003 — Jamming on Side Projects and Bluesky w/ Mubashar “Mubs” Iqbal

Streamed live on Thursday, January 7th, 2025 at 4pm EST. Join Mubashar “Mubs” Iqbal (https://mubs.me) and myself (https://www.ryanhefner.com), we’ll be talking side projects, Bluesky, and whatever else happens to come up during the jam.

You can checkout Mub’s projects at:
https://blueskydirectory.com
https://mubs.me
https://iworkedon.com/@mubashariqbal

And, follow him on the. socials:
https://bsky.app/profile/mubashariqbal.com
https://x.com/mubashariqbal

You can watch the live stream here: https://www.youtube.com/live/ckaGzVTvx98?si=UeHeITvSjUCUjtzF&t=1265

And you can follow the show at https://www.jamsessions.fm and https://bsky.app/profile/jamsessions.bsky.social / https://x.com/jamsessionsgo

Creators & Guests

Host

Ryan Hefner — oss/acc

Having fun, building stuff. Currently building: https://www.starterpacks.net

Guest

Mubashar “Mubs” Iqbal

Sign up for my newsletter 👉 http://sideprojectmvp.com for tips & tricks from someone who has built 120 side projects (https://iworkedon.com/@mubashariqbal).Building @blueskydirectory.com🏠 https://mubs.me

What is Jam Sessions?

Where people get together and jam! Join me, Ryan Hefner (https://www.ryanhefner.com), as I talk with some of the best builders, makers, creators and visionaries, digging into the projects they are working on and what they want to make and add tot the world.

#livestream #podcast #indiedev #startups #makers #builders #buildinpublic

Ryan: 00:03

Here we go. So, yeah, welcome to Jam Sessions. Today, I'm joined with Mubs, Mabashar Iqbal. I hope I pronounce that semi okay.

Mubs: 00:15

No. No. All good. That's why he recalls me because that's much easier.

Ryan: 00:22

Totally. But, yeah, Mubs is a prolific creator, indie maker, and he's just I I guess I've been following his work for a long time. He's been pumping out a bunch of stuff, a lot of stuff on Product Hunt. Now what year did you you won the Golden Kitty 1 year. Right?

Mubs: 00:42

2016. Yes. I've been it's been a while, but, yeah, it it was one of the earlier I think it was the second one that they ran. It was 2015. I think it was the first one when, levels won it, and then I won I won a year after that.

Ryan: 00:57

Awesome.

Ryan: 00:59

Yeah. So, obviously, been following you for a while. You have a lot of cool projects, so I'm sure we'll get into those. Jam sessions is really kind of a space just to meet up and talk and jam with people who are doing interesting stuff. And so I definitely wanna get into all the stuff and projects that you're working on.

Ryan: 01:22

I'm feeling free to, get into some of the stuff I'm working on if you wanna hear about it. I think we're gonna have probably a lot of stuff to talk about regarding Blue Sky and stuff you're doing with Blue Sky Directory and then stuff I'm doing with starter packs and, all that good jazz.

Mubs: 01:43

Yeah. No. It sounds good. I mean, yeah, excited to to finally have the chance to chat. And, yeah.

Mubs: 01:47

I'm sure the it's it's I was doing a little bit of reading about yourself as well and, you know, just to kinda catch up and stuff. And I think there is there there's some similarities in terms of career path and and how we handle side projects and things like that. So I think I think this is I think it should be a fun conversation

Ryan: 02:08

here. Yeah. Definitely. Actually, even I think one of the most interesting kind of similarities we have is you actually worked at a agency in New York or that was based out of New York and also, was it, did they have a French studio? Yeah.

Mubs: 02:29

French studio as well. Yes.

Ryan: 02:30

Studio. Yeah. So, yeah, Area 17. And when, I moved to New York in, like, 07, And I started working for an agency called, Fantasy Interactive. And so I worked there for a couple of years and then I moved over to Vimeo.

Ryan: 02:51

And then at some point, I I caught wind of, like, Area 17. I was like, oh, man. That's like an agency I would actually be interested in joining at some point if I got tired of doing the product stuff, but I never quite got there. But I definitely use them as inspiration. You could probably tell from my portfolio.

Ryan: 03:10

I stole some typography and some other kind of minimalist, styles from it.

Mubs: 03:17

I know. I mean, that's actually one of the things things that I really loved about Area 17 was they were very open and very, sharing in terms of, like, the their their their approach to interface and and kinda how we help things should look and be organized. So they actually published what they call, the pixel school back then. So all all, sort of interface people, all the UI people, and even some engineers, who who joined Area 17 were kind of taken through this school. So that that's how they all kinda had a shared view of how things should be kind of organized and and how things should look and, you know, in terms of having a shared occasion in terms of kind of what project should should should should kinda look like.

Mubs: 04:02

And they did publish that. So anybody even outside Area 17 can kind of, learn that same philosophy as well. And it's funny because, yeah, I I ended up having 2 different stints at Area 17 as well. I I worked there for a while. I left and went to work for, and, I went to work for an agency that's more upstate New York where where I live.

Mubs: 04:24

And then I ended up, I went up I did some freelancing again, and then I kinda had a second stint at Area 17 as well.

Ryan: 04:36

Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I mean yeah. They're they're so good.

Ryan: 04:41

And I still, like, look, check out their stuff to this day.

Mubs: 04:44

Yeah.

Ryan: 04:46

And so yeah. Sorry. When did you move on from Area 17?

