021-06-23 01:05 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (multiverse.plus)
(TXT) w3m dump (multiverse.plus)
| jiofih wrote:
| A product that pays so little attention to mobile won't find much
| success in 2021. The homepage is almost unreadable on an iPhone.
| 20after4 wrote:
| Bring back MySpace! -- almost nobody, ever
|
| I like the idea but I dread what people will do with it.
| xwdv wrote:
| spacehey.com
| monijz wrote:
| rad. we need a 2021 version of geocities
| makeworld wrote:
| https://neocities.org/
| monijz wrote:
| neocities is fantastic, and one-of-a-kind
| k__ wrote:
| I like the idea.
|
| I mostly need code examples (with highlights) and diagrams
| (potentially with animations) in my articles. Is there something
| planned for that?
| glitchyowl wrote:
| text control (including hyperlinking) is something we
| definitely want to invest more time into, so super yes to code
| examples
|
| for now, you can copy and paste linked text into the text
| control, so format the text using something like https://trix-
| editor.org/ home page - then copy and paste it in
|
| can you share more about what you have in mind for diagrams?
| drawing them with shapes or detailed diagrams (excel style)
|
| animations and even code based triggers are features we think
| could really introduce more depth and interesting authoring
| abilities to this blogging site. if you have examples of
| animated diagrams, I'd love to see them and plan features with
| them in mind
| k__ wrote:
| I think, it would be nice to illustrate some examplesand easy
| animations would help.
|
| Like animating the travel of a request through a chain of
| services, etc.
|
| So, nothing too fancy.
| glitchyowl wrote:
| gotcha, thank you for elaborating! could be interesting to
| leverage stickers/transparent gifs for animations too
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| What if it WERE more collage-like and colorful
| graphpapa wrote:
| I think this is great.
|
| It seems to be a popular opinion on this site that 'everyone
| should have a personal website'.. but I think the options
| available don't make it a likely outlet for a lot of people
| because there is too much friction required for too little
| expressiveness. Even for technical people.
|
| This project seems like fun, and that's a great starting point.
|
| I noticed when clicking around that it is set up so that 'posts'
| are always embedded within the multiverse site styling. This
| makes it have less of a 'personal space on the internet' feeling,
| but it does keep the experience more consistent, compared to if
| posts filled the whole page.
|
| Was this a deliberate choice to encourage more 'post-based'
| creation and less 'personal-site' type creation? I am partial to
| the 'personal-site' approach but 'post-based' suggests other
| interesting options, like being able to 'reply' to one page with
| another page, and generally being a little more social
| glitchyowl wrote:
| i recently learned that the motivation behind creating medium
| was because of what you've pointed out -- and how curated and
| pre-designed medium has been is also a trade-off they've chosen
| to make
|
| striking a balance between easy/fluid ways to express, and
| blogposts that feel like you is part of why we went to Nintendo
| and Mac paint for inspirations haha. I personally admire those
| tools/platforms a lot for how they offer limited yet wildly
| creative and fun ways to spend time
|
| `post-based` vs `personal-site/webpage` is something we are
| discussing, maybe there can be a 'full screen' way to remove
| the frame. fwiw, the first collage blogpost I made didn't have
| a frame and you can feel it out here:
| http://weiweihsu.com/2020-07-26/wheres-home
|
| replying to a post and a page imo has a lot of interesting
| possibilities that are yet to be explored too! the way we have
| time-based commenting and remixing for videos/audio (on
| soundcloud, tiktok, etc) has made us wonder in what ways can we
| get creative with commenting and replying, helping them be less
| plain
|
| I'm just rambling on and I will pause here. so appreciate your
| comments here - there's so much work and fun ahead~
| [deleted]
| kickscondor wrote:
| So we are glitchyowl and kickscondor - this is a collaboration
| between us - an attempt to make 'blogging' more expressive and
| visual, possibly to break a piece off and reboot it, now that
| it's fallen out of fashion.
