>build something that provides a unique unprecedented benefit, important enough that people will use it no matter how inconvenient it is
As much as I like Tim I have to agree. My mom doesn't give a shit about controlling her data, much less know who has it or how it's being used.
HN, What would be a killer user-experience that Solid could facilitate with it's data-silo'ing?
=> Enable 3rd party apps that use Solid's login to offer hyper-targeted onboarding and pre-fill more account creation inputs
=> Enable background cross-app communication to app's you've given permission to in order to facilitate great user-experiences? Eg. Spotify tells your Ticketmaster app what musicians you listen to, Ticketmaster gives you notifications when said musicians are coming to your town
For me, interoperability is the killer feature of being in control of your own data as opposed to having it locked up in some private silo.
If you are in control of your profile, contact list and message history data, for instance, you can switch between any chat app that has access to this data at any time and continue conversations without missing a beat. Everyone can use their own favorite chat apps to communicate without having to worry about what everyone else is using.
Lock-in is suddenly no longer a thing.
I think this is the only way to achieve a truly robust marketplace of apps and services that can compete on the strength of their value proposition to users, rather than relying on the strength of their network effects to lock out new players.
Of course, most profit driven corporations aren't going to be eager to adopt this open ecosystem, at least until it gains enough traction that they no longer have a choice. So the burden is on independent and open-source developers to first create experiences on top of this open ecosystem that could be compelling enough to draw users away from the proprietary silos.
I'd love to see this happen, and do plan to build apps that leverage open data systems like Solid myself, but it's definitely going to be an uphill battle, unfortunately.
P.S. replikativ [1] is another lesser known project that has similar ambitions, though it only provides the decentralized data piece of the puzzle at the moment.
As much as I like Tim I have to agree. My mom doesn't give a shit about controlling her data, much less know who has it or how it's being used.
HN, What would be a killer user-experience that Solid could facilitate with it's data-silo'ing?
=> Enable 3rd party apps that use Solid's login to offer hyper-targeted onboarding and pre-fill more account creation inputs
=> Enable background cross-app communication to app's you've given permission to in order to facilitate great user-experiences? Eg. Spotify tells your Ticketmaster app what musicians you listen to, Ticketmaster gives you notifications when said musicians are coming to your town
=> ???