Mubs: 04:51

Most recently, it's I think it's I was it was during COVID. So I think that was 20 21, 22 was, like, my my second stint, at Area 17. I have to I this is the the one thing that LinkedIn is kinda good for. It's when I try and figure out, like, where and where I worked in in sort of past past jobs. So yeah.

Mubs: 05:17

Actually, no. It's actually the earlier than that. So 2020 was was kinda the my for the last time at, at Area 17. I actually went to work for a start up out in Austin after that. And so I was I was at the start up in Austin for about 4 years.

Mubs: 05:38

And then for the last year, yeah, I guess just to just to give a little bit more info. Background wise, yes, I've been freelancing essentially for about the last year after after that last kind of startup, of in tech startup out of Austin. Was kinda trying to figure out, like, kinda what to do. So I just kind of fell into freelancing because it's kinda like the easy way without having to make a big choice about, like, you know, what what the future looks like. Yeah.

Mubs: 06:06

And and then, yeah, and then around October time, this, last year in 2024 was kinda when I kinda moved to Blue Sky and kinda, you know, started working on on projects on Blue Sky. And yeah. And and I'm I'm hoping 2025 is gonna be doing more of my own projects, doing less freelancing, and hopefully, they'll be in the Blue Sky ecosystem, I think.

Ryan: 06:34

Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's kinda you know, I've been juggling, like, 2 clients right now. And, Yeah.

Ryan: 06:42

My, my goal for 2025 is to create a little bit more margin with some personal projects that will sustain and be able to offset some of the client stuff. And then, you know, I guess, keep the freedom of being able to retain those or not. You know? Or if something happens to go awry with one of them, I have a little bit of a backup cushion. You know?

Mubs: 07:03

Right. Yeah. I mean, it yeah. Because I've run an agency in the past as well. Like, when when I first moved to New York, I was in the city and and working at a start up and kinda running a sort of agency on the side, kinda spun that out and and kinda did that a little bit more full time for a while.

Mubs: 07:22

And it's not my favorite thing. Like, it's, you know, it's when you get into running an agency, you're running an agency. You're not building websites anymore. You're not designing websites. You're doing the business of an agency, doing HR and planning and, you know, all of those things.

Mubs: 07:37

And I'm just I I I sat down, looked at it one day, and I was like, this isn't what I enjoy doing. This you know, running an agency takes its own skill set, so, you know, you have things that people like to do. And I was like, well, I like to build things. I like to build websites and build, you know, build experiences and apps and things like that. And and running an agency, that's not what you get to do.

Mubs: 07:59

And and so as much as I like working on lots of different projects with lots of different clients and things like that, that's one of the reasons I like working at an agency because you got that variety of lots of different kinds of projects and clients and things like that. Running an agency just wasn't what I wanted to do. And so I I think this idea of, like, doing freelancing, but then hopefully, pivoting to a few projects that, you know, are my own that, that I can I can re rely on for income and stuff like that, I think, would be would would be ideal? We'll see if it works out.

Ryan: 08:38

Totally. Yeah. I mean, Yeah. It's always just tricky, but the flexibility of freelancing, I love it because to your point, you get to see so much and you're working on different client projects or even the agency stuff. And sometimes you get paid to learn new technology or you have to implement something that you wouldn't normally do if you were just following your own kind of will or in curiosity.

Ryan: 09:11

And so, to be able to kind of be forced into that and also kind of run into all those rough edges, I'm always talking about like finding the rough edges and, really how can you do that and then have that inspire potentially your next side project and whatever else.

Mubs: 09:34

Yeah. I I mean, I I think that's where, like, most of the most of the good ideas that I've had in terms of side projects and things in the past have been usually when I'm working at a job somewhere and there's some task that you have to do, there's something that you have to do that you're forced to do because it's, you know, it's part of your your role and your responsibility. And you're like, well, if I had this tool, you know, it would save me x amount of time or save me x amount of money or just not make me hate my life so much. So you end up kind of building that thing and, you know, unfortunately, it's it's like, oh, yeah. Most there's a lot of other people who have to do this thing as well and and kinda really hate it as well.

Mubs: 10:16

But yeah. No. I I think agency work is great way to kinda just kind of get your feet wet and just learn lots of different ways to tackle problems with different technology as well. I think that's I you know, I've I've talked to a bunch of engineers in the past, and and some of them are I I I don't know if they're fortunate or not, but, you know, they they they work their entire career with one stack. And it's like it's JavaScript, and that's all they ever do.

Mubs: 10:46

Or it's Ruby on Rails, and that's all they ever do. And for for myself, because I'd been in AGC World for for such a long time. And, actually, AGC World with, like, Fortune 500 customers, you kinda have to use whatever stack they come to you with because then they're not gonna switch their stack to match you. And so, you know, I've ended up having to do Java and PHP and JavaScript and Ruby on Rails and and, like, just based on whatever stack the client had and had to kind of figure out how to how to make this work in in their stack, which actually made it I think, again, for my side projects, I ended up being exposed to a bunch of that I would have normally been. And even though I still do mostly PHP now with, there was a lot of stuff that I I was I learned when I was I was on a project doing Ruby on Rails stuff, and PHP still hadn't hadn't got to the point where it's matured to now.

Mubs: 11:46

But there was a lot of stuff that Ruby on Rails was doing and doing really well in especially in terms of how you interface with the database and the the few layer abstractions and stuff like that that it's pretty standard now. And, like, a lot of the frameworks in PHP have a lot of those things as well, but I wouldn't have known about them, you know, as sort of early as I did, unless I'd been pulled into a Ruby on Rails project. And so yeah. So just having that exposure makes life I I think it just expands your experiences and, skill set as well.