|
| The Web seems to have converged on a color called 'gwalb' - gray
| with a little blue. We've gone from home pages - which users
| could dump endless animated gifs and marquees on to - to giving
| everyone a roughly 680x680 square to put a picture or some
| unstyled, unlinked text into. We think being on the Web can still
| be expressive and casual.
|
| Multiverse is a place for creating visual essays and collages -
| closer to comics or slideshows than to a 'blog' on Medium or
| Substack or Wordpress - which are very close to essays. You can
| also design colorful frames for your posts, to increase the sense
| of identity, beyond a name and an avatar.
|
| We're not trying to go head-to-head with social media here - just
| offering a new tool that breaks ranks from the other software out
| there. We know many of you care about the Web - it has a very fun
| and freewheeling side to it that we want to help foster, as well
| as standards like RSS and Webmentions that still make sense! And
| it's still a great place to meet people and make memories. We've
| spent the past six months on this. We will probably offer a paid
| plan if it becomes interesting to people. Are we on the right
| track here?
|
| - glitchyowl & kicks
| 0des wrote:
| Hey there! First off, thanks for the submission. It's a
| refreshing take on the homepages we knew and loved. I'm curious
| what you plan to have in the paid tier. Can you detail some of
| your ideas with regard to that? Also, is there an engineering
| blog that goes into some of the design decisions and mechanics
| behind the scenes? Very much looking forward to what you two
| come up with.
|
| Take care, wishing you the best!
| kkukshtel wrote:
| Hello! I've been a fan of the work both of you do for a while
| (fraidycat, etc.) and have been pretty excited about multiverse
| ever since you first started talking about it. However, one
| thing that has always rubbed me sort of wrong about your stuff
| is that, as far as I understand, you're employed by Facebook
| Labs (https://usesthis.com/interviews/kicks.condor/). This
| interview was the only place I've ever seen that mentioned (and
| granted it was Nov of last year), so it may no longer be true,
| but I've always found myself reticent to engage with some of
| your social experiments because they may be a veiled Facebook
| R+D project/something that FB would take over if it ever got
| "too" popular.
|
| I'm hoping you could clear up your relationship to Facebook
| here and the stuff kicks does - I do truly love all the things
| you two come up with, but want some peace of mind that I'm not
| directly helping Facebook build it's roadmap. Thanks!
| kickscondor wrote:
| Yes it's true that I was invented by Facebook and that my
| website was shutdown by Disney (and then the FBI - as the
| other commenter points out - for the Disney shutdown turned
| out to have been a hoax.)
|
| This is all terrible and I hate my origin story - I agree
| completely. I understand if you need to bow out on this one.
| I rub myself the wrong way a lot of the time.
| fumar wrote:
| "Invented by Facebook." Does that mean this is a FB labs
| project or this is a personal project?
| kickscondor wrote:
| Multiverse.plus is a personal project (of glitchyowl and
| mine.) And I am a personal project of Facebook Labs.
|
| Or possibly the CIA? I get email from two agents who
| claim to be my handlers and to "come home already". But I
| don't really know whose story to believe. Can't just look
| in the mirror to find out.
|
| Ok wow - I am rubbing myself the right direction now!
| jiofih wrote:
| What is happening here?
| kickscondor wrote:
| We are six levels deep in an HN thread. It's not looking
| good.
| kixiQu wrote:
| I'm >90% sure that was a joke. In the same way that
| kickscondor.com was not _actually_ seized by the FBI for
| Kicks Condor being stolen IP from a National Treasure sequel.
| gndclouds wrote:
| It's been fun to see everyone's personality come through in how
| they style posts, and creating blogs in a canvas environment is
| fun. Multiverse has so much character in it. I can't wait to
| see what blog, comic, tutorial, narratives emerge.
|
| I made post on how color wheels work here:
| https://multiverse.plus/gndclouds/addresses-of-color-space
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > Are we on the right track here?
