OP here. Did not mean to imply that web5 sprung out of web3 in any sense. Really I just found web3 to be a useful reference point for explaining SSI. Lots of people understand how web3 works at this point, but there's way less mindshare around the idea of a digital wallet that actually holds credentials and not just private keys.
To that end, I'm generally happy to support the hype, and hope this stuff gets more attention from the web3 lot.
> Did not mean to imply that web5 sprung out of web3 in any sense.
It's really hard for anyone unfamiliar to the area to not read that in your article. To take three quotes out of the whole narrative: "But web5 takes it to the next level", "it's possible to keep the good parts of web3 while improving on its privacy properties (...) thats what web5 is all about", "In web5 (...) This is a radical departure from both web2 and web3".
I get that you wanted some nice story for your blogpost, but it's just not grounded in reality, and you're supporting the wrong actors here if you really want to claim that 'web5' is about privacy.
> I'm generally happy to support the hype
Happy to support privacy destroying technology by adopting their buzzwords while plenty of people – which you even reference at the end – do keep ethics in mind. Alrighty then.
Definitely possible that Apple will win the identity wars. That said, I don't agree with the characterization of web3/web5 as "having to trust nobody". If anything, all the efforts around identity are meant to allow for bringing IRL notions of trust onto the internet. In other words, the whole pseudonymity thing is not a result of using blockchain, but just the fact that nobody's bothered to add identity verification to a lot of stuff happening in web3. That's changing though.
> We hope to ultimately build a Slack/Teams alternative designed for rich, asynchronous human interactions that encourage deep work.
All I can say is keep going. I've been feeling the absence of this for a while, and have taken to making occasional videos on Loom to supplement live meetings and Slack messages. But it's a disjointed experience, and Loom is not trying to be a collaboration tool at all. It would be great to have a solution that does the whole thing end-to-end, with a focus on being more async-friendly than Slack.
By the way, I downloaded the PingPong app, and it seems great. Are you selling subscriptions, or just putting the free version out there for now?
P.S. If you haven't read this article on Figma's growth strategy, I'd take a look. There are some parallels with what you're doing -- i.e. SaaS, collaboration-focused, and attempting to dislodge incumbents with a similar list of features, but less focus on collaboration pain points. https://kwokchain.com/2020/06/19/why-figma-wins/
> Loom is not trying to be a collaboration tool at all
ngould I'd love to understand this point of view. What are the pain points of the experience being disjointed between Loom and Slack for your team right now?
Thanks for the encouragement and article on Figma.
> By the way, I downloaded the PingPong app, and it seems great. Are you selling subscriptions, or just putting the free version out there for now?
No paid subscription for now; we're optimizing for usage and feedback. We should always have a free plan and introduce new features into a paid tier in the long run.
We don't have definitive plans at this point, but it will likely be a few dollars per user per month. But what's currently in the product will probably be free indefinitely.
We hope to encourage people to pay with new, great features. I'm against moving features we've already given our users for free behind a paid plan.
Electric AI | New York City (NYC) | Software Engineer, Engineering Manager (Data + Full-stack), Product Director | Full-time (Onsite) Electric is the world's first all-in-one, real-time IT support solution for small and midsize offices. Through a chat interface, personalized service and flat-rate pricing we keep your email, computers, Wi-Fi and software running smoothly at a fraction of the cost while eliminating headaches normally experienced with traditional managed service providers.
Behind the scenes, we're building out a hybrid human/software platform to resolve and execute IT tasks with maximum efficiency and automation.
Electric AI is backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Primary Ventures, and others. We're currently post- Series B, and hiring across the board for engineering roles. Our stack: React/Redux running microservices on AWS with Python/Serverless. Running Snowflake/Looker/dbt for data analytics & data science.
Electric AI | New York City (NYC) | Software engineers, Data analysts | Full-time (Onsite)
Electric is the world's first all-in-one, real-time IT support solution for small and midsize offices. Through a chat interface, personalized service and flat-rate pricing we keep your email, computers, Wi-Fi and software running smoothly at a fraction of the cost while eliminating headaches normally experienced with traditional managed service providers.
Behind the scenes, we're building out a hybrid human/software platform to resolve and execute IT tasks with maximum efficiency and automation.
Electric AI is backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Primary Ventures, and others. We're currently a few months post- Series A, and hiring across the board for engineering roles. Our stack: RoR/React/Redux running microservices on Heroku/AWS, plus some Python for data infrastructure, ML, etc.
Electric AI | New York City (NYC) | Software engineers | Full-time (Onsite)
Electric is the world's first all-in-one, real-time IT support solution for small and midsize offices. Through a chat interface, personalized service and flat-rate pricing we keep your email, computers, Wi-Fi and software running smoothly at a fraction of the cost while eliminating headaches normally experienced with traditional managed service providers.
Behind the scenes, we're building out a hybrid human/software platform to resolve and execute IT tasks with maximum efficiency and automation.
Electric AI is backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Primary Ventures, and others. We're currently a few months post- Series A, and hiring across the board for engineering roles. Our stack: RoR/React/Redux running microservices on Heroku/AWS, plus some Python for data infrastructure, ML, etc.
