It's a tent.io (https://tent.io/) hosting service. Basically, if I understand it correctly, tents are personal servers where different applications run that can communicate with other tents. So for example if there were a social networking application running on your tent, if someone else viewed your profile, the data would come from your tent, not from some third party server that you don't have access to. And this service provides hosting of said tents. That's my understanding, someone correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm not all that familiar with app.net but as far as I know they still host your data no? Like if you upload a picture or something, it's still on their servers. I think that with tent, it's hosted on your server. It's much closer to email where you can host your own server or have someone host it.
I'd say it is app.net but not in the hands of one company but instead there is a protocol and everyone can implement their own server and apps and run it on their own.
In the end it would be like with email that you would have 5-10 big hosters like gmail, hotmail, yahoo, some regional hosters like web.de, gmx and people who host their own servers like me.
The thing is, the whole Tent thing is not really ready for other people then curious developers. The protocol spec is in the making, most of the apps are broken after the upgrade of the protocol from version 0.2 to 0.3 a couple of days ago and need to be fixed, etc. It will at least take a couple of month until it is usable.
It is not a good thing that cupcake (one of the hosters) are getting new users because of this post because those users will be disappointed.
It is built on the http://tent.io protocol which is like Despora (https://despora.de/) or StatusNet (http://status.net/), where it is a decentralized social network. This use to be called http://tent.is, which was the first working 'example' twitter-like application of the protocol, but now I am assuming they wanted to create a business model, so they will offer storage on top of their twitter-like app, which will be accessed via tent protocol by other applications to store content (photos, videos, status messages, etc.)
Yeah, I have to agree: whether or not you can explain it to me here, that page does not explain to me what I'm buying, why I'd want to buy it, or what I can use it for exactly.
Seems cool, but better marketing is required.
*edit: See: https://tent.io/docs -- that breakdown is actually one of the better explanations of any protocol I've ever seen. Clear, succinct, concise. Really a thing of beauty. Cupcake needs to be explained in the same way. Shoot, I wish everything was explained that well.
I read the tent.io docs and I'm intrigued at their approach to decentralized social networking. I'm more curious about how they will get the traction needed for getting more developers and users to adopt it. I suppose you can always design now and market later, or wait until the world is ready for it, since it is just a protocol waiting to be used.
Thanks for checking it out. As you discovered Cupcake is a hosting service for Tent. We'll also be launching a few apps in the coming months (Dropbox and Droplr type apps powered by Tent). Until then most of the marketing copy is a bit out of place and for most users the service isn't that useful (the Tent app ecosystem isn't that mature yet).
Others have mentioned that you should be more descriptive about your product. I have another suggestion:
The name and design of the site are at odds. Either change the design (show an increasingly full plate of cupcakes?) or the name. A green tree is _not_ what I was anticipating when I clicked on "cupcake.io".
This is a terrible, terrible website. Not because of the design (which is pretty), but because I have absolutely no clue what you're offering. I know that you want $5/month (for what? Who knows?), that you're expanding the amount of storage that you have, and that "Cupcake is part of the growing Tent ecosystem." Oh....okay....WHAT THE F@#K IS THAT?!
You know those annoying TV commercials where you're left with no idea what product the commercial was trying to advertise? This is the web equivalent. Just horrible.
So, they promise 50gb cloud storage for $5/mo (not initially, but after you sign up and wait 4 years). That's about $5 at current S3 storage prices - http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/
Why not "invest": unproven reliability and performance, uncertain future.
That's not a very fair price comparison. You haven't added in the cost of data transfers that you'll be charged with S3. And it seems transferring data from your store to each of your application providers as needed, is the essential point of the protocol & service.
One of the founders here-- We recently rebranded the service (used to be https://tent.is), which is still in alpha, to make the distinction between the hosting service and the Tent protocol clearer. This landing page was designed with some products that haven't launched yet in mind, so most of the copy is vague outside of that context. Honestly we weren't expecting any serious traffic until those apps launch later this year, so we've been focused on product, not marketing. (Most of the team is currently experiencing a power outage at home so we missed this being posted to HN as well.)
True story here: it occurred to me that it would be awesome if there was a customer-brings-their-own-storage protocol for cloud app backends. It would allow arbitrary apps to stay synchronized across devices, but the user would still control the data. And then I remembered that I was pretty sure I had heard about something like this.
And then it hit me, it was the Cupcake/Tent thing I had read about a couple weeks ago but had shrugged off because I didn't really understand the point from either webpage.
I just took a second look, and it seems that Tent actually does everything I had thought in my mind, but also goes well beyond, because it has a first-class notion of sharing. Then I revisited Cupcake and saw that I had actually overlooked the free tier when I first read this story.
Re-examining it all, I think this is absolutely revolutionary! Once people understand that they can actually own all their own data for a couple bucks a month and app writers realize they can achieve cloud synchronization with the customer bringing their own infrastructure, it could be a major shift in the whole multi-device app/social sharing economy. We can start seeing meta-apps that aggregate app content.
But first, both Tent and Cupcake need to find a much better way to portray what they provide, because neither site is capturing the promise...
29 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 63.7 ms ] threadEDIT: Seems like I was not that far off. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tent_(protocol)
In the end it would be like with email that you would have 5-10 big hosters like gmail, hotmail, yahoo, some regional hosters like web.de, gmx and people who host their own servers like me.
The thing is, the whole Tent thing is not really ready for other people then curious developers. The protocol spec is in the making, most of the apps are broken after the upgrade of the protocol from version 0.2 to 0.3 a couple of days ago and need to be fixed, etc. It will at least take a couple of month until it is usable.
It is not a good thing that cupcake (one of the hosters) are getting new users because of this post because those users will be disappointed.
Seems cool, but better marketing is required.
*edit: See: https://tent.io/docs -- that breakdown is actually one of the better explanations of any protocol I've ever seen. Clear, succinct, concise. Really a thing of beauty. Cupcake needs to be explained in the same way. Shoot, I wish everything was explained that well.
Good for the protocol or bad?
The name and design of the site are at odds. Either change the design (show an increasingly full plate of cupcakes?) or the name. A green tree is _not_ what I was anticipating when I clicked on "cupcake.io".
From the description I couldn't tell what service is being sold but I'm fairly sure it isn't an api for cupcakes. Damn.
You know those annoying TV commercials where you're left with no idea what product the commercial was trying to advertise? This is the web equivalent. Just horrible.
Why not "invest": unproven reliability and performance, uncertain future.
'Everyday' should be 'Every day'. 'Everyday' is an adjective.
Looked at page. No idea what I'm looking at.
Checked out Tent.io. Sorta understand.
Back to cupcake. Nope, thought I understood.
Sign up for free account. Still no idea. Oh well. Later.
And then it hit me, it was the Cupcake/Tent thing I had read about a couple weeks ago but had shrugged off because I didn't really understand the point from either webpage.
I just took a second look, and it seems that Tent actually does everything I had thought in my mind, but also goes well beyond, because it has a first-class notion of sharing. Then I revisited Cupcake and saw that I had actually overlooked the free tier when I first read this story.
Re-examining it all, I think this is absolutely revolutionary! Once people understand that they can actually own all their own data for a couple bucks a month and app writers realize they can achieve cloud synchronization with the customer bringing their own infrastructure, it could be a major shift in the whole multi-device app/social sharing economy. We can start seeing meta-apps that aggregate app content.
But first, both Tent and Cupcake need to find a much better way to portray what they provide, because neither site is capturing the promise...