|
| You probably mean on an intellectual level, not in terms of
| user adoption.
|
| The lack of specificity about who your audience is the toughest
| part, intellectually, about what you're doing. First let's
| assume it's the Everyman.
|
| Why do people like a 680x680 picture / selfie of themselves?
| One reason Instagram has demographics much closer to the real
| world than Medium does: people already know how to express
| themselves and define an identity using their bodies. The
| average person - who might have a 2 year college education, or
| read fewer than 10 books a year, or who uses fewer than 4 third
| party apps and websites on their phone - has a more intuitive
| grasp of fashion, makeup, what their hair color and race and
| jewelry and the setting and etc. says about them than if they
| tried to write something down.
|
| What about people who like internet nostalgia? Nostalgia is
| kind of toxic for trying new things. That same audience also
| would pick a Star Wars movie over an indie movie every time.
| Nostalgia is the antagonist of new voices, not the friend.
| People think nostalgia is superficial, that it's GIFs in the
| frame, but it's defining an audience that wants the same
| stories, the same characters, and to stay in a middle to high
| school comfort zone. Kind of the opposite of what you want for
| someone's crunchy blogs or wonky essays.
|
| Otherwise, can someone have an argument about what's the best
| visual design language? It's very subjective. Websites had
| their moment as a medium, and now they're out of the way in
| terms of delivering what a visitor came to see. People who
| express themselves outside their bodies, like writers,
| musicians, political activists, etc get a lot from the gwalb
| getting out of the way. Because so much is just getting your
| voice heard, weird websites turn off visitors far more often
| than it entices them. Not a very exciting opinion though.
| habibur wrote:
| Nostalgia a niche market, and every market needs to be
| served. If he didn't do it, someone else would have as long
| as there is a demand for it.
| kickscondor wrote:
| > Nostalgia is the antagonist of new voices, not the friend.
|
| There are negatives to nostalgia - but this isn't necessarily
| one of them. I would use vaporwave as a counterpoint. (Or any
| resurgence of a genre.) The nostalgic element is the familiar
| part; the artist might then be unfamiliar. I personally
| discover new artists all the time in these nostalgic genres.
|
| Not arguing against your general points about writing vs
| fashion. (And you make a lot of fun points!) But I don't
| think a rebirth of hypertext styling is dead in the water.
| Podcasts were originally seen as just the rebirth of AM
| radio. And they were - but it turned out to be time for that
| - and enough innovation transpired that they stuck.
| dqpb wrote:
| gwalb seems like a good example of "Refinement Culture"
| recently posted on HN.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27483207
| kickscondor wrote:
| Livestream if you want to peek in on Multiverse.plus or ask
| questions: https://www.twitch.tv/kickscondor/
| onion2k wrote:
| I don't know if I'll be going back but it's an interesting idea.
| It reminds me of the geocities/angelfire/myspace/a bunch of other
| content builders of the early 2000s era of web stuff.
|
| https://multiverse.plus/onion2k/hello-hn
| queuebert wrote:
| Big geocities energy with seizure-inducing gifs. I feel like a
| kid with a modem again.
| monijz wrote:
| beep boop, dial it up!
| lokl wrote:
| I like your goal "to make 'blogging' more expressive and visual,
| possibly to break a piece off and reboot it, now that it's fallen
| out of fashion." I have the impression that, with some of your
| other projects, Kicks, you are trying to do this for all the web,
| not just blogging.
|
| However, for my taste, this feels a little too close to Tumblr,
| which I don't think achieves "expressive and visual" in a deep
| sense. I hope that you will continue to explore and find more
| ways to differentiate yourself.
|
| Misc. feedback:
|
| I like how you present small blocks of text, but large blocks of
| text seem cramped sometimes, difficult to read.
|
| The backgrounds are killing me. Perhaps, each background could
| have a solid-color fallback and readers could toggle to only
| display the solid fallbacks?
