Gm
Today we launch urbit.media
First:
We aren't affiliated with @urbit or @tlon or any other entity at all.
Any shortcomings in the urbit.media site are ours.
Having said that: there are no shortcomings in the site. urbit.media is perfect and will become more perfect every day.
Second: make sure you get to the end of the thread. That's where the fresh alpha is.
What is urbit.media?
The answer to this is two-fold.
It's a media platform with a specific editorial stance and with content created by the people of Mars.
It's a media platform with a novel tech stack, i.e. an app built on top of @urbit.
We'll get into the specifics of our editorial and technological stances later, but briefly:
We believe that Earth Media is moribund, effete, and--in the case of its news organs--thoroughly corrupt.
Martians are better equipped to fulfill the 'Truth and Beauty' mandate.
Our job is curation and discovery, two jobs that, if they are centralized for the sake of local efficiency, should likewise be centralized only locally.
Again: we're creating a marketplace for Truth and Beauty.
Technologically, building on @urbit offers some interesting affordances and guarantees to people who create with us.
Primarily, it is that we are able to assemble our feed by pulling content directly from an individual Urbit's graph store. What this means for the creator...
is that he or she has some hard guarantees over ownership not just of their content, but also of the social graph that accompanies it. There is no Earth media company that can claim that.
In the extreme case that U.M decided to stop promoting someone, we cannot also...
take from them the content and the following they have built through Urbit, as is the case for all other Earth websites where the creator is just a line in a database. With Urbit, you are the database.
Now on to the goods.
urbit.media is at the moment a proof of concept & mvp that wants full time attention. It should do exactly what it promises at the moment, which is collate and serve up the feeds of its authors (and it should be pretty fast).
You can scroll the main feed and trust that everything there is good. Martians made all of it.
There is also the 'Station List' on the left on Desktop or as a link at the top on mobile which shows a list of individual authors. Click on one to see a feed of their work.
For instance, we have the excellent work of Urbit Media co-founder ~millyt-dorsen (@enlundm) at his station entitled "unfiltered macro". Find his macro finance perspective at:
urbit.media/s/~millyt-dorsen/essays-7366
We have ~sitful-hatred (@sitful_hatred) who writes the beloved Networked Subject blog and who offers unmissable Urbit how-to's as well as his own theory of technology:
urbit.media/s/~sitful-hatred/urbit-media-6867
~tocwex (@tocwex) writes about business (from an area of expertise), smart contracts, and more at 'wordspace':
urbit.media/s/~tocwex/wordspace-9430
Cointreau-enjoyer Noah K. of The Mars Review (@marsreviewer) has graciously allowed us to put his serialized book about Urbit, Ab Urbit Condita, online. The first book published on Urbit is also now available on the boomerweb:
urbit.media/s/~bidbel/ab-urbit-condita-7812
The popular 'Bookends' group run by ~winter-paches has opened a 'Best of Bookends' station. There, the best Bookends content will be regularly published. This one starts with a poem by Urbit's own ~lagrev-nocfep (@sigilante).
urbit.media/s/~darlur/bob-1501
Finally, my erstwhile business partner and Urbit National Treasure ~libhut-samwes, proprieter of the famous Cryptocurrency Forum, has opened a channel for a Very Special Project yet to be announced. Meanwhile, enjoy his trolling at:
urbit.media/s/~libhut-samwes/the-tulip-ledger-2897
Now, the alpha. The Stack Podcast, which ~libhut-samwes and I started a couple of years ago, and which has become THE Urbit podcast of choice for discerning listeners, releases a new episode.
Ep 037 "In Lehman's Terms" with ~wolref-podlex. Urbit Foundation (@urbitfoundation) Executive Director Josh Lehman talks about Urbit Foundation initiatives, drinking tea, and the remit of the Foundation board.
Listen to the end for the juicy stuff.
urbit.media/a/~habsul-rignyr/orbis-blog-7965/170141184505576745383698656161557381120
After you listen to The Stack, you may want to Trill it.
Trill is a new social app currently in beta. Call it Twitter without the outrage machine included.
Go to urbit.social to use the app. You'll need Urbit Visor installed. Link to that in the following tweet.
chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/urbit-visor/oadimaacghcacmfipakhadejgalcaepg
You can find Trill discussion at its group on Urbit:
~mirtyl-wacdec/trill
And, as a special treat: the first 25 people to retweet this thread and DM me with the name of my childhood dog will receive a free Urbit planet.
I reserve the right to screenshot your guesses for the purpose of public ridicule.
At long last, thanks to ~libhut-samwes and ~dacwet who did the lion's share of the site work. Thanks to our cofounders, who may be revealed in the fullness of time, thank you to @_dalten for their continuing support, to our friend ~finnem, and thanks to the @urbit community.
Keep checking in: we already have several more stations lined up to add in the coming weeks. Oh, and if you have a shedload of money you don't know what to do with, let's build something together.
We'll be elucidating more technical plans and platform & community aims soon.
If you are on Urbit already, please join our public Urbit Media group at:
~hoster-dozzod-dacwet/urbit-media
Join the Cryptocurrency forum at:
~sonwet/cryptocurrency-forum
And join The Stack Podcast community at:
~habsul-rignyr/the-stack-paradise-regained-edition
Thanks for listening, thanks for reading, and thanks for joining us. Now we mog.