the open ecosystem for atproto makes it super easy for one developer to build a compelling and feature rich application in their free time that cannot possibly be maintained by one developer in their free time

Hot take but I think it’s problematic for atproto that lots of developers i see talking about making stuff focus mostly on things absolutely no end user gives a shit about to fuel their protocols and architecture fetish, and it’s a failure there isn’t another app with like 100k+ users active even.

one thing I really like about atproto is that it provides the infrastructure needed to make open source user apps that actually fucking sync data across devices sorry but the average random hobbyist is absolutely not going to run a user account server for their homebrew todo list app

some thoughts on atproto as a post-app paradigm

I'm thinking about how non-developers will feel about atproto. For example, will it take people by surprise that data entered into one app can show up somewhere else? More thoughts in this post.

the point of atproto is to make locked-open apps. apps which are constrained such that they cannot be e.g. bought by billionaires and ruined. yes, doing non-atproto things "enables app developers to do more". yes, non-atproto is "more intuitive" and "it sucks" when you hit atproto's limits.

some thoughts on atproto as a post-app paradigm

Every lexicon, every "app" on ATProto is a "yes and" waiting for your contribution to the vision. We're all first party developers.

Frankly atproto is a great technology that just has yet to really be successfully productized. A few orgs are putting real work into that productization now but only time will tell if it succeeds.

Imagine all the times you’ve downloaded a one-off app for a conference where you made all valuable connections with colleagues only to never use the app again. We could integrate the conference experience into your professional networks on the Atmosphere. ATproto can make networking so much better.

I love that the design of atproto was in part inspired by big social Kafka and ScyllaDB server backends and @martin.kleppmann.com's Designing Data-Intensive Applications and the community immediately used it to implement thousands of apps with no backend lol

The pitch to community leaders and creators is still taking shape, but the interesting part is the fact that ATProto changes the relationships and power dynamics they and their community have around control of data, vendor lock in, and the flexibility to create new experiences.