My New Solo-Social Network

Over the years I have always struggled to figure out a way to evolve with social media. I am normally an early adopter but I’m also an early leaver when I find something isn’t working for me. As these social networks evolved into behemoth marketing machines I have yet once again grown tired of being advertised to. I don’t mind the mundane or simple things in life… and the less curated feeds that don’t exist anymore. 

I use Telegram in its many forms not only as a chat tool but also a broadcast tool. I have a broadcast channel where I would post when traveling but even then I didn’t want to over post to make people’s phones ding to much. So that even got a bit too in your face for me in my opinion. I have had many variations of blogs and I have settled on this one for long form, but now I have my new solo-social network for quick posts. 

I live a somewhat privileged life with lots of travel and experiences that I love to share to those interested. I don’t share to show off or brag but I do share to hopefully enrich someone with a smile like my Nana. I definitely don’t share because I crave likes or attention. There may have been a period when that did bring me some fulfillment but that was short lived. And now that advertising has taken over things like Instagram, I find myself avoiding it even more. 

My struggle has always been to share easily but there is no longer a way to do that. No one posts mundane thoughts on Facebook and Twitter is trash. Everything needs to be curated now. I try to be more of a passive sharer if that makes sense. I’ll share, I’ll post but you can come and check it out if you are interested. I don’t need you to see everything I do. In fact when I see someone in person it’s always nicer when we can discuss things that we haven’t already seen them talk about or post about. 

Recently I have been dipping my toes into AI more and more. I’m using it to be a better programmer and to explore things that I just don’t have the bandwidth to learn. I’m finding it a great tool to use combined with my years of knowledge, I have become efficient and very effective at my job. 

As a side project I have started using the new (the buzz of AI) OpenClaw. A tool that lets you create interactive chat bots and personal assistants within chat applications… of course my application of choice is Telegram so I dove in head first to get it set up. 

I plan to get a bit more technical in another post because I do think I have learned some things that could help others. For now, I do want to sort of outline how my new feed site was born here cause I think it is pretty damn cool. 

Now onto the tech...

I installed OpenClaw on a droplet in Digital Ocean. I installed agents for myself and Brad. Brad named his Kylie [Minogue], and mine is Carly [Rae Jepson]. Yes there is a theme. 

After much tweaking and troubleshooting I got the bots working as they should. Individual but together when we need them. For example I have a shared restaurant database where we can post restaurants with comments or add to a wish list. We can both benefit from this. I have personal database where I can log health concerns, a life log for thoughts or memories by category. Making it super easy to record and when I need to extract or search it’s all there. There is a more boring non-songstress bot that I use for work that polls my emails for any web site error notification that I need to fix.

I then had an idea… as mentioned above,  posting when travelling has always been a task. I love to share thoughts or photos without making everything a curated Instagram post. I want cherish memories and I do like to voice my opinion, mundane thoughts, or observations and really there is no place for that…

What if… I could use my bot to post to a web site I built instantly, quickly, and in an unobtrusive way for people who are interested.  

I outlined to Carly what I wanted to do: When I post #feed  TITLE | CATEGORY | DESCRIPTION | PHOTOS (optional), Carly will recognize that I’m wanting to post to the site. After Carly interprets my message she parses the text, uploads the photo and enters into the database my post. And voila - my own solo-social network! 

I can now post to my web site directly from Telegram. Easy. Fast. Efficient and with very little effort.  I have made my own personal Instagram feed with no ads! I'm also going to start posting photos that come up on my phone as a daily photo (when not traveling) so that I can share memories and moments and my years and years of photos don't go to waste.

And this checks the box of being a passive way to share - if you care, you can visit. If you really care you can add your email and I’ll send you a recap at 8am EST in email with anything posted the day before This is more for when I'm traveling. As I type this, I'm going to give a weekly update when I'm not traveling but daily as I am. Something to have built in... vacation mode!

I decided that I did want to add a way to comment so that has been added but I doubt many people will and that’s cool. Maybe a way to leave a simple reaction will come next. We'll see.

Next month I’m travelling to Europe and some of it is solo. So it will be nice to be able to share using this method which is super easy. So we’ll see how it goes. The site was incepted and birthed today so as I think of more features I’ll be adding them in but I want to keep it as simple as possible. I think I’m using AI for good and I’m embracing how I can work with it and not set myself up to be replaced by it. Let’s see how it all goes….

If anyone is interested in setting this up for themselves, I would be more than happy to help 😄