032 — Streaming Developments: Breaking ground on skylounge.social

Hey. How's it going? I'm Ryan Hefner, this is the All Play podcast. So I wanna give you a little update since the last episode to give you a little, getting a phone call. Don't need that right now.

So give you a little update on what's been going on and, what is next. So, you know, not to, I guess to get down to the to some of the stuff around starter packs, the last steps update I gave was I did a bunch of updates to the website. I made it to where more of the pages were server side rendered. I made it to where there was navigation points that would basically allow a crawler to fall follow all of the infinite scrolling that was on the site as well as tab content and all this other stuff. So all of that stuff is working.

The numbers are actually getting pretty good. It has brought the know, I think I said originally before I did any of the optimizations, we were at around 6,300 or so index pages. It ended up dropping down to, 2,000, I think, because, you know, I just ruffled the Google Search Console's feathers a little bit by basically having it try to revalidate some stuff. And then there was the one downside is that because I am relying on Blue Sky for some of the, for a lot of actually the data that that builds out these pages, if there's a problem with blue sky, there's a problem with starter packs. And that's just something I'm gonna have to deal with.

But the crawlers have definitely been crawling. It's been kinda crazy. I think it's, at this point, I'm actually paying quite a bit to Vercel this month, just because of all the crawling that's been happening on the website. So compared to the actual visitors, there's way more crawlers going on. And I think in the last episode, I said that it got up to 17,000.

Well, we actually jumped up to about 45,000, which has been great. Although there was some val again, some validation issues, so it kinda dropped down to 33. So I think it's gonna be this kind of push and pull trying to get the numbers back up. I'd love it, you know obviously, if I can get it back up into the million or so mark, that would be great. But, right now, they are what they are, and I'm just gonna let those run.

I am gonna start publishing some articles and do some kind of like content marketing stuff for the website. I'm gonna hold on features right now, but I just wanna start I just wanna see if I can try to just get some more users to it and try to get more people connecting. So we almost have about a hundred, people who have connected their Blue Sky account, and I'd really like to get that number higher. So we'll see where it goes. And I think I hid it hinted that, you know, I had another project that I was wanting to work on, and I've been working on it.

So, I think it might have even been like the same day that I recorded that podcast. I ended up basically spinning up a new repo, and I am working on skylounge.social. So skylounge.social is gonna be basically, my goal is that it's gonna be kind of the x twit x slash, like, Twitter spaces alternative for Blue Sky. The and obviously not coupled to being within the Blue Sky app or anything like that. So it's gonna be you authenticate with your Blue Sky account.

You're gonna be able to basically create rooms that you're gonna have sessions within, and you'll be able to have these audio based sessions that people can join in and listen to and, you know, maybe even speak in. And so it's gonna 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 Sky account in order to, use it. I think there's gonna be some interesting things that I can do with that integration. So essentially, you know, being able to auto post when a session begins as well as take advantage of the social graph.

So being able to basically add speakers of other people that you follow or just in general, you can search for people. Probably some tie ins with starter packs, like being able to make like a starter pack of all the, guests and speakers that were within like a specific session. That's another thing that I'm exploring right now is, really the data model. And so where the x slash twitter spaces thing, it seems like, at least based off of what I've, you know, playing around with the app, I've been doing a lot of screenshotting and just trying to figure out what is all there so I can at least have some sort of parody with it. But it does seem that the Twitter spaces thing, it's really like you either schedule a space or you create a space, and then that space just goes.

There's no kind of consolidation or grouping of those spaces that I can tell. I've seen some sites that have actually kind of have to dig into like what if if they're using a service or something, but it looks like they're basically able to maybe they're even just publishing like an embed or like the share link or something and and and and and kind of like content managing their own collection of of the spaces that they've that they've held. But or maybe it's actually they're pulling it off of like spaces that are associated to a host on her profile. I'll have to figure that out, but, that's not gonna be the way that it works on Sky Lounge. So on Sky Lounge, the idea is that a host can make a room, that room can then have sessions that occur underneath it.

And, then that also becomes kind of like a a meeting place of sorts that, you know, you can hopefully rely on, you can go to, you can see when the next one is up and coming. Obviously, you can then subscribe or follow or get like alerts from that room when like a new session's either been scheduled or when one starts. So I think there could be some cool stuff to play around with that. I like the idea of basically having an archive of the sessions there and obviously eventually having the archives of the actual recordings. But I'm gonna, you know, do some baby steps.

