Matt Finch interviewed Jason Hardy, the product director, for MeWe on YouTube. I missed the start of the live stream, so I had to play catch up. This followed the panel discussion about what now for the OSR after the announced end of G+ in ten months. Full disclosure, I was one of the panelists.

I think it is helpful to look at both videos and consider what they mentioned.

I saw a couple of comments that the panel discussion sounded like an ad for MeWe. I don’t think so, as we pointed out all our concerns about it and what we knew would be changed. All of the questions raised helped inform the questions Matt asked during the interview.

The Panel

On the panel, we identified 3 types of users:

1. Content creators, such as bloggers, You tubers, and publishers who want people to know about what they just did.
2. Content consumers who want to read, watch, and obtain what content creators have to offer.
3. Some use G+ combined with Hangouts to actually run RPGs. This is the crowd who wants a built in dice roller. 

I use Roll20 for online gaming. We started using hangouts until Google changed things, and we switched to Discord. I think Discord is ideal for this, and can do what users want without having to use Roll20 or other VTT. However, many don’t want to use Discord, and also refuse to use Facebook.

One panelist pointed out that Facebook can be made to do all the things G+ does, but not as smoothly, and has drawbacks that don’t exist on G+.

+Ben Milton of Questing Beast, pointed out that Reddit can do a lot of what G+ does, and made his argument for why it is a valid option. 

+E.T. Smith, creator of the G+ RPG Escape Rocket community was on the panel and like most of us, surprised at how MeWe quickly became the platform of choice. He expected a more reasoned approach with more time spent identifying choices and evaluating them. (E.T. also has a blog, TrollBones.)

+Brendan S another panelist pointed out that the younger demographic is focused on video and what Discord and Twitch can do with video needs to be considered. Both Discord and Twitch can be made to do the basic functions of G+, but no one thinks to use them that way. I have not even thought of Twitch being an option until this was mentioned.

So far, I have not had time to look into Twitch as an option. Discord can sort of do it, but the flow of constant chat on a busy channel on a server is a fire hose. Too much information. This is very similar to what one first encounters on MeWe. I don’t think MeWe was designed with the idea people would be in so many communities. Thankfully, there is one location to turn off all chat from popping up, so your screen doesn’t fill up. Every group on MeWe has a chat option. When you join a group, you can disable that on group by group basis, or use the global option.

The Interview

While MeWe has had early adoption, the panel was cautious. My big concern is that content on MeWe will not be discoverable by a public search. The upcoming feature of pages will only be visible to those with a MeWe account who are signed in. It did sound to me from tonight’s interview that phase two of pages may be public.

Pages will be here before the end of the year and will be a place for one’s followers to see things. It is basically like a personal group without all the options of a group. Pages will cost $2.99 a month. This is a small amount, I’d like to see what a page is before putting too much into it. 

Concerns about the business model are answered by micro transactions. Some features, like emoji packs are a buy once and done. Many asked about a dark theme, and it will be released soon for 99 cents. All the emoji packs at 99 cents. They have a Secret Chat feature that is free for the first 30 days, but it doesn’t tell you up front how much it is. I had to use Google to find the answer and found it on this tweet from MeWe that is it 99 cents a month or $5.99 a year. Another tweet from MeWe indicates that only the person initiating the chat needs to pay for it. It is fully encrypted end to end and MeWe can’t decrypt it.

Currently, the MeWe store is only in the app, but is slated to come to the website in the future. I didn’t catch a time frame on that.

Right now, there are two ways for sharing/viewing information the timeline and groups. Unlike Facebook, all followers see all of your posts. Each individual controls how they see information, either chronologically, or by latest post, so an old post with a new comment could rise to the top.

Groups allow one pinned post.

The answer to circles is in a future iteration of the site you will be able to group contacts and use a different profile picture for each. At one point it was mentioned that users could have multiple profiles, I’m not clear how that will work.

The answer to collections is hashtags. Their functionality is built around hashtags and that is the current way to do it. It was mentioned that perhaps group owners might get the ability to control the hashtags used in their groups. In a separate group chat on Mewe, one group was discussing what hashtags they would use, and one posted indicated that he verified that one can search on more than one hashtag at a time and that each is highlighted when found.

In addition to MeWe’s base features being free, Jason pointed out that for non profits and educational groups, MeWe Pro is free. Someone asked about organizations fighting against human trafficking that elicited this answer.

Takeaways

PROS

• MeWe has most of the features of G+ we all love.
• Some of the features we want are in the works.
• The large number of early adopters got MeWe’s attention and they are interested in trying to understand and meet our needs.
• Hashtags are key to emulating Collections from G+.

CONS

• People not on MeWe can’t find the information they might be seeking.
• There is no asymetric following. If you are not connected with someone on MeWe, you can’t read their stuff, unless they elect to pay for a page when it becomes available.
• Those who paint the OSR with a broad brush will point to MeWe’s allowance of various types of groups and speech as a sign that the OSR people using it identify with those fringe elements. Which is like saying anyone who uses Facebook is a flat-earther or anti-vaxxer.

My thoughts

My work flow will have to consider MeWe like any other site that I share a blog post or link to my latest PDF. I need to make my blog the center of attention and activity for my online efforts. 

Prior to the G+ closure announcement, I had identified the need to post more on my blog. It was not as clear cut as it is now. As I mentioned at the end of Wednesday’s panel, I plan to re-work my blog roll and move it from the sidebar to a page of its own. There is a spreadsheet going around that encourages bloggers to add their blog to it. I plan to use that to add to my blog roll. I had plans to revise it as there are several new blogs I have enjoyed and need to read them regularly.

Alex Schroder announced on G+ that he is looking into reviving the Old School RPG Planet agregator. That prompted me to add blog/RSS aggregator to my own blog. I want to have the name of the blog and title of the current article. I also need to settle on on RSS reader. I had one I really liked, until Google, Yahoo, and other major web sites dropped support for RSS. (They did that because there was no way to monetize it.) 

While MeWe has the momentum and numbers behind it, I will keep an open mind. I will look at Mastodon and some of the others. I’m not sure they solve the discoverability issue. I know Mastodon only supports 500 word posts, which is far short of the long form G+ and MeWe allow.

Facebook is not an option I am taking seriously. I don’t like its interface and can’t find stuff after it’s posted. If there is a way to find a post from last year, it isn’t obvious. I suppose a google search is in order for that.

MeWe has us scratching our heads about how to do things, and some have asked for someone to do a how to video. I’ve already got a lot on my plate, so not sure I can fit that in any time soon. I was planning to address the whole Roll20 public relations fiasco this week, and that got knocked off the table with the G+ announcement. When I saw the flood going to MeWe, I knew I had to jump in and figure it out. I may have been the first or only blogger to lay out what I did in Tuesday’s blog article. I’d be interested in knowing about others.

Finally, contrary to information I read about the name, and shared in Tuesday’s article, MeWe is pronounced “Mee-Wee”. I hate that name.