Openvibe combines Mastodon, Bluesky and Nostr into one social app | TechCrunch

submitted by Glasgow

techcrunch.com/2024/07/09/openvibe-combines-mas…

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30 Comments

CRUMBGRABBER

"Private equity always finds a way"-Jeff Goldblum

Its interesting that they plan to profit off of the Fediverse but they aren't paying for running instances themselves. At least they aren't now.

The only thing that is actually valuable in all this is the data generated by Fediversers themselves though, lets say 90 percent, and a nifty container around the content to make it more viewable/accessible/prettier, 10 percent.

They want to make profit off of memberships and probably ads, off of Fediversers content, and then they can leverage and monetize their new "social network" by some astronomical valuation in the market.

Good playbook, its been done many times now by Reddit, linkedin, Facebook, and all the rest, and maybe they will pull it off, but after more than 10 years of Social Media abuses, the Fediverse is filled with people who no longer want to be exploited in this way anymore. How about just paying for some instances, or supporting some FOSS projects already in the works?

ByteOnBikes

Y'all remember Pidgin?

That proggie was the bomb for all your AOL, ICQ, MSN, etc so you can keep up with your homies while you update your live journal.

Glasgow [OP]

Trillian masterrace checking in.

Plopp

Pff, Pidgin, Trillian... The true master race was Miranda IM. Only the real pros remember.

deafboy

Pidgin was decent, but remember Miranda? The community around it was fantastic. The plugin system was an absolute blast. Not only there were plugins for any communication network you could think of, the UX was fully customizable.

At one point, somebody even bothered to implement the ICQ flash animations. There has not been anything like it ever since.

Plopp

Miranda IM was the best messaging software ever. Enormously configurable and super light weight. The installer was like 1Mb or something.

Apparently Miranda-NG (Next Gen) is a thing.

ililiililiililiilili

This takes me back. Y'all made me recall running Trillian Pro with a cracked loader. Oh, and what about DeadAIM?! I feel ashamed (as a current FOSS fan) that I didn't switch to Pidgin until *after* pirating all the popular AIM alternatives.

@ililiililiililiilili @fediverse @ByteOnBikes i loved pidgin 😄 used trillian too 😆

InternationalBastard

Trillian Pro cracked gang!!! What a great program that was. Stylish and functional!

Blaze

Good old days

ALostInquirer

The pre-seed stage startup is backed by angel investors and NYC accelerator Wolf, which Openvibe attended last year.

Openvibe is available as a free app on iOS and Android, but plans to experiment with a desktop version. The app will later introduce a subscription plan to generate revenue.

Have any services like this managed to develop a sustainable business model, especially after taking on investment?

schizo

Doubtful. They always are optimistic how many people would subscribe, it turns out that nobody subscribes, and then it's either them folding or speed-running enshittification and spying.

linearchaos

Sure, they make a new product get more venture capital shut down the old product, then wash, rinse, repeat.

aasatru

There were some successful Twitter clients I think. TweetDeck was famous and ended up acquired by Twitter.

tanja

So you'd need an account in all of these networks?

And how would cross-posting work?

Asudox

Proprietary garbage

aasatru

I don't mind proprietary software - it seems it's what a lot of people want, and I simply won't use it.

Promoting proprietary software named "OpenSomething" should, however, be banned as false marketing.

AutoPastry

Is there a good alternative to this? Using one app for Blue sky, mastodon, and even Lemmy sounds cool

Autonomous User

Openvibe is anti-libre software, malware. We do not control it. It fails to include a libre software license text file, like AGPL.

deafboy

If a communication software has terms of service, run away!

piracysails

What do you use?

deafboy

I host 2 ejabberd servers. One casual, federated, the other one standalone, for work. - Conversations is a decent android client that supports modern XMPP standards - Dino on the desktop. It just happen to support the same subset of standards as Conversations, so they work pretty well together.


For Mastodon, I'm using an Akkoma instance hosted by a frind of mine - Tusky works pretty well with it. There were certain annoying bugs when I combined the official Mastodon app with Akkoma.


Every once in a while I try Matrix, but each time I try to log in, Synapse is is fucked in a different way. I have to scrap it up and start from the ground up some day. - Only the element based clients so far, because every alternative lack certain features.


I'm a big fan of Nostr, because of one particular feature - You control your identity without having to selfhost a server. The network seems to be occupied by the christian-carnivore-bitcoin-conservatives so far, therefor it's pretty bland when it comes to content. - Amethyst on Android - Gossip on the desktop. This one requires a certain knowledge of the protocol. Each action needs to be manually triggered.


For some special use cases I have Signal, but most of the time, Telegram is the best the average person can do to meet me in the middle.

piracysails

Thanks for the info. :)

Glasgow [OP]

Does it really matter that much? You still control your profiles on each actual site it's just an aggregator.

fubarx

Once they get Threads support, their target audience will be the non-Twitter universe. This would make it easier for businesses, governments, journalists, and non-technical folks like influencers and celebrities to switch out. That's how you get mass adoption.

I just tried it last week. Good start. Lots of promise.

blue_berry

I'm not sure something like this will be the killer app for the Fediverse.

I think its more a transition-app as long as we have protocol wars. Most people are good with having access to the majority of the Fediverse and probably dont even know about the others.

Its still a great idea!

Lugh

When might it integrate Lemmy?

pewgar_seemsimandroid

very unsurprisingly no twitter

Jupiter Rowland

Mastodon Bluesky Nostr where Akkoma where Iceshrimp where Friendica where Pixelfed

"If it ain't got no for-profit "Inc." and no CEO, we ain't gonna support it."

veee

I use it on occasion between Mastodon and Bluesky. My initial reaction was that I needed to organize my follows better so content wasn’t duplicating in the merged feed.