I'm gonna start with just kind of the the live the live social show and then and then eventually, keep digging in and do some of the recording stuff. The site is live, at least the landing page is currently. So skylounge.social. Go subscribe to the newsletter. I'll be sending updates as I build out the project.

And I've been doing a lot of live streaming. So I guess I've been kinda using live streaming as a way of I don't know, maybe as like a a dopamine thing. I also I've been thinking about this whole, like, how do you kind of, multiply your effort? So if I'm gonna be sitting there, you know, working on this site at night and thinking about these things, it's really not that big of a lift to just turn on the camera and, you know, fire up the I'm using Ecamm Live. Fire up Ecamm and and just start streaming it.

And so that's what I've been doing. I've been basically streaming and capturing these sessions. So if you want to follow along, you can either follow me, follow me on YouTube. It's, I'm at Ryan underscore Hefner, and you'll get notifications on when there's live streams. I've been putting all of the building of skylounge.social in its own playlist.

So if you wanna go back, you could check out some of those episodes. I'm gonna warn you, they're not the most exciting episodes. Obviously, I'm just live coding, and I'm kinda trying to explain what's going on when. So, they're not the most thrilling things. I think it probably will be more fun, to join a live one because I would love to get some more interactions as I'm building this just so that people can kinda, we can vibe off one another.

Also, you're working on something, I really kind of look at these as like almost like co working sessions. So I would love it if someone wants to also, you know, I'm down to even have them hop on the stream if they also wanna share like what they're working on and we can kinda just piggyback off each other's, you know, momentum of of actually putting in the work and sharing it with people and see where that goes. So I've been doing that. I think it's actually going pretty good. So I already have obviously the landing page.

I had a few hiccups with, with the MX repo that I originally started off with. I ended up going back to an earlier version and I think that might actually end up being its own episode of me kind of being embracing vintage code because I feel like there's just certain certain versions of of of certain packages and things that just seem to work better with the way that I work. And, it's kinda interesting. I just don't know if I'm just not aligned with what their current future direction stuff is, but, that might be a whole other thing. But I got through those.

The repo is nice and finely tuned and I feel like I'm working pretty fast. I already have, a lot of the I basically have the majority of the API schema set up to what I think is gonna be, you know, the the final version. Obviously, there's probably gonna be tweaking as I kinda continue to to flush things out. I have a socket server that's wired up and being able to, share stuff between, you know, the client and the API server as well as, like, a a WebRTC connections for all of the streaming negotiation stuff. So I'm finalizing that.

It's getting pretty close. I think it's gonna be pretty fun, and I'm hoping to have a, kinda like an early beta release out soon, and I want to try to start inviting some people and having some conversations on it. My goal is actually to have it done by the end of the month because there's a, let me actually see what the the thing is called. I think it's called like release day or something like that. But I saw it pop up and I was like, oh, this is like the perfect motivation for me to basically try to fast track and get this thing out.

Let me try to see if I can find it real quick. And I'll put the the link to it in the in the show notes. So, yeah, it's release day. It's gonna be Friday, May 30. So it's only twenty one days away.

I'm gonna have to do a lot of hustling, but I think I can get it done. The basic goal will be you can authenticate with your Blue Sky account, which you can already do. You can create a room, which you can already do. You'll be able to initiate a session, which I think you can already do. The thing that I'm working on now is really just the managing of the speakers and the WebRTC connections and being able to share those with all the peers and all this other kind of stuff.

So I'm gonna try to button that up over the next hopefully day or two. And then, it'll be just a lot of kind of fine tuning it. So I guess I'm doing the public commitment. I'm gonna try to shoot for Friday, May 30. Skylounge dot social will be in a, you know, kind of exploratory period.

I'm hoping that kind of like having Sky Lounge and then being able to kind of couple that with being able to create starter packs and and being able to surface starter packs from starterpacks.net, kind of bringing the two sites together might also create a little bit of extra momentum around both projects. We'll see how that goes, but, I'm gonna end it there. Skylines.social. Check it out. And I think I actually have a few more episodes that I'm gonna try to record over the maybe even today or the next couple days.

I just had a lot of ideas this morning. I was out for my run, and I started just adding stuff to an Apple Notes thinking about all the different things I wanna talk about. So I might start having more, than just like sprinkling out these shows once, every week or so. But, I'm a leave 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 Sky Lounge near you. Alright. Have a great one.