Ryan: 12:24

Yeah. And, actually, maybe slightly going back to the area 17 stuff. You all had a, there's, like, a content management system. Was that

Mubs: 12:36

twine or or it's I forgot.

Ryan: 12:38

Wait. What was it called?

Mubs: 12:41

Twill.

Ryan: 12:41

Twill. Twill. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mubs: 12:43

Yeah. Yeah. So I I I tell, this is another one of those, like, claims to fame. But so my first job out of out of, university was working for a little start up, in in in England, and the first thing they asked me to build was a content management system. So I built in CGI in using c code as a as a module for the Apache web server.

Mubs: 13:12

I built a content management system for a around the world race. And so they they used my content managers to update the website in terms of, like, news about, like, what was happening in the race as they went around the world. And so ever since then, I've kind of had to build content manager systems. It felt like I that was a I did for a large part of my career, but it it's now it's now quite funny because in Paravel, there's, like, there's well, there's a CMS and Startomix. I'm not sure if you heard Startomix as well as a CMS.

Mubs: 13:47

So Startomix, I started I I built the first version with Jack, McDade when he lived in upstate New York as well. So there's that as a as a CMS. There's Twil as a CMS, and I saw I I had a hand in building that when I worked area 17 as well. So if you want a content manager system, I'm probably your person.

Ryan: 14:09

Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's I've definitely rolled a few of my own back in the day. I actually looked at almost using Twil on a project.

Ryan: 14:18

Yeah. Because, yeah, I would say, you know, I was at that agency, then I went over to Vimeo. That was actually a PHP monorepo. Yep. All hand rolled framework because this is, like, pre code igniter and Laravel and all that stuff.

Ryan: 14:37

And, actually, when I was hired there at Vimeo, this was still kind of, like, pre or right on the verge of, like, HTML 5 video. So I had to rewrite the Vimeo video player and flash and then did a bunch of other projects obviously for Vimeo. And then after I moved on with them, I think I I came into, I discovered Laravel maybe, like, towards the last year or 2. So back in, like, maybe, like, 2015, 2016. And, yeah, I just started building some stuff on there.

Ryan: 15:17

So a lot of my, like, early side projects post Vimeo were all Laravel. And, Yeah. I'd say, like, it's been a blend of, like, either Laravel or Node, Nest, JS kind

Ryan: 15:33

of stuff, since then, depending on the project.

Mubs: 15:39

Yeah. I it's I've even though I've been exposed to, like I said, I built stuff. My one of the a lot of the early stuff was in c because that was the language back when I started working. But, second second job was more like Java work on the server side. But since PHP come out, I've kind of I've kind of stayed tangential to PHP.

Mubs: 16:05

Like, I started using PHP, I think, in 1999 was when I first, like, built my first thing with with PHP. Still doing a bunch of c code and Java code back then as well. But then because I was using PHP, kinda oh, introduced me to the in to the the word WordPress world as well. So I'm still doing WordPress stuff to this day as well. And then, yeah, just kinda like like you said, rolled a bunch of my own frameworks at the beginning just just to improve my efficiency with PHP.

Mubs: 16:45

And then I heard about Paravel, and pretty much since version 1, I've I've been trying to use it as much as I can, and it's improved leaps and bounds ever since. And, yeah, they've they've done an amazing job of making it. It it it is probably one of the first frameworks that's actually optimized for shipping stuff. Like, there's there's been a lot of frameworks I've used over the years that have been optimized for engineering, I call it. Like, in terms of, like, just, you know, making sure that you do things the correct way from an engineering perspective, versus Harvel always seemed to me, like, yes.

Mubs: 17:24

Obviously, it has a lot of that stuff in terms of doing things the right way into the organizing of files and and organizing your code, make sure you write code the right way. But it it but it always felt like it it it it it was always that was important, but the most important thing was to make it as easy as possible for you to ship stuff, which which I I found refreshing because nobody had really focused on, like, how do you actually get code onto a service so people can use it as opposed to how do you write the most elegant, simple, efficient code?

Ryan: 18:00

No. Totally. I think the the focus is definitely on optimization over opinions, you know, because I feel like a lot of frameworks, it's just a lot of opinions.

Ryan: 18:12

But, Yeah, I feel like Laravel kind of,

Ryan: 18:16

it obviously has its opinions, heavy opinions, but also optimized just for getting something spun up real quick. And the fact that it's on PHP and the you could just throw it on any old host and it's

Mubs: 18:31

I mean, honestly, people always ask me how I was able to ship stuff so fast. I kept trying to tell them it wasn't me. Like, I was like, well, I use CarVal and, like, you know, authentication, you know, models to get in, you know, the crud stuff that you have to build to get stuff out in and out. The Cuemath users are so good. The Cubic because I was like, I was like, good.

Mubs: 18:53

That's my secret weapon. It's not a secret. I tell everybody about it. And, you know, like, how can you ship so fast? They're like, well, I used to write the code.

Mubs: 19:03

I used forge to manage the servers to to put the projects on a server somewhere. And so, literally, I can write code, have it up on a server within within a few hours, really, and and it's got a lot of the functionality. It's already ships with it so that I don't have to build any of that stuff, but I keep focus on the code for the application. Yeah. And and so yeah.

Mubs: 19:26

So, I mean, using the right tools is, you know, it makes you know, it does give you a good head start. The queuing is stuff that the I think the reason that, I think I I think the biggest reason that I I I like Laravel is that is it allows you to start small, but then to grow the project into something bigger, more substantial, you're just you're not having to, like, rewrite it from scratch. You're not having to, like, throw away a bunch of stuff and say, okay. Now I need to write version 2 or whatever. It's easy to incrementally just add more functionality, more feature, and use more of the framework in a way that makes sense to your project as well.

