Hi HN!
My name is Marv and I made paperboat.website, a friendly platform for personal websites and blogs. I wanted to create a place for sharing interesting things with your friends and everyone else, without all the annoyances most of the world wide web comes with these days.
The sites are simple and easy to set up. Feel free to give it a try and let me know what you think!
Thank you! bearblog was a huge inspiration for me.
They have many similarities but the main differences are a block-based editor and a feed that shows the most recent posts of the blogs that you're following. I'm also trying to make paperboat.website accessible for people who usually don't use Markdown.
[2] For those unfamiliar with the vtuber scene: This video is not AI generated. She's a legitimate content creator; the views and subs on that video are real and organic. She's a real human with a video camera and face tracking that maps her real human face's expressions and movements onto an anime character model in real time, broadcast on a livestream. There's a whole ecosystem of supporting software, specialized model artists and riggers, agencies that provide all sorts of support to individual creators in exchange for a cut of ad / superchat / sub / merch / event revenue...the vtuber rabbit hole goes quite deep.
Innocuous. Saba streams on YouTube; any NSFW content would get age-restricted or taken down. There's nothing immoral about a 20-something woman finding an audience streaming with a cute, petite anime cat girl avatar. (Or maybe 30-something, I have no idea her real age.)
You should be able to stream with an anime character of any body type you want, especially if it's your original character and you commission the art yourself, as Saba did. It's fantasy. When you choose your animated avatar's body type, it could match your real body type; be an aspirational body type you wish you had; or be a business decision responding to what kind of content has viewer demand. Who cares?
Congrats on the launch! Love to see more minimal, single-purpose sites like this popping up. The no-JS, no-ads approach is refreshing.
Two quick questions. On data ownership: do the ToS allow you (or a future acquirer) to sell or commercially use the content people publish on their blogs? And is there a way to export blog posts, say as Markdown? Portability is a big deal for me before committing to a platform.
Thank you so much!
The content will always be owned by the users. I'll never use their content commercially and I will also never sell the platform.
The page content is stored as Markdown and I'm working on an export feature to export raw data and also the entire HTML pages so that users can take it with them if they decide to leave paperboat.website.
Curious. Are you just a good guy whos tired of the way the world is? What's in this for you? This seems like a cool thing to do but I feel like "I will never sell the platform" should be taken with a grain of salt. How long-term are you intending for this to run? How long has it currently run? What is your uptime?
I'm not meaning to grill you here. These are just the questions I had reading through the page. Will I take my blog here and then have it just disappear in a month?
Thank you for your time and thank you for contributing something like this to the world! We need more "things so things can exist" and less "Things so I can have money" so big kudos from me!
Yeah, that's always the big question. You'll have to take my word for it.
I spent many years in the Re-Volt community (racing game from the 90s). This is what lead me to become a programmer, made some of my best friendships and found out how important places for communities are. I helped build the community by starting a Discord server with some friends, set up a website to organize online events, maintained a Blender plugin and documented how custom content can be made for the game, organized meetups and so on.
The friends I made through the community and how close we still are today had and still have a huge impact.
This time gave me so much and one of the most important things I took from that time is how important it is to maintain places where people can meet, share and learn from each other. That's a part of my thinking and whenever I start a new project, that's in the center of it.
Thank you for taking the time to share and respond! Having to take your word for it makes sense, I think I'll give it a shot! Good luck with all of this!
Definitely a huge inspiration! For global discovery, I'm working on a webring-like feature. Unless users really want it, I'll steer clear of a global feed for now because I'd like users to discover other content more organically. I'm definitely open for ideas, though.
I haven't gone through and created a paperboat site (as I'm kind of drowning in channels at the moment), but I love the aesthetic and the spirit of a stripped down social space. Congratulations on the launch and best of luck!
10-20 years ago running a social network platform was viable for individuals. Today, in the era of information warfare, SEO, trolling and in general magnitudes more bad actors, it's almost impossible.
Friend has encountered things like people uploading illegal content and then reporting to hosting provider or various terrorist or political organisations publishing their manifestos and vile content then making death threats for taking it down and so on.
Also no ads, means how the platform is going to survive once provider runs out of money or figures out it is not as easy as it looks like?
Good points! paperboat.website is very simple and focuses on friends sharing their blog posts which each other, which helps limit regular users' exposure to potential malicious activity.
I expect it's going to be tricky if the user base grows but I'm not planning to compete with larger social networks. It's primarily a space to create personal sites and blogs and my plan is to keep it around as long as possible. If users decide to purchase memberships, I'll have even more time to make sure it stays secure and up to date. If not, I'll still run this for me and my friends which is a huge motivation for me already.
Hi HN! My name is Marv and I made paperboat.website, a friendly platform for personal websites and blogs. I wanted to create a place for sharing interesting things with your friends and everyone else, without all the annoyances most of the world wide web comes with these days.
The sites are simple and easy to set up. Feel free to give it a try and let me know what you think!
Congrats on the launch! I love ideas like this, but curious how this is different than https://bearblog.dev which has been around for a while?
Thank you! bearblog was a huge inspiration for me. They have many similarities but the main differences are a block-based editor and a feed that shows the most recent posts of the blogs that you're following. I'm also trying to make paperboat.website accessible for people who usually don't use Markdown.
