A social network off the grid

Hey backers! Another month has passed, and I bring you very exciting news. In February, we managed to finalize the last piece of the Bluetooth puzzle, and what's left is a truly unique social networking feature. I worked for about 37h (less than usual because I had some personal topics to take care of) out of which 17h (330€) were funded by you. Thank you! Here's what was built in the app:

• Bluetooth sync. More about this below :)
• Bug fixes. Fixed a crash that happens when Wi-Fi syncing with latest Patchbay, fixed support for ascii heart in markdown, and fixed reliability of the internet connectivity indicator
• F-Droid builds are back. For some while you couldn't get updates of the app from F-Droid, this is now fixed
• Renewed the website. We now have a blog page and dedicated donate page

Let's talk about the big new feature, Bluetooth sync!

This new feature means you can share data phone-to-phone directly, without intermediaries, without internet connection. Just put two phones together, open the Connections tab, choose "Bluetooth seek", then as soon as the phones find each other you can share the latest updates between them. Check out this video where I demo the feature working. Also read our blog post announcing the feature which explains its important use cases.

In the Scuttlebutt community, just a week ago a lot of folks got together in a riverside retreat in New Zealand for the first ever global Scuttlebutt gathering. I myself couldn't travel there this time, but I am hearing a lot of stories, and I get the feeling that a new chapter has started for SSB. So many topics were addressed, such as cultural decolonization and its sociotechnical implications in SSB, the design of new moderation features to protect communities, protocol redesign considerations, as well as simply bonding and having fun with peers of the Scuttleverse.

And on the wild internet, I found a few interesting mentions of Manyverse and SSB. One is a blog post by the Lifeboat Foundation mentioning Manyverse alongside Riot and Delta Chat, and the other is a technical article describing how to use SSB to build apps with it.

For next month, I hope to bring you new features around moderation, images, and connectivity that bring us closer to v1.0. Reminder: check our feature roadmap.

– Kind regards,

Andre Staltz