Mubs: 20:08

That means that you're not wasting time. And, you know, that's kind of one of the reasons that we can we can, you know, we can talk about it more in in later or we can write one out. But when when I started working on Blue Sky directory, I was able to get things rolling pretty easily and pretty fast and to have a site up and running, you know, pretty easily. But then to be able to, like, have the site grow as the site has grown with all the starter packs and and things like that, like, in I feel like with other frameworks and with with other tools, I woulda had it woulda been a lot slower because I woulda had to, like, stop and restart and things like that versus using Parabel. I was able to kinda start how I wanted to, but then just continue to evolve and continue to add it in a in a way that kinda makes a lot of sense as well.

Ryan: 20:59

Totally. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I definitely started so much, and I've kind of, like, optimized and evolved it. But, you know, at the same time, I feel like there's certain projects that I bid off when I was working at an agency as just to try to optimize my workflow. So I ended up building a, like a lighthouse, test runner because I was tired of the inconsistent results and trying to figure out how to, like, compare, most recent tests against last test and see how it's evolving.

Ryan: 21:33

So I wanted to have a history of all of it. So I I set up a Laravel project called Optimize toolset, and I could just throw in a bunch of URLs and have those run on a cron or a schedule or whatever and I fire those off. But over the years, I've added so many URLs to it that it's just tearing down the server that it's on. Because I I never got around to basically, like, getting another box to run the test on versus everything, API and some other stuff. So it's like a tool that I just, like, use my own, but it's also, like, DDoS by my own use.

Mubs: 22:16

No. I mean but and even that, like, I mean, it's fairly, like so when I went to work for the the Fintech company out of out of Austin, like, I built I built the first version of the tool that that we built there with Laravel as well. Just everything was running on one server. We I just put had one web server. Had well, had the one server.

Mubs: 22:38

Had the website. Had the the Laravel code. The front end, like, the back end all ran on one server. And then eventually, we just, like, just with and all inside of forge. Like, I just added a second server.

Mubs: 22:50

We moved the DB onto that server. So we kinda spread the kinda spread the load a little bit on the eventually, got to the point where there's so many few jobs that need to run that I just set up another server. We just deployed the same code to the that server as well as the main application server, and all the queue jobs ran up on that server, but all sharing the same database as well. And and it was all stuff that didn't really have to change, you know, anything in the code to kinda make all that work. It was just change the configuration so that we know that, you know, the the The queues run on this IP or whatever.

Mubs: 23:28

The queues run yeah. Basically, it was just yeah. Basically, you set the route to, you know, route to the the the one server for the for the the IP result of that for the web server, that queued server. We just didn't run the queue scheduler on on the web server instead of, you know, on so on the app server. They only ran on that other server, and that was it.

Mubs: 23:50

Like, that was the whole that was how you had to set that up. So it kinda made it very easy to to kinda scale, and, yeah, we we I think for the 1st year, we we kinda ran on $20 a month posting, and we were we were we were we we I think we had raised at that point, $20,000,000. And and so it was a it's a so it's a fintech company. We basically loaned money to SaaS companies. Wasn't alone.

Mubs: 24:19

It was what what's called factoring where we kinda yeah. So you you're buying a future avenue. It's not alone for financial reasons. It's not for for legal reasons, it's not alone. And yeah.

Mubs: 24:35

So for the 1st year, I think we'd I think at that point, we've issued $10,000,000 out to as companies, and we are running the entire infrastructure $20 a month.

Ryan: 24:47

Oh, that's pretty amazing.

Ryan: 24:49

I also feel like I need to look into forge again because I use forge too for my Laravel projects, but I don't feel like I saw the, the carve out stuff to be able to quickly, spin up, like, secondary servers on some of the stuff.

Mubs: 25:05

Yeah. I mean, you basically just add another server. They've they've changed the options now in terms of, like it it used to be that you just spun up a server, but now you can say, I want this to be a

Ryan: 25:14

Like a worker.

Mubs: 25:15

DB server or just a queue work, or, or if you wanna run, it'll elastic search or Mhmm. Search and those kind of things. Yeah. So you can you can specify what kind of server that you wanna run, and it'll install just that piece of just the piece of software that you need as opposed to installing everything. So it's kinda optimized the server for you.

Mubs: 25:38

Yeah. I it's funny because I just got the invoice for Forge, and I think I'm still on the a $140 a year plan because I signed up the 1st year that it launched. So I've got access to, like, all of the features and functionality for, like, the lowest price that you can get because I signed up and have been a customer since the 1st year that it's been, it's been it's been out. Yeah. I I I told you to sign up right now, and they're like, it's so expensive.

Mubs: 26:03

I'm like, you know, I I'm like, I'm sorry to tell you. A long time ago. Yeah. I mean, what you're paying for, like, 3 months now, I fully pay for these entire years. So Totally.

Mubs: 26:14

It's working out well. Yeah.

Ryan: 26:16

I mean, I'm still on a $15 a month plan. So I must be doing I must have got in pretty early too.

Ryan: 26:24

Exactly. But it's it's really awesome.

Ryan: 26:27

Totally.

Mubs: 26:27

Although, I'm I'm kind of excited to see, like, they've been working on that new Cloud. Cloud. I haven't got access yet, but I'm I'm I'm kinda hoping soon. But it sounds really interesting as well to see kind of what the feature hosting will will kinda look like as well.

