social media

Eternal Beta Tester

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Yesterday Threads came out which is the Meta/Facebook/Instagram equivalent to Twitter. I tried it so you don’t have to… but let’s be honest I also sort of sign up for every social network that comes out. Someone might view this as me being fickle or indecisive, but it is just in my personal mindset to want to get in and poke around with a lot of different things. While I was a WoW Tourist for years, it did not stop me from playing every new MMORPG that came out even though I had no real intentions (until Rift that is) of actually leaving that game. Threads is not exactly what I would consider good, but it does seem like there are people who love the damned thing. My spouse is a teacher, and apparently among her friends… they are completely enamored with it. It also seems to be a big hit amongst the celeberatti types.

At its core… Threads is essentially “what if Instagram was Twitter”. My core complaint with Instagram and part of why I only use it for idly scrolling… is that most of the posts that I end up seeing are not from people that I followed, and even then nothing is in chronological order. Twitter for me was very much an “in the moment” experience, and focused entirely on the people that I followed and the things that they might have been retweeting. There was a sense of immediacy to the platform and if something was more than a few hours old… you might as well not respond to it because it was already “old news”. Instagram and Threads are applications decided to have some algorithm feeding you content, in the order in which it deems most relevant. On the day Threads opened… most of my feed was made up of completely random people that I did not know at all. On day two it started to feed me more of the people I was following… but also still a lot of randomness. None of this is conducive to a reasonable replacement for Twitter.

I feel like it is VERY important to understand that I have never used official apps with Twitter. Algorithmic fucking about and promoted Tweets were never part of my user experience. Instead, I had a very user-crafted experience and I was able to tweak the site and my TweetDeck layout to match my interests. This is also why I use Mastodon and what I expect out of a social media experience. Coming from that background… Threads is a completely unusable mess of an application. There is also the problem that it is mobile-only… and I really don’t use social media that much on a mobile device. Sure it is great for idly browsing while laying in bed waiting for sleep to claim me… but during the day I am almost always using it on a computer through a web browser. I didn’t start using Instagram at all until I could access it and upload through a browser… which I did by tricking the browser to think I was on an Android phone. I am not willing to jump through those sorts of hoops for Threads, because it just doesn’t add anything of value to my life. In fact, I had uninstalled it from my phone until this morning when I decided I wanted some screenshots… and now have uninstalled it again.

Blue Sky on the other hand… is charming. There is something about that platform. It has a vibe not unlike what those heady early days of Mastodon felt in 2018. Granted it is a different type of user that is hanging out on the platform than the deeply FOSS/Anarchist vibe that was on early Mastodon, but still it has a unique thing going on. Right now I am mostly there because the handful of friends that were unwilling to convert to Mastodon seem to have taken up residence there. It is still feature-limited, and I still think the At Protocol is the Betamax to ActivityPub’s VHS and will ultimately lose… but it is interesting enough to keep me logging in periodically. There is still an awful lot of “talking about other social media networks” going on regardless of your platform. Things are in a state of flux and I guess it is natural… but I also was sort of happy to have reached a point on the Fediverse where it was coming up less and less.

I think my core problem with Blue Sky or BSky as most users seem to call it… is the interface. I hate the default Twitter interface and BSky seems to be a carbon copy of it. I never understood how people could use that interface… or the default Twitter app… and was always shocked at how few people used TweetDeck or any of the third-party apps like Fenix or even HootSuite. Among the options I have found so far with Blue Sky, I think TokiMeki is maybe the best. It essentially allows you to create a multi-column view like you would it tweet deck. Some of the layout of the site bugs me a bit but I have gotten used to it. What I don’t love however is the lag involved with using any of the third-party options.

Another option is something called SkyFeed, and thus far I do not love it. I might learn to love it eventually though if I ever figure out how to make my own custom feeds. Part of the claim to fame with this interface and Blue Sky, in general, is you can roll your own feeds and assign some pretty detailed filtering parameters to them. You can then either publish your feed globally or simply use it privately. I’ve subscribed to a GameDev one and a Cat Pics one and they both work pretty well. Skyfeed has a helper tool for generating feeds so even if I don’t end up using this as my final multi-column UI, I might use it to help build some feeds.

