Anyone remember app.net?
I feel like in a lot of ways, app.net was ahead of it's time. It's whole goal was to build a "social backbone". A social account and network of linked users. On top of that backbone you could build out services, and all your friends were already there. In a lot of ways, it did what the fediverse is trying to do with Kbin, Lemmy, Mastodon, Pixelfed and activitypub in general.
I remember they started with a Twitter clone, but a clone for Vine, and Instagram soon appeared. It was wonderful while it existed.
Can't say I'm familiar with it but it sounds kind of like what https://calckey.org/ is trying to do now?
Calckey surprised me. There are many different sites out there right now which has me more favorable about the future than I've been recently.
In some ways, I think what I am trying to do with communick is very similar. I am just being very careful to avoid the things that (IMHO) killed them.
they wanted to charge $99/year for access. From everyone. That is completely unrealistic. My basic access costs $10/year, and it can cost even less if you join as a group.
they went the YC route. Got money, and with it the responsibility to grow at all costs. I just want to build something that can be sustainable and that can give me the resources to keep working on interesting open source projects.
I took a peek, and it looks great!