Ryan: 26:45

Yeah. Totally. I mean, you know, I think the good thing that Laravel does is it takes a lot of the questions out of the equation when you start getting started. Like, you're running, like, a local Postgres or MySQL database or whatever. And then you can you can evolve from there to go to, like, a hosted version if you need to.

Ryan: 27:07

But, you know, there still are those decisions and trade offs, and being able to know which ones and when to make is, I think, what it still takes, you know, some senior ish. You need to be around the block a couple of times to know know what to choose.

Mubs: 27:25

Yeah. I mean, it was funny. I mean, like, again, I mean, touching on Blue Sky, again, like, it was funny because I went from it was the same kind of scenario, but instead of a year, it all happened in the space, like, a month. But, I was I I just threw up the the first version of the site on on, like, some server that I already had running. I was like, this this site's not gonna use a lot of resources.

Mubs: 27:50

It's gonna be really cheap and easy to run. I'll just start up on this server. It's just gonna be basically that big HTML, you know, kind of thing, at the beginning. And then, obviously, I started to index all of the starter packs, and it it went from, you know, a few 1,000 startup. It went from I think I started with, like, 60 or so starter packs, I think.

Mubs: 28:10

I was looking at it just manually.

Ryan: 28:12

You're manually adding those to the directory. Right?

Mubs: 28:15

At the beginning, yeah. My idea was that it was all gonna be manually, like

Ryan: 28:19

Curated.

Mubs: 28:19

Curated stuff. And because I didn't realize just how how many starter packs there were. And so and so yeah. So I started to, like, build up scripts to, like, search search the sort of user list and see what starter packs people have. And eventually, it was just like, I I I can't do this manually.

Mubs: 28:40

And and it grew. I think I think by the time I actually launched, like, the starter pack only section, I think there was probably about 10,000 starter packs in there. I think I think we're up to yeah. I'm sure you put your point now. I think we're just shy of 200,000 now in terms of starter packs.

Ryan: 28:59

It should be over 200,000. That's the thing with, so I think so you started blue sky directory and why I'm read on it was you're gonna basically like curate all the tools and other resources and stuff. But then obviously when starter packs started taking off, it made total sense to add that to, you know, keep the fever alive. And there was also no real good way to browse or explore starter packs without having to go to individual person profile on on this guy and then tab into their starter packs. And I don't know.

Ryan: 29:37

Unless they're they're sharing the link or in the feed, but

Mubs: 29:41

Right.

Ryan: 29:41

Yeah. Discovery was definitely a broken thing.

Mubs: 29:44

Yeah. Yeah. I mean yeah. No. I mean, originally, the plan was just to do just like a normal run of the mill to to to directory with some, like, curated starter packs, some curated feeds, some curated lists.

Mubs: 29:58

Profiles or whatever. For and then, you know, applications and clients and things that you might wanna use that that use the stack. And then, I mean, starter packs are probably one of, like, the coolest features in terms of, like, how to solve, like, the onboarding issue and how do you know who to follow, who's here on on this on on on this particular platform, things like that. And, yeah, I mean, I went through the same cycle that I bunched bunch of people that somebody referred me to although I signed up in, like, April of last year well, 2023, I think I signed up kind of originally. But I I stopped using it because it just wasn't you know, it wasn't ready yet, I don't think.

Mubs: 30:35

You know, like, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't it wasn't what I needed at the time, I guess. And then, I think it was actually Justin Jackson started talking about Blue Sky on on on even even on x. He was just kinda posting about it. And so that's kinda what reignited my interest in it. I was like, okay.

Mubs: 30:57

Let's see kinda where they're at, what features they've added, you know, what functionality they're in. Who's here as well was was the sort of in it was was, like, the big important question. I think it's it's it's a social network. If there's no people, it doesn't matter what the features of functionality are. Totally.

Mubs: 31:13

And so yeah. So I I and he had built so I think he had built a spreadsheet a while back, which was just like, is everybody who's on x that you know who also might have an account on, on on Blue Sky. And so I added myself to that. I think that was back in, like, August time kinda last year. And then when starter packs came out, Justin created the starter pack with everybody who was in the spreadsheet.

Mubs: 31:41

And that and so that was my first exposure to kinda starter packs and suddenly started getting a bunch of followers because people were using his starter pack to sign up, and then they're just following everybody in the starter pack. And so I kinda went through the same thing, though. I was like, well, that's a cool starter pack. Who else has got some cool starter packs? And I was trying to see who yeah.

Mubs: 32:01

Who's in the indie maker world? Who's in the Laravel world? Who's in the sort of web development space that that I might wanna follow. And I had the same problem everybody else did. It's like, unless you know what the starter pack is, you don't know what the starter pack is.

Mubs: 32:16

And so the the direction of the first stab at solving that, I was like, even if you have to do it manually, just knowing who's who's who has a good starter pack would solve that initial problem. But then when you got, like, you know, 10,000,000 people joining in the space of the week after the election happened, that just blew up. It was like it went from, you know, a few 1,000 starter packs to, you know, to 200,000 of them now, that, it just yeah. You just couldn't do it manually anymore. People I mean, it was stuff that I didn't know anything about too.

Mubs: 32:47

Like, people were asking me about starter packs of in subjects and topics and areas that I was like, I have no idea what that even means, let alone who to follow in that space. And so just, you know, just automating it as much as we could. And so, yeah, I started automating it. I started put I mean, my my initial thing was, I think, I just used the search to see when somebody shared a link to a starter pack and then automatically indexed it through that. And then eventually, it was like, well, it's all in the fire hose.

Mubs: 33:17

We know it's all there. Let's watch the fire hose, see when people are making these things, see when people are still sharing. I can still see it in the fire hose. People are sharing them as well. And then yeah.