I think the biggest challenge for me personally with Blue Sky as a whole though… is that I don’t really feel like I belong there. I mean I am sure this is partially just a me thing, but as a platform goes it seems to be dominated by the most charming shitposters. All I really want to do on social media is spout off my random nonsense about the video games I am playing, and comment on other people’s random nonsense. While I can in fact do this thing, it also doesn’t really feel like that is the vibe of the platform as a whole. There is a certain oily sheen of Twitter clout that I recognized when stepping aboard and does not really fit what I want anymore. I kinda want a bunch of unabashed geeks talking about their super grognard and arcane exploits. I have no interest in appearing cool anymore, and I am just not sure I fit into the community that is gathering there.

Part of that is absolutely on me though, because I am not sure if I want to fit in. I found a home and it is a delightful one, and while I keep poking around looking at other things because it is my nature… I am always happy to return to the blue-grey interface of the default advanced mode Mastodon client. I think what I daydream about is a future where maybe my sticking around on Gamepad.club doesn’t mean not being able to hang out with the friends that didn’t connect with the Fediverse as a whole. My hope with the focus on federation among the current crop of platforms… means at some point they will all standardize on a single federation method, or at least that there will be gateways and bridges that are built between them. I dream of an era when we all get to settle into whatever social platform feels the most comfortable to us… and also still get to share conversations freely.

I would love to say just create an account on Gamepad.club and hang out there with me. I’ve helped with this instance in order to have a comfy place for my friends to land, but I also am tired of being the guy who is constantly trying to recruit folks away from whatever platform they are enjoying. I had come to realize that I was just going to lose access to a number of friends, and I had been okay with that… but the last few weeks and the continued dumpster fire that is Twitter sorta ripped open some old wounds. However, I am sorry to say… I won’t be coming to Threads and while I am lurking there… I won’t be adopting Blue Sky as my new home. My home is and will continue to be Gamepad.club. That is where I feel most comfortable and honestly feel most loved. I’ve tried almost every social platform that has come out over the last few years save for the more toxic ones like Gab or of course Truth.Social… and none of them have done it for me. On Gamepad we have a little over 100 users and most of them are active, and it just feels comfy.

The Fediverse can be a wild place, but it also feels like home. I love gamepad and I love all of the other bright little hubs out there that folks have coalesced. I love how open and free folks seem to be in their discussions. I love that folks seem to be genuine with each other and are willing to tear down the layers of defense that we threw up while using Twitter. I don’t want to be cool anymore, and I am not sure if I ever wanted to be. I don’t have to even give the slightest fuck about what my follow count looks like as compared to someone else. I just want to be me, sitting on my virtual porch waving at other delightful geeks and nerds as they pass by. Maybe that is a weirdly utopian viewpoint of the Fediverse, but it represents how I feel about it most of the time. Sure there are little wars that get waged between instance admins that are diametrically opposed on a given issue… but being on our small little island we are often insulated from a lot of that. I trust Gazimoff, Aywren, and Scopique who I share admin/mod duties and I am always happy to welcome a new face that shows up on our shores.

It isn’t perfect, and I realize our little corner of the internet won’t be for everyone. However it is where I live now, and while I might visit other places… it is the only place where you can always find me. I still hope for a day when a bridge gets built between my home and wherever you call home, but I’m not willing to abandon my peace of mind to keep looking for a mythical realm that everyone will simultaneously decide to call home. Like I said the other day… there is no new Twitter, that time is over and you have to figure out where it is that you call your home.

There is No New Twitter

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Good Morning Friends! While technically a vacation day for me, I guess I am here opting to write a blog post because I have had some thoughts kicking around in my head. It has been a bit of a wild ride since the first of this month for a lot of folks on the internet. If you have not been impacted then gratz… you are not terminally online. For the rest of us, however, there has been a bit of strife even for those who abandoned that site last year. Essentially a sequence of events has led to Twitter largely being unusable for the average user that has refused to pay for the $8 per month badge of shame. Firstly on June 30th, Twitter shut off access for anyone viewing the site without logging in first… which also killed access to any links that have been shortened with T.Co. Next came the above tweet which announced that all Twitter users would be dealing with “rate limits”.

