032 — Streaming Developments: Breaking ground on skylounge.social

Some quick updates on the status of https://www.starterpacks.net and announcing the new project that I am working on!

Since the last update, the crawlers have been crawling—HEAVILY—accessing the site over 24M 👀 times. Needless to say, my Vercel bill is going to be a little higher this month, but 🤞 it will be worth it. Since the last update where the number of indexed pages jumped from 3k to 17k, since the last episode that number rose as high as 45k indexed pages, but recently dropped a bit to 34k.

I think the indexes is going to be a bit of a cat and mouse game, but my hope is that more indexed pages will generally be better for driving more organic traffic to the site. As the crawlers are crawling, I am working on some articles that will showcase some of the features, and also focus on some keywords that I am going to try to start ranking for. So, no new feature development for now, but going to see how traffic to the site goes over the next couple of weeks as I focus on SEO and content.

On the development front, new things are in full swing on a new project that is also focused on the Bluesky platform and community. The project called, Skylounge, and it can be found at https://www.skylounge.social. The goal is to build a X/Twitter Spaces alternative for Bluesky, that also embraces all the things I love about the open web.

Over the last week I have been streaming the development of the project, with the goal of sharing the process and approach that I am taking for the app, along with trying to multiply the return on my effort of building. So far it has been going pretty well, but I am really looking at these live streams as an opportunity to do some co-working with people, so if you have a project you are working on and want to share what you are doing during the live stream, I am down to share your work and even have you jump on the stream—if you want!

My goal is to launch the initial version of the site on Release Day, happening Friday, May 30. If you have something you have been working on—or putting off—maybe you want to use some social accountability to fuel getting it down. You can find out more about Release Day here: https://www.creativequests.world/releaseday

Ok, I have been rambling on. If Skylounge sounds interesting and you want to be one of the early people to sign-up and help me test it out, please go to the site and sign-up to be included on the mailing list I will be using to share updates: https://www.skylounge.social

To follow along, you can find me at https://www.ryanhefner.com, follow me on Bluesky @ryanhefner.com (https://bsky.app/profile/ryanhefner.com) and keep up with the show on https://www.allplay.fm and @allplay.fm (https://bsky.app/profile/allplay.fm).

Help yourself, while supporting the show, by trying some of the services that I use, and highly recommend:
Transistor FM (https://transistor.fm/?via=allplay)
Fathom Analytics (https://usefathom.com/ref/EKONBS)

#buildinpublic #podcast #startups #webdevelopment  #webdesign #bluesky #indiedev #bootstrapping #indiehackers

Episode Transcript

Ryan (00:00):
Hey. How's it going? I'm Ryan Hefner, this is the All
Play podcast. So I wanna giveyou a little update since the
last episode to give you alittle, getting a phone call.
Don't need that right now.
So give you a little update onwhat's been going on and, what
is next. So, you know, not to, Iguess to get down to the to some

(00:24):
of the stuff around starterpacks, the last steps update I
gave was I did a bunch ofupdates to the website. I made
it to where more of the pageswere server side rendered. I
made it to where there wasnavigation points that would
basically allow a crawler tofall follow all of the infinite
scrolling that was on the siteas well as tab content and all

(00:45):
this other stuff. So all of thatstuff is working.
The numbers are actually gettingpretty good. It has brought the
know, I think I said originallybefore I did any of the
optimizations, we were at around6,300 or so index pages. It
ended up dropping down to,2,000, I think, because, you
know, I just ruffled the GoogleSearch Console's feathers a

(01:08):
little bit by basically havingit try to revalidate some stuff.
And then there was the onedownside is that because I am
relying on Blue Sky for some ofthe, for a lot of actually the
data that that builds out thesepages, if there's a problem with
blue sky, there's a problem withstarter packs. And that's just
something I'm gonna have to dealwith.

(01:28):
But the crawlers have definitelybeen crawling. It's been kinda
crazy. I think it's, at thispoint, I'm actually paying quite
a bit to Vercel this month, justbecause of all the crawling
that's been happening on thewebsite. So compared to the
actual visitors, there's waymore crawlers going on. And I
think in the last episode, Isaid that it got up to 17,000.

