Reducing Friction...

The progress on @snapie is going well. Today I started implementing polls and got somewhat close to having them working, but I decided to move on to hangouts, which is a feature I’m a lot more excited about.

To be honest, it’s hard for me to work on things that don’t excite me. And although polls have been requested and are used in other apps, they hardly feel groundbreaking to me. Are they nice to have? Sure. But without them, it’s not like a sandwich is missing the beef. It’s just missing a bit of seasoning.

With that said, I’m jamming a lot into this version of @snapie. I’m motivated not just by the personal challenge, which is definitely part of who I am, but also because there’s a friendly battle going on in the short form content space. To me, that kind of competition is healthy. It pushes all of us to polish and improve our apps in hopes of attracting and retaining users.

In today’s hangout with the boys, we talked a bit about a project @tibfox is working on. A stopgap solution, if you will, to the friction of web3 applications. While it’s not exactly what I had in mind, it’s probably the kind of thing we need to reduce the friction that makes people fall off so easily.

What are keys? Why do I need them? I just wanted to post a picture!

These are the kinds of frustrations that could become a thing of the past, or at least be delayed until they actually matter in a user’s journey. Which, to me, is the goal. How can I ask someone to invest their time and energy into a platform if they feel no ownership, no emotional connection? It just doesn’t work that way.

On that note, it’s my intention, and I hope this is clear, to bring something like this into @snapie. Alongside it, I want to build an easy account creation system with web2-style authentication. Something that acts as a first step for new users. It might sound utopian, but it’s not hard to imagine a simple “just hit continue” flow where a trusted onboarder creates and links an account. From there, a new Hivean could participate socially, test the waters, and only later graduate into managing keys.

There are still details to figure out, I’ll grant you that, but from where I stand, they feel solvable.

At any rate, I can’t wait to show you what I’ve been cooking. I hope the Snaperinos enjoy these updates as much as I’ve enjoyed working on them.

MenO