What this means in practice is that simply by leaving your Twitter client or web browser running, you would begin to lose access to new tweets when your account on any platform had cached 600 messages. New accounts are restricted to 300 I am assuming so folks don’t simply create alt accounts to bypass the quota. The rumor is that this is all being brought on by the fact that Elon Musk yet again failed to pay one of his bills… this time for hosting in the Google Cloud. There has supposedly been a mad dash within Twitter to migrate elsewhere, and the impossible task was not completed in time… leading to the entire service being severely throttled instead of fessing up to this… it is being played as more of Elon’s crusade against bots and data scraping.

This is not the first time we have decreed that Twitter was burning. However, this is maybe the first time that it has truly adversely impacted the average user. 600 Tweets is not a lot given how spammy some users are, and given that promoted tweets and the things that the algorithm crams in your feed also count towards that number… most everyone ends up being rate limited before long. There is actually a weird sub-community that has sprung up around trying to speed-run the rate limit. The end result of this is that folks who never considered leaving… are not desperately seeking a solution. Essentially everyone seems to be looking for the next Twitter.

The latest greatest home seems to be Blue Sky. For those who are completely unaware of what this nonsense is, essentially Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame… has gone off and attempted to create his own corporate version of Mastodon that looks and feels like Twitter did circa 2008. The problem with Blue Sky is threefold… firstly it is very much a “minimum viable product” at the moment and is missing a bunch of features that one expects from a Twitter-Clone like some measure of private messaging. Secondly, they are using the Gmail model for growth, where every so often users are given one or two invites for them to ration out to their friends. Thirdly you are jumping from the arms of one corporation that had no clue how to make enough money to sustain its service to the arms of another company with seemingly no viable business plan.

At some point, it seemed that Blue Sky was universally declared the new Twitter, and folks desperately tried to get invites to the platform. This caused so much churn that by the afternoon of the first, Blue Sky had to completely turn off invites… even for pre-existing codes that had been sent out. There was a period of time when neither Twitter nor Blue Sky was loading at all. They have since turned back on the trickle of outstanding invites, but no new ones are being sent out. Essentially there is no room in the inn for new users, and the site is not ready for public launch. The folks who are there seem to like it, and I personally think it is a reasonable place to visit… but doesn’t really feel like home. The platform as a whole is missing so many features that it really does not make sense for them to attempt to rush into production. So as a result of just not being able to accept the masses, Blue Sky will in theory fail to be the new Twitter.

Now Meta is attempting to toss their hat into the ring with Threads. I am uncertain if this is the ActivityPub option that has caused so much drama recently within the Fediverse, or if this is something entirely different that they had been working on. Whatever the case this will give folks who are already bought into Instagram an option to make Twitter-like text-based posts on that platform. While I use Instagram occasionally I don’t really love it. Instagram is a site about beautiful people posting beautiful things about their beautiful lives. I am not a beautiful person, and I am also not extremely visually motivated when it comes to expressing myself. I write walls of text broken up by screenshots, and when I am not doing that… I write dumbassed quips. Instagram has never really felt like home, and I doubt adding Twitter posts to it will make it more embracing either.

Then there are the living dead… the locations that attempted to be Twitter or at least give an alternate landing spot that failed to gain any real traction. These include Spoutible shown above, Post, CoHost, and countless others trying to be the next new place for folks to talk with each other. All of these have their own communities but they are also extremely narrow in their scope and have lacked the mass adoption required to be the next Twitter. Spoutible seems to be a carbon copy version of Twitter, and others like CoHost are leaning more on the past social networks and creating an almost Live Journal-style experience. Then there are things like Tumblr that are still alive and kicking and apparently working on federating over ActivityPub.

Then there is the Fediverse, or as most folks seem to refer to it… Mastodon. This is more the Anti-Twitter than a Twitter replacement because it was created by folks looking for an alternative to social media as it existed at the time… and was forged in the fires of folks who abandoned Twitter for various sundry reasons. There are many articles out there that will tell you that the Twitter Migration failed and that Mastodon will not be the next Twitter… and I agree with them for the most part. I think the key to understanding this is the fact that the folks running most Fediverse servers would not consider replacing Twitter as a laudable goal. It sorta just wants to exist as its own thing, which is there if folks want to partake but also… fine if folks don’t.