(01:51):
Well, we actually jumped up toabout 45,000, which has been
great. Although there was someval again, some validation
issues, so it kinda dropped downto 33. So I think it's gonna be
this kind of push and pulltrying to get the numbers back
up. I'd love it, you knowobviously, if I can get it back
up into the million or so mark,that would be great. But, right

(02:13):
now, they are what they are, andI'm just gonna let those run.
I am gonna start publishing somearticles and do some kind of
like content marketing stuff forthe website. I'm gonna hold on
features right now, but I justwanna start I just wanna see if
I can try to just get some moreusers to it and try to get more
people connecting. So we almosthave about a hundred, people who

(02:36):
have connected their Blue Skyaccount, and I'd really like to
get that number higher. So we'llsee where it goes. And I think I
hid it hinted that, you know, Ihad another project that I was
wanting to work on, and I'vebeen working on it.
So, I think it might have evenbeen like the same day that I
recorded that podcast. I endedup basically spinning up a new

(02:59):
repo, and I am working onskylounge.social. So
skylounge.social is gonna bebasically, my goal is that it's
gonna be kind of the x twit xslash, like, Twitter spaces
alternative for Blue Sky. Theand obviously not coupled to

(03:22):
being within the Blue Sky app oranything like that. So it's
gonna be you authenticate withyour Blue Sky account.
You're gonna be able tobasically create rooms that
you're gonna have sessionswithin, and you'll be able to
have these audio based sessionsthat people can join in and
listen to and, you know, maybeeven speak in. And so it's gonna

(03:46):
be kind of like a, you know,Twitter spaces or clubhouse, but
it's gonna be a website. And,you know, you're gonna have to
authenticate with your Blue Skyaccount in order to, use it. I
think there's gonna be someinteresting things that I can do
with that integration. Soessentially, you know, being

(04:07):
able to auto post when a sessionbegins as well as take advantage
of the social graph.
So being able to basically addspeakers of other people that
you follow or just in general,you can search for people.
Probably some tie ins withstarter packs, like being able
to make like a starter pack ofall the, guests and speakers

(04:30):
that were within like a specificsession. That's another thing
that I'm exploring right now is,really the data model. And so
where the x slash twitter spacesthing, it seems like, at least
based off of what I've, youknow, playing around with the
app, I've been doing a lot ofscreenshotting and just trying
to figure out what is all thereso I can at least have some sort

(04:54):
of parody with it. But it doesseem that the Twitter spaces
thing, it's really like youeither schedule a space or you
create a space, and then thatspace just goes.
There's no kind of consolidationor grouping of those spaces that
I can tell. I've seen some sitesthat have actually kind of have

(05:17):
to dig into like what if ifthey're using a service or
something, but it looks likethey're basically able to maybe
they're even just publishinglike an embed or like the share
link or something and and andand and kind of like content
managing their own collection ofof the spaces that they've that

(05:37):
they've held. But or maybe it'sactually they're pulling it off
of like spaces that areassociated to a host on her
profile. I'll have to figurethat out, but, that's not gonna
be the way that it works on SkyLounge. So on Sky Lounge, the
idea is that a host can make aroom, that room can then have
sessions that occur underneathit.

(05:59):
And, then that also becomes kindof like a a meeting place of
sorts that, you know, you canhopefully rely on, you can go
to, you can see when the nextone is up and coming. Obviously,
you can then subscribe or followor get like alerts from that
room when like a new session'seither been scheduled or when

(06:23):
one starts. So I think therecould be some cool stuff to play
around with that. I like theidea of basically having an
archive of the sessions thereand obviously eventually having
the archives of the actualrecordings. But I'm gonna, you
know, do some baby steps.
I'm gonna start with just kindof the the live the live social

(06:45):
show and then and theneventually, keep digging in and
do some of the recording stuff.The site is live, at least the
landing page is currently. Soskylounge.social. Go subscribe
to the newsletter. I'll besending updates as I build out
the project.
And I've been doing a lot oflive streaming. So I guess I've

(07:09):
been kinda using live streamingas a way of I don't know, maybe
as like a a dopamine thing. Ialso I've been thinking about
this whole, like, how do youkind of, multiply your effort?
So if I'm gonna be sittingthere, you know, working on this

(07:31):
site at night and thinking aboutthese things, it's really not
that big of a lift to just turnon the camera and, you know,
fire up the I'm using EcammLive. Fire up Ecamm and and just
start streaming it.
And so that's what I've beendoing. I've been basically
streaming and capturing thesesessions. So if you want to

(07:52):
follow along, you can eitherfollow me, follow me on YouTube.
It's, I'm at Ryan underscoreHefner, and you'll get
notifications on when there'slive streams. I've been putting
all of the building ofskylounge.social in its own
playlist.
So if you wanna go back, youcould check out some of those
episodes. I'm gonna warn you,they're not the most exciting

(08:14):
episodes. Obviously, I'm justlive coding, and I'm kinda
trying to explain what's goingon when. So, they're not the
most thrilling things. I thinkit probably will be more fun, to
join a live one because I wouldlove to get some more
interactions as I'm buildingthis just so that people can
kinda, we can vibe off oneanother.