|
| "Composed on today" -> "Composed today" (likewise for
| "yesterday")
|
| I hope this doesn't come across as negative. What you're doing is
| very interesting to me and I look forward to seeing where it
| goes. It just hasn't fully achieved your stated goal, yet, in my
| opinion.
| kickscondor wrote:
| I can totally see this perspective, lokl! We are very uncertain
| that we're achieving our goals. I think I agree with you that
| Multiverse doesn't go too far off from Tumblr - and that's
| deliberate - we wanted to see if we could offer a stepping
| stone. Start at a familiar place but move in a different
| direction.
|
| I'd be interested to hear more about achieving expressiveness
| in a "deep sense" - don't know if you mean offering more
| hypertext features - something more in the way of Roam or
| Notion. For us, aesthetics are rather deep - and offering
| design tools for fleshing out posts and designing frames seemed
| like something that had gone neglected. I think the posts that
| are being published so far show a lot of promise. Perhaps we
| can offer further stepping stones from here, to build more
| elaborate hypertext.
|
| Really great question - this is exactly what we talk about
| between each other as well. Thank you for all of the feedback
| as well. Very much appreciated.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Very cool - that said, it appears that I'm not receiving (is it
| being sent?) the sign-up email for new accounts.
|
| Exciting project. Tasteful design.
| kickscondor wrote:
| Trying signing up on the home page. If it says your email
| already has an account, try here:
| https://multiverse.plus/signin
|
| You can also email us at hello@multiverse.plus and we'll look
| into it. Might be a specific browser issue.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Hey, thanks for the quick response. So I still don't have any
| emails, and I couldn't find any other Log-in / Create Account
| functionality on the home page. In other words: I couldn't
| find any other way to create an account that wouldn't result
| in me using the form on /signin.
|
| Maybe I'm being a dummy, let me know if you have any
| additional suggestion otherwise I will get in touch with the
| email you provided. This is a _really_ cool project, and I
| hate to admit some of the unfinished amateur hobby projects I
| 've created towards similar ideas to multiverse.plus.
| kickscondor wrote:
| Oh shoot - I missed this comment. There is a sign-up form
| on the home page: https://multiverse.plus/ Just under the
| image of the PC.
| mschrage wrote:
| kicks has such a fun & distinctive visual style. Came to comment
| that the design reminded me of https://www.kickscondor.com/ and
| now I understand why!
| glitchyowl wrote:
| glitchyowl here, one of the creator of multiverse, thanks for
| peeking in
|
| we want to make blogging on the web a little more casual
| expressive than it's been. which is why we've went with a free-
| form canvas with lots of style customisation options ~*
|
| here's my mic check - https://multiverse.plus/glitchyowl/haiyo-
| multiverse
| kzrdude wrote:
| Hey, it's all quite inspiring - adding a bit of color.
| Shameless question coming, is it allowed to rip this off, copy
| the stylesheets or similar and use a style based off of this on
| a personal blog?
| glitchyowl wrote:
| halo kzrdude! for sure, remixing is part of what makes the
| web fun! right now, you can also export your post as svg,
| html, or png if you want to carry it somewhere else
|
| we have had discussions about offering ways to embedding
| (like on the home page) and exporting the styles in json/css
| format too
| wuz wrote:
| Been using Multiverse for a bit now and I honestly love it so
| very much. It's a brilliant mix of creative expression and
| creative limits - I can make cool stuff without having the
| infinite array of options that I would in design software. I
| recently wrote about my experience with old forums when I was a
| youngling on the internet and creating the post was honestly so
| much fun! I've felt my creativity really coming back since I've
| started using Multiverse.
| glitchyowl wrote:
| ahh wuz you are too kind and your posts are wizardry. it brings
| me smile to see your (almost) eye-searing pink posts!
|
| in case folks are interested, this is wuz's post on the old
| forums: https://multiverse.plus/wuz/a-love-letter-to-jred-net
| bovermyer wrote:
| I like the playfulness of it, and the ability to customize my
| "voice."