While I have been dabbling with Mastodon, particularly since 2018, I truly made it my home late last year and made what I hope was my final migration to Gamepad.club a server that I help administrate. I chided Blue Sky for not really having a viable business model, but the truth is… the Fediverse isn’t really out to make money either. Most servers like ours run on a patronage system where folks donate time and money to help keep the site running. This doesn’t really work at scale, but I feel like the Fediverse works when it is a bunch of smaller communities rather than attempting to be a single flagship mono-site like Mastodon.social or even honestly Mstdn.social. Because the network is so distributed… the smaller servers felt almost no impact from the crush of new user sign-ups. While we had quite a few new faces show up over the weekend… the server remained happily trucking along without missing a beat.

While there are absolutely a bunch of different options out there who do want to be the next Twitter… I don’t really think any of them will succeed at that goal. Twitter is a thing that evolved over time as the lowest common denominator, the network that everyone simultaneously agreed was tolerable enough to maintain a presence on. That began to change when Elon Musk took over, and it is a landslide that can’t really be stopped now. However once that dam truly breaks… folks are going to spread out to ALL of the options that I mentioned and many more that I didn’t… and not a single one of them will become the new ubersite. Folks have way too many options and once you realize you don’t really need Twitter or its clout, you start to focus instead on what actually brings meaning to your personal experience.

I found my new home, and while I realize most people ended up turning their noses up at the Fediverse/Mastodon experience… I found a community there. I would say maybe 30% of the total #TwitterMigration stuck around, but those who did found communities and started adding to the tapestry that is what makes that place special. While I will probably dabble in lots of different networks as they evolve into specific niche cases, my home base is always going to be Gamepad. Sure it meant that I lost a lot of friends through the transition, but I made so many brand new friends… and it isn’t like my path probably won’t cross the folks I missed along the way. It is not like I am terribly hard to find when someone decides to pay me a visit years down the line.

There won’t be a new Twitter, because you just can’t even have back a specific moment in time. For me, the final straw was Elon’s antics. For others, it will be the rate-limiting that started this week. For yet more it will be the fact that they will be losing TweetDeck in roughly 30 days if they don’t pay the $8 per month ransom to keep access. Much like there was never another World of Warcraft, because no other game really captured the moment that crafted that game… there will never be another Twitter. There will be larger communities and smaller communities… but there will be no one place where everyone has to be. I know personally… I am looking to move away from as many corporate services as I can and begin hosting my own infrastructure where possible. This blog has been around for almost fifteen years at this point, and has migrated between multiple providers… and because I own it… I know it will keep existing as my landmark on the internet for as long as I need it.

I’ve gone so far as to host my own Linktree because I did not like being beholden to that service. Sure it took a modicum of effort for me to configure Link Stack on my web host, but once done I now have a permanent way to keep my various links up to date and give someone a simple link to find pretty much everything I do. At some point… I probably want to go down the path of migrating away from Gmail. It isn’t like Google is known for keeping things around for long… so I figure at some point in the not-so-distant future the axe will come for it as well. Moving away from Twitter was more of an evolution than I realized it would be. I want to own my place on the internet, or at least trust the people who run the resources I am consuming. However… this will not be something that everyone is even interested in doing and as a result, someone will need to keep maintaining the “AOL” for those users.

I think the volume of what is available on Twitter will likely land in three different places. There will be about a third of people who do eventually migrate over to the fediverse in one form or another, even if it is corporate variants like the ActivityPub federation that Tumblr is looking at. Then there will be folks who stay loyal to Blue Sky and keep betting on Jack to make things right again out of some sense of misplaced trust that he can build a new Twitter. There will be another third that land on whatever the Meta offering ends up looking like because they are already comfortable with Instagram or Facebook and just want a turnkey solution that asks absolutely nothing of them and could not give a fuck about what that might mean for their data in the long run. The monoculture of Twitter, if there ever was such a thing… will cease to exist. Elon has done irreparable harm, and all that is left is for folks to wake up and realize that particular party is over.

There will be no new Twitter because that era is over.

