Thanks for this. I really appreciate (and enjoyed!) the use cases. What I have in mind is mostly the information sharing use case. I think there’s been a lot of focus on such a platform “catching on” and what it means on the global scale, and I did get caught up in that for a brief moment, but I’ve realised that my interest on the global scale is misplaced. I want something that primarily works for a local community, and I want it to be decentralised in a fashion so that if instances decide to acknowledge each-other’s existence, they’ll provide the ability to look for physically close posts by pointing to each other when relevant. This might not be how the rest of the Fediverse works, or want’s to work, but it seems better and actually simpler in design to me. I think I’m going to go off and try building my own thing. If nothing else, it’ll be a learning experience.

The Hometown functionality isn’t what I’m describing. I want something in which the experience is about physical proximity to the subject. I may be bad at explaining this. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Yes, it looks like this is a better comparison than Nextdoor in terms of features.

Hey, you’re the second person to suggest that it could be achieved with Mastodon. I’ll look into it, and if it can be achieved with Mastodon in the way that I’m picturing, I won’t be reinventing the wheel, thanks.

I’ll look into that, thanks. If someone has already done the work that’d be amazing!

The Home functionality could and probably would be used like Nextdoor is used, however categorisation would allow for niche interests that fall outside of general neighbourly discussion. The nearby functionality would result in functionality that I don’t believe Nextdoor offers, which is exploration focused.

Additionally, it’s decentralised, which I don’t believe Nextdoor is.

Thanks Rimu! Steal away! I just watched a video of you demonstrating PieFed. It’s good to get some positive feedback from a developer with experience in building a decentralised platform, because as of yet, I don’t have that.

I’ll almost certainly be using ActivityPub if and when, and I’ll keep in mind this address amendment :D

Hey! Thanks for the feedback! :D Regarding your point on whether or not it could ever take off, I’ve given this some thought over the last 24 hours, because I have received a lot of similar feedback. Initially it was one of the biggest things preventing me from wanting to actually attempting building it. I’ve come to the conclusion that if I can foster a community around it in my local area only, that would be a success for me. The nearby functionality would still work at a local level. If it grew from there, that would be even more of a success. I think with any network that’s designed to be fragmented like this, there’s always going to be places in which it doesn’t take off or not enough people adopt it, but that shouldn’t really affect whether or not it’s a success at the local scale. So I’ve decided not to let that factor deter me.

I see your point on just using, let’s say, an instance of Lemmy for my local town. This is a fair point, the solution might already be out there, but it uses a toolset that’s designed for generic conversation, and not conversation around a location – like, perhaps a specific location that I want to see or place on a map and talk about it. This is the functionality that I’m personally craving.