|
| It has the potential to become a new community.
|
| However... I'm confused how to discover groups.
| glitchyowl wrote:
| hey! groups are definitely very limited right now, there are
| only a fixed # of groups that you can post to but we are
| looking to expand that
|
| would love to discuss and hear your ideas on it if you are up
| for it! we are at hello@multiverse.plus or our discord group is
| here: https://discord.gg/5MvkKjAyrM
|
| and in case its interesting, humdrum shared their thoughts on
| groups in this multiverse wishlist post:
| https://multiverse.plus/kvnk/multiverse-wishlist
|
| and @kickscondor also wrote up some thoughts on the social
| aspect: https://multiverse.plus/kicks/not-just-a-subreddit
| bovermyer wrote:
| I joined the Discord and look forward to chatting about this,
| and other, Multiverse topics!
| chaganated wrote:
| Where is the source?
| overshard wrote:
| I honestly miss people building random stuff on the internet to
| showcase unique information on things like Geocities. They were
| almost always "ugly" but also always visually entertaining.
|
| I remember skimming through hundreds of car Geocities sites by
| enthusiasts who had no clue how to build a website but wanted to
| show off their rides. It was always a rollercoaster of poor UX
| and bad quality images but something was also fun about finding
| the random image that was a link to some internal page that had
| more random links on it to more and more and more.
|
| Now everyone just posts info on curated pre-designed platforms
| and blogs like Facebook or Blogger which takes out half of the
| appeal for me, I instantly don't care about anything posted on
| Facebook and don't have a Facebook account. There is some good
| content on Blogger and the likes but there's nothing fun about
| most of the posts.
|
| I clearly have been visiting the wrong sites and probably could
| dig up similar content to what I miss. It could also just be me
| being old and grumpy.
| glitchyowl wrote:
| appreciate what you've expressed @overshard, it resonates
|
| i dont think pre-designed sites and blogs are bad, but I think
| if/when they are the only (easy/popular) options out there,
| that's when it feels a little unfortunate
|
| fun and casual is something that we strive for -- a lot of deep
| and rich things come out of playing and being playful. we hope
| that we can help contribute a small step toward that
| minikites wrote:
| >It could also just be me being old and grumpy.
|
| I don't think it's that, I think you're describing the
| electronic version of an old neighborhood with character versus
| a modern suburban planned community. Some people genuinely
| prefer the latter, but there's not much of a choice both online
| and in the real world these days, so we're all stuck with it.
| depingus wrote:
| Whenever I see people on here longing for the web of old
| (surprisingly often) I point them to a great little game called
| HypnoSpace Outlaw. You play a web enforcer in an alternate
| reality 90's internet simulator.
|
| It's available on Xbox Game Pass, and here's the Steam link:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/844590/Hypnospace_Outlaw/
| kickscondor wrote:
| Well it's dangerous to give people the tools to design
| themselves - it's a rare skill and very difficult to blend it
| all together into a cohesive community! I think many startups
| of the 2010s saw Myspace design as a disaster.
|
| We're hoping that by having some default color palettes and
| some common patterns and fonts - as well as limits to paddings,
| margins and border sizes - that it helps people stay in the
| ballpark of what a Multiverse post looks like. (Kind of like
| how you can spot something made with LEGOs from a distance.)
|
| But whatever - creating ugly things should be part of the
| world. Looking forward to the future of 'ugly', 'bad', 'shoddy'
| design on the Internet. <3
| dentemple wrote:
| On the other hand, a ton of us got our start in web design or
| development due to the freedom of sites like Myspace and
| Geocities.
| glitchyowl wrote:
| yeah im one of the kid that is eternally grateful to sites
| like myspace and geocities
| Hedepig wrote:
| In the context of hobby websites, the choice of the word
| "dangerous" is pretty extreme.
| kickscondor wrote:
| "Disaster" is also hyperbole.
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