• Live Journal
• Facebook & Twitter
• GitHub Blog with Hexo
• Medium
  • the editor bad parts
  • Good parts
  • highlights
  • Audience
  • Freedom and Ownership
  • Nothing back
• Youtube
• back to GitHub with a notebook
• NOSTR
• Yakihonne
  • A bit of pain
  • First Zaps
  • Community
  • Community-driven Development
  • Awesome Tech
• What I am keen to see in a future
• The Big Ideas

§Live Journal

Live Journal was extremely popular in Ukraine while I was in school and during my university years. It was one of the first social media platforms founded in 1999. LJ or ЖЖшичка as it was called in Ukrainian community, was a place for poetry and long reads. As you could guess from the name it was focused more on people’s Journals.

§Facebook & Twitter

Around 2009, one of my colleagues showed me Facebook. It was more international, cool and modern. What more important audience? It was a boom of social media. Twitter for me was way harder because it was not designed for a long read. I used Facebook for everything

• poetry
• pics of cats
• tech post
• philosophy I used mainly social media and it was hard for me to run my own blog. I noticed that i have a lot of challenges
• post got lost in a page
• no way to do a long read with code and formatting
• There was no way to separate audiences

I read a lot of articles that suggest to have a blog for a better profile and a successful career. So i deside to create one !!

§GitHub Blog with Hexo

In 2018 i get brave enough to start sharing my articles and ideas. I was not ready to invest a money to hosting and i was extremely neardy. I was keen to use something simple for publishing like org-mode files or markdown. I fould few solutions and stopped on Hexo. So Hexo give me a tooling to turn markdown to a blog that i could simply host on github pages. It was

• free hosted
• simple md files
• open to everybody
• keep a versioning
• follow my developer flow and tools
• easy to add custom js / css visualization
• easy to use features like plantUml diagrams

I was keen to create a new kind of blog that used non-linear articles and post more in a mindmap style - till i discovered that mind maps are high in context and could be used as a support material and not as a leading media.

I realized one big problem ,and this problem was not in tech, and it was not even in content or form of content. My blog was quite a lonely place. I desice to fix it with a plugins that add comments and crossposting to social networks but it didnt help. All blogs that self hosted struggle from 2 big problems’

• discoverability
• audiences Competing with a Google search rank or full-scale social media is hard. The main challenge blogs is not social media platforms - you do not have a readers.

§Medium

After a bit of research, I discovered that Medium is one of the biggest publishing platforms with an audience and communities. At the same time, it was easy to publish and use an editor but …

§the editor bad parts

The medium editor has some obvious issues as for tech nerds:

• no markdown support at all
• no tables or complex formatting
• no way to add customizations
• no way to make it interactive

§Good parts

• super simple
• page links preview
• document embeddings So it was a nice tool for non-tech people but extremely limited

§highlights

One of the cool and hidden features for user highlights and reading lists. You could capture part of articles and etc. I really even more like this feature on kindle - on kindle you can see what other people are highlighting and how popular is this part of the article. highlights could be quite powerful for a reader experience. I keen to have it on Yakihonne.

§Audience

The coolest part . On medium, you have readers a lot of readers and a lot of writers. Now you have people around !!!

§Algorithmic fight

From one side, it is cool, but now you are competing with algorithms. For me, algorithmic feed is a nightmare. You as a reader do not decide anymore what you want to read - now it is a job.

§Freedom and Ownership

Tadam - your articles do not belong to you. It is the biggest fraud of the 20th century. I’ve been blogging about this problem for a long time. Your content does not belong to you . it is a platform property. It is a platform fuel that platform will turn into money.

§Censorship

Well, as far as content not belong to you it expresses values and follows the rules of the platform. If the medium does not like your content it will be lost and your account could be blocked. it is more side effect of ownership and web2 platforms in general. You should follow a rules and trends.

§Nothing back

As far as you own nothing - you get nothing. It is simple. Medium has an author program, but you should be eligible to apply to the program

• requirement to audience size
• a requirement of interactions
• age and what’s more important it is regulated and requires you to provide tax id and all regulatory information. In some countries, it could be a pain. It is not the biggest problem. Yep, you literally got nothing, but if you want to get anything and buy a coffee from your articles - you force users to pay !!

§Force you to pay

It is the worst part of medium - you force others to pay to get access to your content. Even more, at some point, you will start to pay to platform yourself. $ 50$ per year is not big, but it is not free will. You pay and force others to pay.

I dont want to say that medium is evil but it is some how

§Youtube

I catch that long reads and articles take time and effort. I am not a native English speaker, and worse, i am dyslexic. It is a challenge to write a long reads but video is simple. Sure you do a note and prepare a topic to talk about times in writing, but you switch the camera and talk - it is easy and fast. Well, some audience really like videos more and has a tendency to force author to do more TikTok and shorts-like videos. I faced with a same set of challenges with youtube as for medium

• Censorship
• No ownership
• We pay you only if you successfully and clarified

But something was new - russian bot attacks. A few of my videos were deleted forever and i do not have a backup because of russian bot and russian farm attacks. It is a big topic of moderation of the ukrainian segment of YouTube that deserves its own article. Ir was a main reason that i start looking for decentralized video hosting. You could read more about my journey with a video My journey to Decentralized Social Media I try not to repeat my self in this article. I am quite happy with Peertube now. More about peertube in my article here.