Mubs: 33:27

So eventually ended up it's still I mean, I don't think mine's still a 100%. I don't think I've got everything in there yet, because there's still a lot of the older stuff that people haven't shared since, and I haven't gone back and indexed everybody's starter packs. But it's, you know, it's probably not I I don't think it needs I don't think you need a 100% coverage in in something like this. It's it's what's useful and interesting, and, you know, more and more of the newest stuff is more useful and interesting.

Ryan: 33:53

Yeah. I would totally agree. And, also, once you start relying on the fire hose, it's like you're on the hook for making sure that service is remaining connected to the fire hose. So I definitely had it. I mean, I think there was a time where, blue sky maybe had some issues with the even the fire hose itself, and then that would go down, and then that would take down my service.

Ryan: 34:14

So I had to make sure I had to start it back up so I didn't lose too many packs coming in. Now I didn't take it the one step further of actually looking at posts that referenced the starter pack. That shit that would have been a smart thing for me to do early on. But right now I'm just looking at basically update, creates and deletes to try to keep that, pool fresh. But, and actually, I, I think my longer term goal was starter packs at least.

Ryan: 34:44

Because I, again, I think I got in roughly around the same time you did. I was invited again sometime last year by a friend, and I found maybe like 3 people that I knew, you know, you're like, you're like, you know, the, you know, like the early adopters, you're like searching around to see, like, if they're on and who are they following. And if they're only following like 5 people, you know, there's not a lot of people around here. But, I I totally agree. I it was like, you know, late October, November timeframe when everyone started hopping over there.

Ryan: 35:20

I think I also caught wind of Justin Jackson's, first, like, PHP friends of Laravel or I forget what it was. Laravel.

Mubs: 35:30

Friends. Yeah.

Ryan: 35:30

Yeah. Laravel Friends starter pack. I think I tried to get on there because I was like Well,

Mubs: 35:37

like, you know, I was already in it. I was because I was in the spreadsheet, so I was already in it. So I was awesome.

Ryan: 35:43

Yeah. Totally. And so yeah. And then to your to your point, I I would didn't realize that you were actually gonna kind of, like, start curating starter packs because I saw the tools and stuff. And I was like, oh, well, it'd be cool to build a tool around starter packs.

Ryan: 36:00

So I think even just the concept of starter packs are a really cool idea both in the concept of blue sky, but even beyond. You know, there's a lot of people who probably have a Twitch or a YouTube Yep. Or whatever that I would be if I'm interested on one platform, I probably wanna follow them on all the different ones. And so it I I started thinking about, well, let's see see if we can actually just start curating and exploring all the different starter packs, that are on Blue Sky. And that is where I I tried to get as, like, full of a catalog as I can because you wanna, you know, like, have as many options there.

Ryan: 36:47

But at the same time, I do feel like there's opportunities to even expand on that profile and then still use those starter packs as a, a way to, explore and discover people.

Mubs: 37:02

Yeah. I mean, it's it's

Ryan: 37:04

And I guess in addition to that, some of the tools I wanna add to starter packs is actually discovering the starter packs that you're in and then exposing those on your profile. So that way it's a little bit fuller, richer discovery. And it's also like, I don't know, like what other starter packs I'm in at this point. I think I got added to a bunch early on, but it'd be fun to just see, like, when you're added or removed or any of that kind of stuff.

Mubs: 37:33

Yeah. It's funny. I mean, like, I when when I started, well, when I started working on the the Tyreke, and this is, you know, the the fun thing with side projects is, like, I didn't really have, like, a patient. Right? Like, I wasn't like, this is my 5 year plan.

Mubs: 37:46

Right? Like, it was just like I was like, I wanna build something, so I started building. You know? Like, this isn't I rectify because it it seemed like the sort of cool and obvious thing to to to to work on. And then you have the flexibility at that point to react to what's happening around you, and that's that's kinda what I reacted to.

Mubs: 38:07

Because the minute I started posting about the curated list, that's when I'd be, like, piled on was like, yeah. But why didn't you add mine? And why didn't you add mine? And why haven't you added mine? And why have you added mine?

Mubs: 38:18

And I was like, so many of them. And so at that point, you kinda know that there's a lot more happening under the surface here that if you can surface that, that there's gonna be a lot of interest in it. And and I'm absolutely in the right place at the right time in terms of, like, so many people joining, you know, moving from x and threads and, you know, all those other platforms are moving over here. And really what, you know, what really As I say, you have a lot

Ryan: 38:45

of early links. Right?

Mubs: 38:48

New York Times, Wired, you know, you know, Forbes, just about every publication, and, you know, tech crunch and everything. Like, just so like I said, just so happened to me that I yeah. I think even though a few a few of us started working on actually, I I'm not even sure I was the first person who started working on it because I think there was people pre October, you know, I think I think starter packs came out in, like, August. I think it was when they when they were, like, added as a feature, on the platform. There were some people who were working on this whole idea of, like, can we can we collect all these starter packs?

Mubs: 39:25

But, so when I started working on it, it was more of a security thing. And and I and plus I did my whole, like, building public thing as well. So people knew what I was building, and they knew what features I was adding and what I was trying to achieve, I think. And that made it a little bit easier. They all came to me because they all knew that I was working on this whole starter pack feature and, you know, featured, items and things like that.

Mubs: 39:50

So, I mean, I think that building public thing really gave me that edge, especially in terms of, like, links and stuff. Because people referred to the thread that I wrote about building it and, you know, things like that. But that that's where I think all the SEO stuff has really really added to like, because I think the website's still getting I you know, since the holidays have you know, since I've been back at work now, I'm still getting about 4,000 business a day on the site still.

