> The goal wasn't to build another social network.
> It was to bring back a small feeling that the web used to have: the sense that there are actual people on the other side of the screen.
> Town Square is intentionally tiny and forgetful. There are no accounts, no profiles, no follower counts, no permanent chat history. Messages exist only while people are there to read them.
Cute idea! But maybe this is just me having a different experience, but people having accounts/permanence was one of the defining “old web” feelings people keep talking about. A few people that were always in comment threads, or people with their own blogs linking back to you etc. People didn’t have the sign guestbooks with the same info every time, but they would anyway because they’re building up a persona. I get that you don’t want any social-media-y popularity contests, but… that is sort of what the web 30+ years ago was like.
> they would anyway because they’re building up a persona
While I’m sure some folks were doing it for that reason, there are a whole bunch of us who were just doing things like that because it was fun. We didn’t need to be popular (but that would have been nice too), we were just kids looking for a community where we fit in.
The Internet back then was a grab bag, a hodge podge, a diaspora, and a most importantly a place to be who you wanted to be instead of a place where your “real” identity followed you everywhere.
I'm actually thinking about implementing some sort of "permanence" for some people, specially for recurring visitors of a given site. But that's still an early thought.
Your risk conclusion elite club this way. So I think this makes the idea less interesting.
Would that be a little guy permanently on the page even if the user isn’t present, or a permanent persona for a user across visits?
A permanent persona for a user across visits. Could even be across website visits, if they all use townsquare.
go further and let me have the same persona in townsquares across various sites. or have you already described why you wouldn't want to do that?
That's what o meant. Same persona in Townsquares across various sites. You would recognise me on my site, on your site and John's site.
This is where Disqus comment sections, as shitty as they were, were a real boon to the blogging ecosystem. You'd see the same users again and again across multiple blogs.
Indeed. We knew each other from our handles(still do).
I mean, the web 20-30 years ago was kinda mixed?
You had your IRC, with no message persistence, no image hosting, and no persistent account names (being able to reserve a username was an optional add-on feature). People would show they were away by changing their username from bob to bob_afk.
And it was common for people to use a nickname (for safety) and never show their face (because posting photos was a big effort). A person could be called 'cmdrtaco' or 'hemos' and that was enough, didn't need their real name or photograph or anything.
But you're right that there were also more small forums using things like phpBB which would be dedicated to a single interest, and they were much more human-scale communities. And people could have big signatures and animated GIF avatars, so you couldn't help but remember them!