Community Issues: How to address the barrier to entry with prospective users?

[bnb]

As ^Jonas, ^Joakim, and ^Arturo Vergara were just discussing, how can Tent address the barrier to entry for non-tent users to Tent apps? Currently, something like this will happen:

1. User finds app and wants to sign up
2. User goes to sign up, and is told to register with a Tent host. "Perhaps Cupcake or Campr?"
3. User has to go to an external site, which they know nothing about, and put in their information. These are two huge put-offs. 4: User has to go back to app and enter their entity to log in
4. User has to authenticate with their host
5. User can use app once authenticated

This is about 4 steps to long. Once three steps in, the user will start to lose patience; any further, and they'll be furious and quit. We need to come up with a solution that will help onboard users to individual apps and Tent itself.

[joakim]

My suggestion on Cupcake was that Cupcake, Campr or someone else solve this for us by providing a reseller/affiliate program, allowing app/service developers to offer users a Tent account when they sign up, as part of the signup process. The user's Tent entity URL should ideally use the app's domain name, not the hosting company's, making it a streamlined and transparent process for the end user.

For the hosting company to profit, it could provide a freemium model where payment for paid plans go directly to the hosting company, with the app receiving a percentage.

A worse but much more feasible alternative would be to have a step of the signup process where users are sent to the hosting provider to sign up there, and once done get sent back to the app's signup form with the resulting Tent entity URL… that's far from an ideal alternative, IMO.

[joakim]

^Daniel answered on Cupcake:

We spent a bit of time on that back at the very beginning but never put anything together. At some point in the future for sure (after we're strongly pushing app creation)

[bnb]

@joakim How would multiple apps be handled under one Tent account? The idea behind Tent is that it's a unified data store--doesn't having an entity for each app ruin that? I'm probably misunderstanding what you're saying; if so, I apologize.

[joakim]

I probably didn't make myself clear enough :)

If you already have a Tent account, you'd just use that (for many apps it would be "sign in with your Tent account"). What I described is for those who don't have a Tent account, many of whom don't even understand the concepts of Tent and aren't ready to learn about it, they just want to sign up for your amazing app. You wouldn't want to explain how Tent works up front, that can be explained to them later once they're in. "You now also have a free Tent account, how awesome is that!"

I guess one should make it clear that you're getting a Tent account while signing up, but I think one should keep it short and simple during the signup process.

Also, having the user's Tent entity URL use the same domain name as the app/service would only make sense for really big apps/services, like social networks. Smaller apps are better off providing Tent entities using the hosting provider's standard domain name. Having a lot of people's Tent entities use your domain name requires commitment and professionality.

[gdm85]

From home page:

Tent creates an open market where anyone can compete directly with Facebook

For this to hold true, it's strategically necessary something like Friendica's Facebook post connector.

As far as I know, this is not currently covered for tent.io?

[danielsiders]

@gdm85 To the best of my knowledge applications that cross-post to services like Facebook and Twitter are a violation of those services' terms of service. While some applications may go unnoticed at a small scale, after any significant user growth they would be shut down. We believe that any long term solution needs to be sustainable and not easily terminated at the whim of the proprietary networks.

[gdm85]

@danielsiders well, that is totally new to me. Can you mention a reference of this from their Terms of Service (fb, twitter)?

[danielsiders]

@gdm85

Twitter:

If you’re rendering Tweets, be sure you’re following our Display Requirements. Don’t add or remove functionality from Tweets, change Tweet actions to other verbs, etc.

…

Don’t resyndicate data. If your service consumes Twitter data, don’t take that data and expose it via an API, post it to other cloud services, and so on.

from API Terms

Facebook:

Don't put Facebook data in a search engine or directory, or include web search functionality on Facebook.

…

Don’t replicate core functionality that Facebook already provides.

…

Respect the way Facebook looks and functions. Don't offer experiences that change it.

…

Don’t build an app whose primary purpose is to redirect people off of Facebook.

…

Don’t modify, translate, create derivative works of, or reverse engineer any SDK or its components

From Policy

[gdm85]

@danielsiders thanks for the references! Now I get what you mean. But wouldn't the idea be to post on tent.io first, then syndicate to others? Not the other way round.

[danielsiders]

@gdm85 I think it's pretty likely that they'd view any "other" network that cross-posts to facebook as " an app whose primary purpose is to redirect people off of Facebook".

Basically while it might fly under the radar while the network is tiny, as soon as it grows they'll kill the app. We believe in taking a sustainable approach that can scale as Tent grows.

That being said one of the great things about Tent is that anyone can build an app. So while we can't dedicate our limited resources to building a Facebook app, someone else certainly could and any/every Tent user could use it