Explaining Tent

Tent is...

What analogies or taglines will make Tent easy to explain to people?

Tent is far more than just a Twitter clone

• "Tent.io" is an open, internet-wide social protocol -- it will be the foundation of many social networks which can all talk to each other. Social networks similar to Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and more can be built using the Tent protocol.
• "Tent.is" is a service which will host a Tent server for you.
• The first app is a Twitter-alike called "TentStatus", but Tent is a lot more than just a Twitter clone.

For the public

• Tent.io replaces centralized social networks with something you can personally own and control. You could run your own Twitter in your broom closet and still communicate with the rest of the world.

• Tent.io gives us a way to regain control of our identities from the corporations which are trying to profit from them.

• Remember when you had conversations with friends without a third party always listening? Tent.io allows you to take out the middleman (if you run your own server).

• Wish you could share whatever photos and content you liked with your friends without being blocked by the moral views of a multinational corporation?

• Unhappy with Facebook but feel like a hostage because you can't easily migrate to another site? Tent is designed to let you seamlessly switch service providers while keeping your data and social connections. This gives service providers an incentive to care about their users, putting the users in control.

• Tent.io can be run as a Tor hidden service, allowing activists and others to communicate with each other without fear of being traced. Tent.io is decentralized and can't be blocked the way Twitter has been in various countries.

For developers and internet-savvy people

• Tent.io is a decentralized protocol (like email), and Tent.is is a particular hosted service (like gmail). It's better than email because: you can change your address and your followers will automatically come along with you; structured documents allow a variety of apps and uses; better broadcasting to many people (especially when groups are implemented); encryption (eventually); users can edit old posts (eventually); posts can be public like a blog or directed only at certain people; apps can invent their own kinds of posts, likes, comments, reblogs, events, rsvps, photos, check-ins, or anything else you can think of.

• Tent.io is like a decentralized network of blogs and RSS feeds, except with privacy controls and real-time notification of new content.

• Tent.io fosters innovation because apps don't need the protocol owner's permission to exist. Anyone can build apps without getting anyone's permission (except the people who want to share their data with you). As developers of Facebook and Twitter apps know, it's all too easy for those sites to cut off the oxygen to an app that they don't like.

• Tent.io is a simple protocol that speaks JSON. It's easy for developers to build on.

• Tent.io is an open ecosystem like the web itself. Just like anyone can set up a web server or email server without asking permission, so too can anyone host their own Tent server or write (or use) a Tent app – no walled gardens, no strings attached.

• Tent.io is a distributed realtime internet-wide persistent message bus and JSON document store with social permission control. Buzzword bingo!

• Tent.io is like OStatus, but better

This matters because...

• Twitter just changed their rules to prevent you from getting your content back. http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/20/ifttt-is-the-latest-service-to-be-affected-by-twitters-api-constraints-will-remove-triggers/

• Twitter can be subpoenaed for your personal data: http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/twitter-loses-occupy-wall-street-case-forced-to-hand-over-user-info.php

• Facebook actively scans your chats for "suspicious activity": http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57471570-93/facebook-scans-chats-and-posts-for-criminal-activity/

• Facebook and Google Plus will kick off people with unusual non-Western names, people who have changed their names, and people who want to be anonymous to avoid stalkers or political repression: http://boingboing.net/2011/08/20/understanding-the-nym-wars.html

• The big social networks exist to make money from advertising, which is why they never seem to care about your privacy. The more data they have from you, and the more your name and identity is forced into predictable boxes, the more money they can make.

• Facebook is extorting money from nonprofits, bands, etc for the privilege of sending messages to the people who tried to follow them: http://boingboing.net/2012/10/01/facebook-fan-pages-broken-but.html

• Facebook imposes their own moral views on what kinds of content you can share with your friends: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/18/breastfeeding-photos-facebook-respect-the-breast_n_1285264.html

Tent is not...

• Tent is not yet another Twitter clone or social network; it's a protocol. If Twitter and Facebook supported the Tent protocol, their users could send messages to each other instead of being trapped inside just one service.

• Tent.is is not the same as Tent, the protocol. It's just the first service built on the protocol.

Related resources

• Tent FAQ and documentation of the protocol

• For developers, Related projects, libraries, and apps

• A blog post: Thinking About Tent

• A blog post: Is social networking ready for disruption?