forteller

Free as in Freedom :)

You might very well be right. Using XMPP is not important to me. The important thing is the goal of moving as many people as possible over from closed to Free/Open systems.

Yes, you are of course right about that. It might just be a sign of my age that I just mentioned Facebook as the bad guy in my post… :)

Did you read the article? It's about weakening, not replacing.

As I say:

«Facebook is taking over the web and we need to save it. The issue is too complex to have one solution. The most obvious solution is federated social networks, but it’s also a very long term solution. We need more, sooner. One of these thousand small solutions should be to take back chat and subscriptions, by making them dead simple to use for everyone straight from the browser.»

Absolutely. That's why I say we need many more things to take down Facebook. This is just about starting, making it a little bit easier for people to not spend close to 100% of their online lives in the walled garden of Facebook, by giving them an easy option for two of their functions. It's not about replacing Facebook completely, it's just a start.

That sounds exactly like the idea behind federated social networks. I've blogged about that in my post 'Think like the internet – Or how to fight Facebook, and win" http://blogg.forteller.net/2011/think-internet/

Yes, that's a good thing. But it's only one tiny piece of the puzzle. It's like saying "if you want to tackle climate change don't try to lobby the government for stricter regulations or for a price on carbon, just recycle your trash". This is such a huge problem that we need both tiny, personal initiatives, and systemic change. We can put all our eggs in either one.

As the author I have to disagree. All I'm asking is that they make the Free/Open Atom and RSS feeds work at least as good as the streams in Facebook does, and that they implement chat.

First one: That only needs to switch the Feed button to a "Like" button that subscribes you to the feed in one click. Then it needs to change the "new tab" page from a speed dial to a stream of those feeds. This stream could be hosted in the cloud (probably it should, to be available anywhere), and so would not add any bloat.

The chat I understand can be seen as bloat. But still, it's just one function, not those hoards of functions that the original Mozilla suite had.

And the point here is that it's really important to make people less dependent on Facebook, to pave the way for other initiatives and efforts to create another chip in the Facebook wall, and then some others another chip, etc. until the wall finally comes crashing down. IMO that's so important that one extra function, adding a little bloat, is well worth it.

You have to remember that just by being a person who read Hacker News you are not a regular person. I really don't mean to be harsh, but it doesn't much matter what you prefer or that you find this trend of running things in the browser problematic. What matters is what normal people do. People who don't even know what a "client" in computer lingo means.

Those are the majority, and if we want them to use Free and Open systems (which is my whole point here), then we have to create those systems in a way normal people will start switching from the closed systems and over to the open ones. And that is only going to happen if the open systems are easier to use and more accessible than the closed ones.

I am aware of the fact that Facebook uses XMPP (I mention it in the post). Still, extremely few people use it through a client. They use it through fb.com.

The browser already is a chat client for millions of people. It's called Facebook. So since the browser already is the only chat client tons of people use, why not make it a client for a Free/Open chat system instead of Facebooks chat system, that they control, censor, give access to to NSA, etc.

> This is a bad idea because a web browser should not become a chat or client as well.

Well, the browser already is a chat client for millions of people. It's called Facebook. So since the browser already is the only chat client tons of people use, why not make it a client for a Free/Open chat system instead of Facebooks chat system, that they control, censor, give access to to NSA, etc.

> Remove their like-buttons from your pages!

I agree we should do this. But that won't help people keep in contact with their friends. And so it won't change the thing I'm focusing on here.

Yes, you're right. They tried to integrate social networks in the browser. But as you say: They went over the top. I'm just suggesting making feeds easier/better and integrating a chat function not dependent on Facebook or any other of the big, closed players.

The other important reason why Flock failed was that they where new. Firefox already has a huge user base who would just get these new functions trough a normal update.

It's about visibility: People can't use what they don't know exists. Most people didn't know Flock existed.

Thanks! I also put up a mirror over on WP.com: http://forteller.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/mirror-first-steps...

Sorry about my server going down! You can read a mirror over on WordPress.com: http://forteller.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/mirror-first-steps...

Well, as I say in the blog post: «I’m sure there are some extensions out there doing all this already. But that’s just not good enough. It needs to be built into the browser to make it easy and visible enough.»

What do I mean not visible enough? For people to use it, they need to know about it. Most people don't even know they can use extensions (or even what a browser is), but they do know that Facebook has a chat function, because it's right there.

Remember, this is not about making life easier for geeks like us. It's about making it just as seamless to use Open web technologies/social networks for normal people as it is to use closed/private systems like Facebook.

It gives you a huge network/user base who would never install a stand-alone client, but who let Facebook lock them in to their chat system because it's dead simple.

Remember, this is not about making life easier for geeks like us, people who actually know what XMPP is. It's about making it just as seamless to use Open web technologies/social networks for normal people as it is to use closed/private systems like Facebook.