(08:34):
Also, you're working onsomething, I really kind of look
at these as like almost like coworking sessions. So I would
love it if someone wants toalso, you know, I'm down to even
have them hop on the stream ifthey also wanna share like what
they're working on and we cankinda just piggyback off each
other's, you know, momentum ofof actually putting in the work

(08:55):
and sharing it with people andsee where that goes. So I've
been doing that. I think it'sactually going pretty good. So I
already have obviously thelanding page.
I had a few hiccups with, withthe MX repo that I originally
started off with. I ended upgoing back to an earlier version
and I think that might actuallyend up being its own episode of

(09:17):
me kind of being embracingvintage code because I feel like
there's just certain certainversions of of of certain
packages and things that justseem to work better with the way
that I work. And, it's kindainteresting. I just don't know

(09:37):
if I'm just not aligned withwhat their current future
direction stuff is, but, thatmight be a whole other thing.
But I got through those.
The repo is nice and finelytuned and I feel like I'm
working pretty fast. I alreadyhave, a lot of the I basically
have the majority of the APIschema set up to what I think is
gonna be, you know, the thefinal version. Obviously,

(10:00):
there's probably gonna betweaking as I kinda continue to
to flush things out. I have asocket server that's wired up
and being able to, share stuffbetween, you know, the client
and the API server as well as,like, a a WebRTC connections for
all of the streaming negotiationstuff. So I'm finalizing that.

(10:20):
It's getting pretty close. Ithink it's gonna be pretty fun,
and I'm hoping to have a, kindalike an early beta release out
soon, and I want to try to startinviting some people and having
some conversations on it. Mygoal is actually to have it done
by the end of the month becausethere's a, let me actually see
what the the thing is called. Ithink it's called like release

(10:43):
day or something like that. ButI saw it pop up and I was like,
oh, this is like the perfectmotivation for me to basically
try to fast track and get thisthing out.
Let me try to see if I can findit real quick. And I'll put the
the link to it in the in theshow notes. So, yeah, it's
release day. It's gonna beFriday, May 30. So it's only

(11:04):
twenty one days away.
I'm gonna have to do a lot ofhustling, but I think I can get
it done. The basic goal will beyou can authenticate with your
Blue Sky account, which you canalready do. You can create a
room, which you can already do.You'll be able to initiate a
session, which I think you canalready do. The thing that I'm
working on now is really justthe managing of the speakers and

(11:28):
the WebRTC connections and beingable to share those with all the
peers and all this other kind ofstuff.
So I'm gonna try to button thatup over the next hopefully day
or two. And then, it'll be justa lot of kind of fine tuning it.
So I guess I'm doing the publiccommitment. I'm gonna try to
shoot for Friday, May 30.Skylounge dot social will be in

(11:50):
a, you know, kind of exploratoryperiod.
I'm hoping that kind of likehaving Sky Lounge and then being
able to kind of couple that withbeing able to create starter
packs and and being able tosurface starter packs from
starterpacks.net, kind ofbringing the two sites together
might also create a little bitof extra momentum around both
projects. We'll see how thatgoes, but, I'm gonna end it

(12:12):
there. Skylines.social. Check itout. And I think I actually have
a few more episodes that I'mgonna try to record over the
maybe even today or the nextcouple days.
I just had a lot of ideas thismorning. I was out for my run,
and I started just adding stuffto an Apple Notes thinking about
all the different things I wannatalk about. So I might start
having more, than just likesprinkling out these shows once,

(12:37):
every week or so. But, I'm aleave it there. Again, I'm Ryan
Hefner.
This is the All Play podcast.Follow along at allplay.fm, and
hope to see you soon on a SkyLounge near you. Alright. Have a
great one.