Ryan: 40:23

Yeah.

Mubs: 40:24

And that's mostly mostly because I've got so many links out there that are sending people to it, and that's all because, I just happen to be in the right place at the right time. Everybody's interested in starter pack. Everybody saw what I was doing. Everybody linked to it, because it was, like, it was, like, the new hot thing. So at the time and, yeah, now I'm just trying to figure out, like, kinda, you know, obviously, the sort of nice thing about what we do is we is we as we build things, we're kinda automating things.

Mubs: 40:50

Right? Like, we're we're reading off the fire hose. I don't have to manually add starter packs anymore. They're all just getting added automatically. That frees up your your time to think about, like, what's next.

Mubs: 41:02

Like, what's the next feature I can? What's the next functionality like Ned? And, yeah, I've had a lot of the same thoughts in terms of, like even though I love start up as I think I think they're an awesome idea. I don't think that they're they're ultimately how you find your audience. Right?

Mubs: 41:17

Or you find your community because it relies on other people to put you into a pack. Right? Like, because that's the whole idea of a starter track. Is that, yeah, other people are assigning you to these things. And so that's why I started, like, the whole idea of a profiles on blue sky directories.

Mubs: 41:38

It's like, why do I have to why do I have to run other people to put me into these things? Like, they should be these things, these, you know, these topics and, you know, these areas of interest that I can assign myself to. And so with the pros one, I mean, we can with the Blue Sky account, they can log in. And once they're signed up, they can they can from it, I think I've got a list of, like, 300 different topics and things like that. You can just assign yourself one.

Mubs: 42:10

And just and just I can expand that. Not yet. So not this is all off of the Off the platform. Right now. Yeah.

Mubs: 42:18

It's all off chain stuff. You know, it's it's all happening. Eventually, I think if there's a lexicon that I could add to, like so you could, take these assignments that you've given yourself and put them onto your profile with a lexicon, I think it's probably the right way to do it rather than with specifically with tableer, although that might come and go with it as well. Oh, yeah. So yeah.

Mubs: 42:46

So so I think so right now, I think there's about 800 or so profiles that either I've assigned some kind of, topic to or people have just come to the website logged in and kinda picked the their own one. So you can you can come to the directory now. You can say, I wanna I wanna find people who talk about politics or I wanna find people who talk science or I wanna find people who talk about startups. And you can just see a list of those people, and you can search through those lists and see who's active on on those kind of things. I think longer term, that kinda makes more sense because you're self selecting then.

Mubs: 43:25

I still think there is there's still some, you know, opportunity for somebody. Probably won't be me because I think it's not manual work. But in terms of, like, terrifying who's a journalist and who's who's an athlete and who's who's an artist and and who's an actor and those kind of things. I think, you know, people wanna know about celebrities and things like that. But that you kinda have to have some kind of manual verification process as well.

Mubs: 43:53

If Blue Sky isn't gonna do that, I I like I don't have the time or the or or the the seasonal system make that happen. But I think that's the other layer that I'm hoping somebody else handles it because I'll just lean into that and say, well, if if if if some other third party organization has said, this is an actor, this is a politician, this is a journalist, I can just bleed that into the into the directory as well and just add that as another way to filter and search

Ryan: 44:23

Totally.

Mubs: 44:24

For that as

Ryan: 44:25

well. Now when did you add the profiles? Because I don't know if I've played around with that yet.

Mubs: 44:33

That was, right before Christmas, I think. So you kinda got lost a little bit, I think, in in in in in the sort of holidays. Downturns. Exactly. But, yeah, that was something like I was I I was trying to think about, like, what what version 2 of starter packs look like.

Mubs: 44:50

And I actually, I I I love the idea of starter pack because it's not just about who's the cool friends that you have that you want people to start up for. People have been doing it around, you know, specific topics and specific interests and specific, you know, sort of activism and things like that. I was like, that seems to be the right way in terms of organizing these things. We need to know who's posting about these particular topics, who's posting about these issues, but you should be able to put yourself into that into that into that list. You shouldn't have to rely on somebody else to put you into that list.

Mubs: 45:26

And, yeah, there's other signals. Like, just because I've assigned myself doesn't mean I'm actually talking about that stuff. Like, it doesn't so you can use other signals. You know? Things like how many followers you have, how many following you have, how how old your account is.

Mubs: 45:39

There's other signals. I think they're gonna add Mhmm. Couching as a mechanism on the platform. Like, somebody else can vouch for somebody to say they worked with them or they worked at this organization or, you know, I trust this person in some way. I think that's all that's all attributes that we can use to sort who is in that profile list.

Mubs: 46:05

So I think I was just kinda setting it up for people who wanna be in those lists. And then, okay, now that you're in that list, if there's 600 people in that list, what's the top 10 people that you should follow in that list? Right? Like, we could use other signals to help you kinda surface who the right people are to follow even though thousands of people might say they they talk about that one thing. But, yeah, it just I mean, I think that's one of the the cool things about what's happening here is Blue Sky to some degree has pushed a lot of the emphasis, a lot of the work, and a lot of the owners back to the community and says, look.

Mubs: 46:43

We're a small team. We can't do all of this stuff. You guys need to do some of this stuff. And it's very cool to be able to do a lot of these things that and actually have access to an open platform that lets us do a lot of these things. I'd love to do a lot of these things on Twitter and x as well, but we just can't well, unless you have lots of money, can pay $42,000 a year to get access to the API or month rather You get access to the API and things like that.

Mubs: 47:09

Like, it's not gonna happen.

