Introducing TogetherLoop

Alexander James:

If anyone wants to add me on the site, just take my username and search for it. I kept it the same for simplicity

Added you.

Not sure if I am being incredibly stupid, or if this is a bug/feature ?

I search for Alexander James and I get a result for James Steven ______

However, when I look at who has liked Jeff's REM video, I see Alexander James in the list ?

I was messing with the search a little, and you caught it right in the middle of re-indexing the users. Getting another "James" is correct, but the one you're looking for now should appear first. Also, in a few minutes (deployment takes like 20 minutes to clear the CDN), you should also be able to follow any name/link to the user's profile page, and not see anything other than the header and a button to send a friend request.

One thing that I'm trying to figure out is how to smoothly get people to "install" the app. For a long time, this has been a thing with something known as "progressive web app." Some of you may know about my personal music cloud service, the open-source MLocker, and I use that as if it's a native app on my phone. Plays music all day in the background, even when the phone isn't open. TogetherLoop is built the same way.

Android I think will prompt you once to install from Chrome, but not always. The hamburger menu has an option to "install to home screen," and iOS in Safari has something similar in its "up arrow in a box" icon (not even sure what that's supposed to mean). There are some ways to prompt folks, and I'm still looking into it.

I imagine that isn't obvious. But give it a whirl, because it'll feel pretty native at that point.

Oh, do we need DM's? I built that into the forums, so I imagine it wouldn't be a huge lift to port.

DMs would definitely be a nice touch.

And there's an app? I haven't been prompted to install anything (Chrome on laptop/Pixel 6A phone).

Most "apps" are just websites wrapped in a container. I'm skipping the middleman. Check the UI I describe above for the "add to homescreen" thing.

Well that was easy.

I didn't know that was a thing.

If anybody wants to add me on TogetherLoop search Mulford. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one.

I suppose it's worth saying (for those who have no idea) my actual name is Kevin Meyer. I'm made of Legos on TogetherLoop.

Only partially made of Legos in real life.

DM's would be great... One of the main functions of facebook I tend to use is messenger of all things, so being able to have that type of feature makes it much more useful for me, at least.

One "bug" I found is someone I am friends with shows up in my friend list twice. I tried to remove one with remove on the friends page, and the duplicate entry disappears, but then they come right back. Seems like I can't unfriend them (or one of the two showing in my friend list?).

Jeff:

iOS in Safari has something similar in its "up arrow in a box" icon (not even sure what that's supposed to mean).

That’s typically referred to as the “share” icon I think.

Jeff:

Oh, do we need DM's? I built that into the forums, so I imagine it wouldn't be a huge lift to port.

Definitely. That's one of the main uses I have for Faffbook.

I am Mike Bosley on TogetherLoop. Not a heavy poster, but an algorithm free Social is kind of appealing.