[UPDATE – 14:00 CDT]

When I wrote this post earlier in the day… I was apparently super dense. I knew that Meta had been working on what is effectively their own Mastodon Client (technically just interops with ActivityPub), but I had no clue it was launching this fast. Threads is essentially a corporate storefront on the Fediverse. It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

Gamepad is Cozy

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Good Morning Friends! I’ve not really talked about it here on the blog, but for a while now I have been helping with the operation of Gamepad.club. Recently there have been some situations in the greater Fediverse where instance Administrators have gone missing leading to periods of significant degradation in operation and instance culture. Due to these wider concerns, Gazz wanted to protect the instance from ever being in a situation where an administrator could not be reached. I was asked and I agreed to help around with the instance. The variance in our operating times helps us catch those sign-ups and approve them a bit faster. So if you have any questions or concerns about Gamepad.club feels free to hit me up through any of my many social channels. I’m not really around on Twitter anymore so if you reach out there, it is going to take a while for me to even notice.

I have to admit I had been somewhat hesitant to talk too broadly about my role as an administrator on Gamepad.club not because I was ashamed to talk about it, but more because I wanted to spare the instance any undue heat. I had a fairly significant falling out with the Administrator of another gaming instance that launched last November. Largely I was trying to keep from our small home drawing her spite and her blocking the instance. However, I feel like I have been walking on eggshells since the events surrounding the launch of that instance and my being removed from the moderation team. When the same exact things happened to the other moderator of the instance, I just got tired of trying to be cautious. I will not let that bullshit that we dealt with damage my joy when it comes to the fediverse any longer. I feel safer on Gamepad than I did on other instances, because I have known Gazz for so many years, and he also knows me.

We’ve not had what I would consider meteoric growth, but it has been steady growth nonetheless. I think the great social media land run is more or less over, and folks who would be willing to leave Twitter already have their flag planted on some instance here. Most of our growth has been folks migrating from other instances because they wanted a more chill local feed. Truth be told the great thing about the Fediverse is that there is no real reason why anyone needs to be on any specific server. More than anything it is about choosing your local feed and maybe having a “cool address” behind your name. We’ve thrown out a placard and announced that we were open for business, and folks have answered that call a few at a time. Even I put off moving entirely for a while because it is a bit of a hassle to uproot yourself and plant yourself in a new place… even when you feel like that new place will be a better home.

I have to admit I am honestly fine with having a bit of a personal touch to our home, rather than trying to bring in thousands of people. None of us are trying to make a living off running an instance, but instead just trying to carve out a comfy home for ourselves in this new social landscape. The really cool thing about where we are now in the fediverse is that you can maintain a small instance, yet still have a good federation with thousands of other instances. I think last I knew we were federating actively with some 9000 other instances. Small instances that are not terribly well federated have issues with hashtags and the like, but so far the handful that I follow habitually are still introducing me to new people. I admit I was a bit concerned about that by moving away from one of the “stuxlikes”, but I’ve not really seen any tangible difference. I don’t think Patreon fully covers the operating expenses but if nothing else it is putting a decent dent in them.

So far things seem to be trucking along swimmingly. There has been a bit of weirdness when someone migrates from an instance we have not had migrations from before. We aren’t entirely certain what is going on there but it settles out after a few minutes. Essentially when you migrate from another instance there is a flurry of activity as the new server handshakes with both the old server and every server that you were following folks on. The whole “moving” instance thing is relatively new as in the past the only option you had was to export the list of folks you were following and then import that list into the new home. Previously there was no means to move followers, and the new process essentially asks for permission from every instance. If it succeeds the instance has the person who was following you previously follow your new account and then unfollow your old account. This works great so long as every server is running the same version of Mastodon, but largely falls apart when you are talking about other fediverse variants like Pixelfed, Pleroma, Misskey, etc.

Because of the voluntary nature of server migration and follower moves, this is in part why I always suggest folks export all of their data manually to CSV so that they can fall back to importing those if anything does not go as planned. In a worst-case scenario, you can then manually import everyone you were following, and hope the nature of the fediverse takes hold and they follow you on the new account. Server migrations are commonplace enough that rarely does anyone really bat an eye when someone jumps instances. More than anything the ability to change instances provides a self-healing characteristic that you just don’t have in another environment. If an instance gets stale, too busy for your tastes, or is unsustainable by the administration team… then you can move your home and in most cases, the entire process takes less than fifteen minutes from start to finish. Instances sign onto the Mastodon Server Covenant as we have as a way of providing at least three months’ notice if an instance needs to shut down.

