Patchwork

It's better than email because:

• Private messages are end-to-end encrypted, always.
• You have to follow somebody to get messages from them, so you won't get spammed.
• Your mail can be public broadcasts or private, and you'll only see replies by people you follow.
• The datastructure is a global mesh of append-only logs, which can support new types of data (not just "mail").
• Users are not bound to one server/host (what we call "pubs") and do not have to trust the servers.
• It's very easy to setup and maintain your own pub.

It's better than twitter and facebook because:

• Private messages are end-to-end encrypted, always.
• The software runs on your device, so there's nobody tracking your browsing.
• The application-code is FOSS, so you're free to fork or write new applications without a gatekeeper setting terms.
• Data is saved to your disk, and so the application works offline.
• You can sync directly with friends over the wifi.

Because we're still in development, you'll need to contact an SSB team member (in #scuttlebutt on Freenode) to get onto the network! That's our informal barrier to entry right now, since we're not prepared for lots of users yet.

Patchwork embeds the Scuttlebot networked database, so if you're running Patchwork, you don't need to run another scuttlebot server.