S1E9: Finding Frequency with Jesse Karmani
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Welcome back! This week, we’re sitting down with Jesse Karmani, the developer behind a social photography platform called Frequency. The design motivation behind it is extremely interesting: social networks with a large, undefined audience can lead to posting being incredibly performative, even metric-driven. What does a social network look like that’s designed around sharing with the people you care about most?
We talk about some of our experiences with modern social networks, how they’ve deviated from what they used to be, and how Frequency hopes to tap into the best parts.
Show Notes
Developing Frequency
- Frequency is a private, followers-only Fediverse platform for sharing photos with your friends. There are no public posts, no federated or trending timelines, just connections and what they’re sharing with you.
- Jesse initially started thinking about the concept after going on a camping trip, and getting away from social media. When she came back, she realized that her phone had been connecting to Instagram for a total of 13 minutes everyday, despite her never using it.
- Most social media platforms have a problem: they’re designed around interacting with a potentially vast audience of followers. As time goes on, public interactions can become increasingly performative, rather than authentic.
- What is Frequency built on? It’s a highly customized fork of Mastodon, with a heavy emphasis on user experience. It has a dedicated iOS app built in React Native.
- User adoption for a private social app is definitely a challenge. How do you get people on when there’s no trending timeline?
- Monerization is also tricky. Frequency is built with privacy in mind, and for a lot of privacy enthusiasts, advertising is a no-go. Jesse didn’t want to make Frequency nagware, or embrace some weird payment scheme that feels bad. Instead, Frequency has a very frugal subscription model.
- Frequency has an Inner Circle feature, where you can reach out to a subset of your followers! Jesse is looking at turning this into your own curated feed in the app.
The Web Today
- A lot of social platforms are incentivized to keep their users engaged by suggesting content from some black-box algorithm. Often, it’s rage bait.
- More often than not, apps like Instagram feel like a dying shopping mall, largely trying to get you to buy things instead of connecting with people.
- Social networks also seemingly have held our relationships hostage, where you might see fewer and fewer posts from your mutual connections. When you try to quit Facebook, it even shows you a picture of all your friends to instill guilt.
- Compared to building for Web, developing an app can be extremely cumbersome for one reason: app stores. You can build pretty much anything you want in the browser, but Apple’s stringent requirements can be a real headache. Thankfully, it’s less painful with React Native, because Jesse can at least use the tools and workflow she’s familiar with.
- Discord has seen a lot of adoption in lieu of platforms like Facebook. In some ways, its ubiquity and mass adoption are reminiscent of AIM or Yahoo instant messenger.