Right now we are going through a rather public scenario where a large instance is shutting down. Currently, folks are using this as an excuse to decry the failure of Mastodon. For me, I largely view it as the system succeeding because instance admins have thrown out the welcome mat to make sure the folks from Mastodon.lol needing a new home can find one easily. Migration is one of those things that is just built into the Mastodon experience. I’ve shared the entire history of my instances before, but Gamepad.club is my tenth instance and in each case, I had perfectly valid reasons to move. That isn’t to say you need a reason other than “I want to” and the beautiful thing is that after awhile folks understand that the nature of the fediverse involves people shifting into more comfortable positions. I would never put the hard sell on anyone to migrate to any instance because so long as there is no defederation nonsense at work, we will be able to talk freely no matter where you end up.

Anyways long post that went in a bunch of different directions as often mine do. I’m helping out with the operations of Gamepad.club and while I’m technically an administrator I still very much take my lead from Gazz. I mostly help out with tedious things like loading emojis and helping to approve account submissions, but am there to step in if there ever comes a need for me to take a more active role. It is a good home and we’d love to have you, but also there is no pressure to move if you are happy where you currently “live” on the fediverse.

Gamer Social Media

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Love for Anook

AnookForTheWin

So anyone who follows me probably knows of my love of twitter.  Over the years it has become the only major social media network that I really interact with on a regular basis.  Technically I have Facebook, and G+ and essentially an account on every single social media network because I am always curious about the next big thing…. but rarely do they actually make an impact.  What has happened instead is that I seem to have become more and more entrenched in niche social media.  Firstly I have to talk about my love of Anook.  When this site first launched it confused the hell out of me.  In fact I was shooting off my mouth like I often do on twitter, complaining about me not really understanding its purpose….  when the Anook account started messaging me trying to explain it.  My attachment to this network is entirely thanks to one man, Lonrem the social and community manager for the site.  The site itself does a lot of things…  but it also has so far to go before it “grows up” into the site that it could be.

I have a long list of things that I would love to see on it, but I continue to use it as it is in the hope that someday the rest of the world will realize just how special this network really is.  It is built on a strange dynamic of forcing actual interaction with the site, rather than allowing folks to just auto post content.  This is cool because it means that folks are actually there and posting and commenting… but the negative is for content providers like myself it is frustrating to have to do extra work just to support them.  Each week when I publish AggroChat I go out and manually syndicate the content to our AggroChat Nook.  The first change I would love to see is for them to integrate with RSS feeds the same way they do with YouTube and auto format a post in a way as to showcase blog content.  The other big one for me is that their system only allows you to tag one game per post… and you all know I cannot seem to make single game posts like ever unless it is an impressions piece. In any case…. the community on Anook is amazing because Lonrem works his ass off to keep it that way.  Spammers, Bots and Trolls do not last long because the network is curated by hand.  I just hope that they get the funding to expand features and integrate with more things.

Slack: Private IRC Thingy

MyLoveForSlack

The next social thing that has taken me even further away from traditional social media… is Slack.  It is kinda hard to explain just what Slack is, but I tend to think of it as a private social network.  On one hand it is almost like having a private IRC server, and on other hands it is like having a private version of google drive or dropbox.  I was originally introduced to the tool through the MMOGames.com staff who uses it for coordination of articles and such.  I then started using it at work with my own development team, and we have pretty much switched to communicating exclusively through it so that if someone tags into a discussion late they can use the channel backlog to catch up on what is going on.  Finally I convinced the AggroChat crew to start using it to discuss and coordinate things during the week, and from there it kinda grew into me being in a huge number of private slack groups each of them with their own dedicated focus.  The end result is that I use other media less and tend to use slack as my key focus.  It has a bunch of benefits, like the fact that this site is largely used for business purposes around the world, and as such happily passes though most corporate web filters.

