Oliver's Army - A next-gen social network to kill the dead internet theory.

Oliver's Army - A next-gen social network to kill the dead internet theory.(olivers.army)

1 points by brandoniscool 1 year ago | 2 comments

Hi,

We built this over the course the last 4 months. We hated misinformation, we hated bots, we hated loneliness, we hated corporate infiltration, we hated the destruction of our kids' mental health. Read our Declaration of Principles here: https://www.olivers.army/declaration

Requester Mode -> Create and activate Requests to be sent and seen by anyone in "Responder Mode"

Responder Mode -> Respond to active Requests that get sent your way. You can filter requests by maturity, creativity and some safety stuff. More clever filters in future.

Observation Deck -> Watch the most interesting conversations happen. We're still building this.

We wanted an operating system type feel. We went with window management as we thought this was the most intuitive.

We're running with this tagline for now: "A next-generation social platform that connects people through real time conversations." but we think it's corny and want a new one; suggestions welcome.

Have a great Wednesday HN! It's a privilege to be here. -Brandon

anigbrowl 1 year ago | |

You need to put this on your landing page. I can see the things that make it different, but felt reluctant to invest time in finding out by experiment. The 'Declaration of Principles' is a nice idea but read as vague and pretentious, a grab-bag of feel-good phrases. The prompt 'how do you feel about what's going on right now' doesn't help.

I don't get the requests and responder roles, it feels like quora, and the filters are also confusing (perhaps because there's no examples to peruse). I'm guessing that your favorite conversations are ones where you learn something useful or thought-provoking, or break a complex topic down to its elements and show how their interaction plays out, kind of like freeform Socratic dialog...but I'm not sure if this is the correct interpretation.

I suggest you communicate to users through plain rather than high-flown language, summarize your vision of what's interesting and valuable (rather than just what is not), and maybe spend a month filling it with some team conversations so as to provide users with a sense of what sort of social space it is.

Finally, aesthetics. I get the reference in the title but I'm not sure an Elvis Costello song title is the hook you think it is. The background art feels nostalgic but that doesn't seem ideal for a new product unless you're aiming for a community of people who explicitly reject existing internet culture. The fonts are too small on desktop.