[matt_s]

It’s fundamentally not viable in the sense of mass adoption. Security conscious and tech nerds (like HN audience) might do it but mass adoption, aka crossing the chasm from early adopters and onwards, isn’t feasible because all the aunts, uncles and grandma’s out there aren’t going to pay for it or switch.

If those user types haven’t moved en masse off twitter to <insert some replacement> then what would compel people to move, and pay for something they don’t pay for with money?

If by existing relationships you mean only like 2 degrees of separation then its implied that there is no global posting, no viral capability and probably no businesses or politicians on it (all amazing features I would love). Basically a family and friends network. A huge difficulty would be how to price it, one time fee for a family tree? The largest costs are going to be bandwidth and storage. If you go no video/images then what pulls people in?

Company structure might be key too. If it’s built as employee owned and operated with a small profit goal, it might take longer to grow but odds are enshitification or corrupt management can be avoided.

[neilfd]

My early thoughts on pricing are that the free version allows you to keep a rolling 30 day window of content, it is built to encourage you to post every day, recording your life, with some soft journalling, phot prompts etc, so 30 days gives you a month free. on day 31, you can no longer access the 1st days content, day 32, 1st and 2nd days content is faded, subscription allows you access to your whole timeline, if you unsub, the 30 day window cuts back in. Subscription allows you access to everything - £2-4 a month is what im thinking. Might be dumb, might not be

[matt_s]

The rolling timeline seems like a good approach to not have free users take a ton of storage but I would think even allowing free users to post video/images content at all is going to consume a lot of storage. It might be worth thinking through ideas on how to encourage users to get their network to sign up.