What slack does extremely well is text chat, and while they can integrate with a dozen other things and are even starting to move down the voice chat path…  they are the king of text allowing you more options than pretty much any other service.  For programmers this is amazing because it allows you to post snippets of code and then have it formatted and color coded for the language you posted it as.  This is huge when collaborating on development, and we even end up using this from time to time among the AggroChat crew.  You can also see in the above image that we have it integrated with twitter so that anytime someone sends a message directed at our AggroChat account it shows up in a specific channel.  The feature we have really gotten addicted to is the custom emoticons and I am not sure what I will do without my Vault Boy Thumbs Up icon to use as a reaction.  The piece of the equation that most people don’t know is that the team behind Slack… is Tiny Speck the company that built the amazing 2D MMO Glitch.  They essentially took the robust chat infrastructure behind that game… and turned it into a business product that honestly makes me feel a little good inside to be using.

Discord: New Voice Contender

DiscordTheNewKid

Over the years we have shifted back and forth between the three major voice providers for gaming purposes:  Teamspeak, Ventrilo, and Mumble.  Each of them has their own positives and negatives.  They all share a big negative however in that it requires you to either find someone willing to host a server for you, or pony up for server hosting costs.  For years during World of Warcraft raiding, I just ate the cost of a voice server because it was something like $45 a quarter.  However that still adds up over time, so when we were offered the Alliance of Awesome Teamspeak server I jumped at the chance to jump to no longer having to pay this fee.  That server has been awesome and we record AggroChat from it every Saturday night.  However deep down inside… I know that someone out there is having to foot the bill for our fun… and it kinda bothers me.  Recently a new app called Discord has somewhat taken the gaming world by storm.  In so many ways Slack and Discord seem to spawn from the same desire… to have server less communication for their users.  Slack went in the direction of replacing IRC, Instant Messenger and Email…. and Discord went down the path of trying to replace Teamspeak, Ventrilo and Mumble.  There is a huge bit of overlap between the two technologies but for the most part Slack is my daytime network, and Discord is rapidly becoming my night time network.

What is extremely awesome about this is that each game community seems to be adopting Discord, and I now have large communities in Destiny, ESO, Rift, and The Division that are focused that one game.  We recently shifted to using this as a World of Warcraft raid for the Stalwart casual Wednesday night raid and it works wonderfully.  The stability of Teamspeak has been a little questionable of late, and we went through a night where everyone sounded like robots.  This lead us to fire up a discord, and in a few minutes we were all able to chat happily with little to no lag.  There are some caveats here that I feel like I should talk about.  The web client is awesome for text based chat, but if you intend to use it long… I highly suggest downloading the client for your desktop or mobile platform.  The web client push to talk only works if you have focus on the web page…. meaning as soon as you alt tab into your game you can no longer speak.  A side note… if you are not using push to talk…  please god use push to talk.  I raided for years with folks who didn’t and really… we can hear every sneeze, fart, and kid yelling in the background.  I would absolutely jump from Teamspeak to Discord entirely… but as of right now there is no good means of recording a channel.  I’ve bumped the feature up on the request list, so hopefully maybe someday someone will see fit to do that.  Mostly I hate Skype with a passion and would love for Discord to really take over the podcast recording world.

Other Stuff

The thing is… these are the three services that I have now become extremely comfortable with and have integrated into my life.  There are so many others out there like Player.me that I have yet to really see the personal benefit of.  Then of course there are all of the services like Steam that we all use… but don’t really use like social networks.  Recently I have somewhat been forced to use Band because it is what my Destiny Clan switched to using.  It seems to have really great scheduling options, but pretty shitty chat or at least it is shitty if you are not using a mobile client.  I try and do everything I can through desktop or web based clients because nothing makes me a sad panda like typing on my phone. I am horrible at responding to non-critical text messages because I really hate the process of typing even with swype on a mobile device.  I know my wife uses the Google speech to text functionality a lot, but nothing makes me feel more of an idiot than talking to my phone.  So in the end… I put off responding to as much as I can until I am sitting back down at a keyboard again.  So I’ve showed you mine… what services do you now use that you cannot give up?  I am curious how these niche media sites are reshaping the way we interact with social media in general.