At some point I got a lot of feedback that it is hard to follow videos only for a tech topics, even with screencasts and supporting coding materials. Some people, mainly tech people prefer to read more. So video was not a universal answer. Some times it is nice to combine video with a text sumarry and additional details and context . I realised that long-form posting is still a thing.

§back to GitHub with a notebook

It was a period where i was deep in opensource and was making opensource SDK for a SSI. It was a lot of tech heavy and code heavy content where you need to explain code line by line should a result of execution , give a diagrams and add a lot of tech details. Regular blog platforms are simply not ready for live coding environments and such content. So I start looking for new tools that extend my old GitHub-hosted blog. For sure org mode and babel was awesome but to magical tool. I still keen to write my story about org mode stay tuned !!! After a few researches about literate programming i decided to use a Jupyter Notebooks It was exactly what i was looking for. User was able to take a notebook from a git and play with a code and follow a guide. Even more Jupyter books give a way to assemble a notebooks to a website where user could just read a book composed from notebooks with out even install anything or as a option user could download a notebook and play with it. I wrote a article about my journey there Turn code samples into an executable book with Jupyter-book.

As a result, i published my little book like series about SSI I got a cool code interaction tool but missed a audience again

§NOSTR

It was 2023 and I was deep in a postblockchain and privacy first research for my work. After one chat with tech buddy Andri (big fun of mate and decentralized tech) i discovered RGB contracts on top of Bitcoin network. You could learn more about RGB from my curration. author Max Orlovsky was talking about a RGB and need of transport protocol RENOSTR. I discovered that RENOSTR is more like the idea but NOSTR itself is booming social protocol in bitcoin community !!! I jump in and try Damus . It was clear - it is a future but on earlier stage of adoption. It was quite lonelly space and mastodon had a better community adoption. One big thing about NOSTR - it is a protocol so people start haking and building apps and ecosystem around it . I found a clone of the medium. https://blogstack.io/ was a long for bloggin platform on top of NOSTR. I would say extremely slow and buggy but the idea was amazing. I started posting and republishing there.

§Yakihonne

One day I got a message from Isaac @jf3u…qh99 one of yakihonne team members. the message was heartwarming - folks like my writings and want even to zap me. Zaps was a new concept to me but i was familiar with a lightning network. it took me a bit of time to set up tech part of payment. I still waiting for this originals zaps so probably they get lost some where but this post opened a doors to a completely new community and ecosystem.

§A bit of pain

I struggled a lot with a Chrome browser and wallet extension. It took me days and days to code bug with the community and i still use the incognito mode of chrome and Arc to post my blogs. In general wallet interaction is a big adoption pain for all web3 and web5 project. I was so eager to join that i finally hack a way to make my first post.

§First Zaps

I didn’t get my original zaps but i got so much zaps for articles from /blogstack. It really motivates me to produce a content and share a content. It more a revard of people and community attention - somebody read your idea and shares a same view.

§Community

the biggest hidden power of Yakihonne is a community and telegram channel. I am not a big fan of telegram i believe that this Russian-powered platform is not secure and safe, but I took a risk and joined a channel. Community is a unique combination of Yakihonne teams and developers with writers and authors. it is a first time where i see so engaged team in a product. A lot of support and love

§Community-driven Development

The team is eager to listen and build a platform features from feedback. More folks have a reward for a features review with critics, pros and cons, and proactive feedback. Community really drive a lot. I am a developer so i know how hard is to do a cool software. Decentralized software is way harder.

§Awesome Tech

The editor has a lot of power and hidden features

• full and good support of markdown with tables and so one.
• full support of HTML . so you could embed
  • a videos
  • page links
  • code formatting
  • and maybe little interactive apps
• image upload feature save time
• math formulas DSL

You could follow my curation for publishing hacks on yakihone So it is a much more advanced editor and rendering. Be careful what looks amazing on Yakihonne could have pur support on other platforms. So i try to use more markdown but the structure iframe is essential feature for me.

Some features of platform is unique for NOSTR publishing

• Curations - a cool and visual way to collect articles together. It is open a lot of doors
  • mini books publishing
  • article series publishing
  • collect topics of different authors.
• Bookmarks - another cool way to remember
• Reports - we censorship free but still as a community we have a responsibility to fight with harmful posts

§What I am keen to see in a future

• code highlights for different languages . now the feature is broken. I made a article how to doit
• Ability to have shared community currations. I see a lot of dublicates in curation list so maybe a shared list will help a community
• Big Dream is a streaming and Yakihonne for videos . but for now you could use iframe . see my article
• page preview links as same as a medium have . I have a article how tpo doit yourself
• ability to run sandboxed Js and mini apps . it could make a tech article more fun with runnable code
• highlights - more like bookmarks on steroids but even more. it is cool to let author know that people like some part of article and save it for later.
• open algorithms and strategies for feed filter. it will give a user a tool to define whats to read

§The Big Ideas

Yakihonne powered by NOSTR brings a lot of essential features that other platform are not able to deliver

• Ownership You need to trust Yakihonne relay but on same time you could use a NOSTR power and keep your publications backups. it is your data
• Freedom to write - platform is censorship-free and open to everybody
• Freedom to read - same work with a reading . you could define whom to follow and read and from with relays
• Anonymity - I am a public person but for some people and some countries it could be a part of freedom to stay pseudo anonymous
• Freedom to reward - with Zaps you could support writers. Yakihonne support writers a lot . It is more open that force user to pay
• Transperancy - be on top of protocol give you full transparency of data and it is use.
• Community - the biggest super power I want to thank to a team of Yakihonne for amazing product