Whenever I hear the words "paper boat" I'm put in mind of a certain [1] vtuber [2].
[1] https://youtu.be/pYVEIX7nSEs?t=769
[2] For those unfamiliar with the vtuber scene: This video is not AI generated. She's a legitimate content creator; the views and subs on that video are real and organic. She's a real human with a video camera and face tracking that maps her real human face's expressions and movements onto an anime character model in real time, broadcast on a livestream. There's a whole ecosystem of supporting software, specialized model artists and riggers, agencies that provide all sorts of support to individual creators in exchange for a cut of ad / superchat / sub / merch / event revenue...the vtuber rabbit hole goes quite deep.
As a coincidence there are 3 ShowHNs on the front page right now all with “boat” in their name. Showboat, Rowboat and Paperboat.
What did I just watch... Alright, something for everyone, I guess.
Sameko Saba/Gawr Gura/senzawa, the most popular/notable virtual youtube personality (vtuber) is what you just watched.
Technically impressive, but that’s about it.
is this innocuous or does it have hints of child abuse like the whole loli anime scene?
Innocuous. Saba streams on YouTube; any NSFW content would get age-restricted or taken down. There's nothing immoral about a 20-something woman finding an audience streaming with a cute, petite anime cat girl avatar. (Or maybe 30-something, I have no idea her real age.)
You should be able to stream with an anime character of any body type you want, especially if it's your original character and you commission the art yourself, as Saba did. It's fantasy. When you choose your animated avatar's body type, it could match your real body type; be an aspirational body type you wish you had; or be a business decision responding to what kind of content has viewer demand. Who cares?
Congrats on the launch! Love to see more minimal, single-purpose sites like this popping up. The no-JS, no-ads approach is refreshing.
Two quick questions. On data ownership: do the ToS allow you (or a future acquirer) to sell or commercially use the content people publish on their blogs? And is there a way to export blog posts, say as Markdown? Portability is a big deal for me before committing to a platform.
Will definitely subscribe either way. Nice work.
Thank you so much! The content will always be owned by the users. I'll never use their content commercially and I will also never sell the platform.
The page content is stored as Markdown and I'm working on an export feature to export raw data and also the entire HTML pages so that users can take it with them if they decide to leave paperboat.website.
Curious. Are you just a good guy whos tired of the way the world is? What's in this for you? This seems like a cool thing to do but I feel like "I will never sell the platform" should be taken with a grain of salt. How long-term are you intending for this to run? How long has it currently run? What is your uptime?
I'm not meaning to grill you here. These are just the questions I had reading through the page. Will I take my blog here and then have it just disappear in a month?
Thank you for your time and thank you for contributing something like this to the world! We need more "things so things can exist" and less "Things so I can have money" so big kudos from me!
Yeah, that's always the big question. You'll have to take my word for it.
I spent many years in the Re-Volt community (racing game from the 90s). This is what lead me to become a programmer, made some of my best friendships and found out how important places for communities are. I helped build the community by starting a Discord server with some friends, set up a website to organize online events, maintained a Blender plugin and documented how custom content can be made for the game, organized meetups and so on. The friends I made through the community and how close we still are today had and still have a huge impact. This time gave me so much and one of the most important things I took from that time is how important it is to maintain places where people can meet, share and learn from each other. That's a part of my thinking and whenever I start a new project, that's in the center of it.
Thank you for taking the time to share and respond! Having to take your word for it makes sense, I think I'll give it a shot! Good luck with all of this!
This reminds me of bearblog.dev, in a very positive way.
One thing I adore about Bear is their discover page. Have you considered adding one?
Definitely a huge inspiration! For global discovery, I'm working on a webring-like feature. Unless users really want it, I'll steer clear of a global feed for now because I'd like users to discover other content more organically. I'm definitely open for ideas, though.
Lots of mentions of bearblog.dev, I want to mention https://mataroa.blog which is even more similar.
I haven't gone through and created a paperboat site (as I'm kind of drowning in channels at the moment), but I love the aesthetic and the spirit of a stripped down social space. Congratulations on the launch and best of luck!
Thank you so much!
10-20 years ago running a social network platform was viable for individuals. Today, in the era of information warfare, SEO, trolling and in general magnitudes more bad actors, it's almost impossible.
Friend has encountered things like people uploading illegal content and then reporting to hosting provider or various terrorist or political organisations publishing their manifestos and vile content then making death threats for taking it down and so on.
Also no ads, means how the platform is going to survive once provider runs out of money or figures out it is not as easy as it looks like?
Good points! paperboat.website is very simple and focuses on friends sharing their blog posts which each other, which helps limit regular users' exposure to potential malicious activity.
I expect it's going to be tricky if the user base grows but I'm not planning to compete with larger social networks. It's primarily a space to create personal sites and blogs and my plan is to keep it around as long as possible. If users decide to purchase memberships, I'll have even more time to make sure it stays secure and up to date. If not, I'll still run this for me and my friends which is a huge motivation for me already.
Congratulations on your launch!
Like others have mentioned Bearblog, I'd also like to mention fika.bar, which is a service similar to yours. I wish success to all of you!