An Everything App

in HiveDevslast year

I have to disagree with the whole "everything app" concept. Yeah, I know WeChat is/was widely used, but was that because its users had freedom of choice and without censorship? Or was that because their choices were limited and the advertisers with the deepest pockets got to be highlighted in that app?

Don't kill off creativity and choice by trying to appeal to everyone with "everything".

As you might know, we created the Hive-Tube plugin to give Video, Podcast and Livestreamers a CHOICE of where they want their content hosted and without any restrictions at all. Upload to as many Hive-Tube hosts as you like and get unbeatable syndication of your content, absolutely free.

That level of freedom cannot be accomplished any other way. Open standards and syndication are the way forward in Web3. No more walled gardens!

If you have some free time and you want to just sit back and consume some content, will you choose a simple app catered to reading ebooks or blogs, or a simple app catered to just consuming some streaming media?

Don't turn your app into a cluster f*ck of bolt-ons and eventual censorship.

One thing that I've learned over my 30+ years of software development is that you need to have a clear goal of what your product or service will be, ahead of time. A clearly defined profitable model and business plan. However, many Devs don't do that. They become "yes men" and constantly try to bolt-on more and more "features" to their apps, taking up evermore time and money, and eventually turning their apps into a cluster f*ck. Finding what you want in these "everything" apps becomes more and more difficult.

If your core-competency is eBooks, then stick with that and add the features that eBook consumers expect and want, and then stop. Same thing goes for streaming media apps. Don't try to turn your app into an eBook reader, and a secure messenger, a shopping supercenter, a streaming media interface, a gps mapping app, a blogging ui, a photo-sharing app, a networking app, and a videocalling app...

Make your app "grandma-friendly"

"Well, we can make more money if we just add ______" - Famous last words. Don't turn your sexy app into a cluster f*ck. Do what you do best and do it better than anyone else. Your profits will come sooner than later and you won't have to sell out to advertisers, centralization and censorship.

I too have received some dm's from users about adding this, adding that, adding more of this or that, etc. I have to almost always say NO because I do not want our apps to become a mess of bolt-ons and losing our "grandma-friendly" user interface.

We build apps like HiveCast to be grandma-friendly. She's not going to care about encrypted messaging, or shopping online with HiveCast. She wants to watch her cooking shows and not get bothered with ads and other buttons that she needs to click and weed through. K.I.S.S.

HiveCast Proposal #274 was created for this very reason. It's another great product from Agorise that brings users to Hive that will stick around and contribute value to Hive for years to come. Please check it out and click that Support button:

👍 Peakd: https://peakd.com/proposals/274
👍 Ecency: https://ecency.com/proposals/274
👍 Hive blog: https://wallet.hive.blog/proposals
👍 Hivesigner: Click here or here

Let's Open Source it & Launch it! 🚀🚀

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Very much agree with the sentiment here! It’s important to do a thing good instead of trying to a lot of things okay with these types of things. I didn’t think of it in the way you described until I read it but I think it’s a very solid point that we should take into account more! Don’t keep trying for the everything app, that’s a dumpster fire waiting to happen.

I totally agree. Pick a specialty and home in on the details that will make you the best in that specialty. Don't try to be everything to everyone. That's a sure path to failure.

I agree to make it simple. I always end up using mplayer on the command line instead of the fancy KDE Amarok jukebox with all the gloss. So simple UI is always welcome when it comes with tech.

Agreed 100% 💪

Very good points, and Elon Musk is sure he can pull it off anyway. Having a population completely reliant on your company store for every single thing they need to survive is an enormously attractive proposition to megalomaniacs like Musk, and he has dreamed of this power all his adult life, from what I've read. The recent revelation that Musk personally disrupted communications during critical war operations in the Ukraine to literally control the outcome of military operations should chill anyone aware of it to temperatures close to that of Spacex rocket fuels on the launchpad.

Is there even any reason to doubt if he did it to the Ukrainian military in a life and death struggle he wouldn't do it do you over whatever trifle or financial gain he decided to take advantage of? He's already proved he's willing to cost human lives by manipulating the service he provides that certainly have an expectation of being free from manipulation, and not even for money, but just out of personal preference. He has no ethical problem with using your use of his products against you. I'm confident all corporate ISPs are equally mercenary, which makes Musk's actions typical of corporate profiteering. They certainly don't deserve my trust, and I wouldn't want to be utterly dependent for anything necessary to life on any of them. That's just the power Musk seeks with X.

Thanks!

Best thing a developer could ever do is to make the complicated look as easy as just breathing!

Most Devs are not Designers though and they do not give enough consideration to the users that they want to use their app. Building a UI that includes everything, that everyone is going to love, is not possible.

As soon as ANY kind of ad/advertising gets introduced into a website or app for product shopping, services, or "checkout isle" impulse purchases etc, will always result in censorship.

If the Dev expects to have a profitable app in the end that will never need ads, then he/she needs to utilize the chain that it's built on and NOT introduce those third-parties.

100% agree!

We are seeing so many applications just like the everything app and I love how it is always open to everyone
Nice one!

The everything Apps are getting built though. Amethyst on mobile and nostrudel on desktop for example are both leading the charge!

Yep, I find it sad that so many want to try and reinvent the wheel. Round is round. They can try if they like, that's great, but I see it as a waste of time and money.

What seems like endless amounts of money get thrown at those projects who sell it as "now we're gonna add this, now we will add that, now we need money to change this and make that better" etc etc.. Going off into so many different directions, especially within one product leads to centralization and censorship, every single time.

I sent Elon a tweet about this today, maybe he'll notice.

Those projects I mentioned are decentralised apps and some parts are maybe funded by the Open Sats project..

Oh man, don't even get me started on devs who call their apps "dapps" or "web3". Most haven't a clue. Just because they connected their app to a blockchain, does not make it decentralised.

Lol! I love those too.

Them: "Our app is the first decentralized (fill in the blank) app!"

Me: "Wheres your hosting and infrastructure?"

Them: "AWS and Azure cloud with Cloudflare intergration."

Me: "Ok, you can shut up now, stupid."

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