Ryan: 47:14

Yeah. I mean, that was one of the big things about me building on Blue Sky because it was like, Twitter is just so you just can't do it. You can't pay enough. You know? Way too expensive.

Mubs: 47:26

Right. Yeah. And and, look, I mean, honestly, I mean, like, most of what I'm doing isn't gonna make any money short term, long term, even potentially. I don't even know other than, you know, people buying advertising slots and ad and, you know, spending a little money on ads. It's not like it's a SaaS that people are gonna pay for every month or anything like that.

Mubs: 47:44

So to pay, you know, 5, 10,000 bucks a month to Twitter or to blue sky in this case to to build a platform that I think people would use if it existed. But it's gonna be a huge thing. It's like, you know, not something I can afford. You know? And so but I think that's the nice thing about having access to it as a community.

Mubs: 48:05

You can build the tools that you think that are gonna be really useful and interesting even if it's not gonna make any money because it's not costing you an arm and a leg to be able to operate that thing as well. So, yeah, I mean, I think right now, I'm probably still spending because of the scale. I'm I'm sure you run into this as well. But at at one point, you know, I was getting, I think, you know, 50, 60, 70000 people come to the website every day. I have to scale the servers up a a a fair bit.

Mubs: 48:33

I think still I'm still spending somewhere between a 102100 a month on on infrastructure costs now. And that was mostly just be that was mostly just to handle the sort of load at the time. I could probably scale it back to down a little bit now. But it's it's almost easy just to leave it where it is because I know those surges are gonna happen again. Like, you know, there's talk around the in inauguration time.

Mubs: 48:58

There's gonna be another surge. Elon Musk, it sorry. Mark Zuckerberg just announced that they're basically not doing the the sort of trust and safety is being thrown out the window, on threads and and Facebook and stuff. We saw another little another wave of people kind of leaving and and kind of arriving here as well. I think it's gonna continue over the over the next 6 months, over the next years.

Mubs: 49:26

It's not gonna be you know, people aren't just gonna stop using x, you know, immediately. Like, not everybody's gonna stop using it, but it's gonna be a slow crescendo. And, eventually, we're gonna be like, how do we get to a 100,000,000 people here? And Yeah. And if we're gonna wake up one day, it's gonna be a 100,000,000 people here.

Ryan: 49:44

Yeah. I mean, I I'm I'm down for it because I feel like blue sky feels like Twitter in the old days. I love the fact that my following is just the people who I'm following, and it's not a bunch of, like, injected stuff in between there. You can opt in to obviously the various different feeds that you wanna have if you wanna have different algorithms going on. But at the same time, you could also write your own if you want to, which is really cool.

Ryan: 50:12

Yep. The flexibility and freedom over there just feels awesome. I just hope that they figure out a way to monetize it to keep it going because that's, like, the biggest thing. And I just you know, anytime you go with ads and tried to have to, like, pay for eyeballs to pay for your company. I just feel like that's just where it goes wrong.

Ryan: 50:36

It's gonna lose that magic.

Mubs: 50:39

Yeah. I'm really I mean, I'm really hoping I mean, I I hope when Twitter announced, like, you could pay for Twitter you know, you pay for pro or premium, whatever heck they called it, I I kinda hoped that that would be the signal that they were gonna rely less on ads. But did it I don't know what Yuan, you know, did there. Like, the whole, like, tying the verification tick check mark to you paying was, like, the entirely the wrong approach. Like, because the 2 things, they don't mean the same thing.

Mubs: 51:12

So it was kind of a stupid way to kinda do that, I think. And, no. I'm I'm really I'm really I'm really optimistic in the fact that, one, the post guy corporation itself is set up as a public benefit corporation. Mhmm. So, yes, they wanna make money.

Mubs: 51:33

Yes. It's a it's a company. It needs to make money. Otherwise, it won't exist anymore. But it's not the only reason that they're around.

Mubs: 51:40

Although, you know, it feels like Twitter is just the only reason they're around is is to make money. And so I'm really optimistic that Or

Ryan: 51:47

just to start fights. You know?

Mubs: 51:50

Or to or to or to influence Exactly. Those things. But, I guess if you could afford to do that, you know, he can. So it's okay. But, but, no, I'm really I'm really optimistic in terms of their philosophy and their vision seems to align a lot with what Twitter originally was in terms of being the public square and and and so things like that.

Mubs: 52:13

But, also, I think I I really hope they and I think the plan is to launch the subscriptions first and then try ads if subscriptions aren't working. Because I think subscriptions without ads will work. The whole the whole reason that I don't think ads I don't think subscription works on Twitter which is because they didn't get rid of the ads. Like, the whole point about me paying for Twitter, I thought was gonna get rid of the ads. Right?

Mubs: 52:37

And it didn't it's I I almost feel like I saw more ads after they started, doing it because I think what they had tried to do on Twitter was is to incentivize people to post. So they took the subscription revenue and paid that back to people, for the amount of interactions and views and impressions and things that they got. I was just paying so that it would support the platform. I didn't really need that money to come back to me for posting because I was getting a benefit for posting already. Right?

Mubs: 53:04

Like, I'm I'm engaging with the audience. I'm using the platform. That's the advantage that I want. I don't need to be paid for for for being active. And I'm hoping on on on Blue Sky that they actually use the the revenue that they generate from subscriptions to run the company.

Mubs: 53:22

Like, I hope they don't use it to pay back. Now, obviously, if they introduce a way where I can subscribe to an individual person and and get, you know, extra content, things like that, then, obviously, that should go back to the person that, you know, that I'm subscribing for. But if I'm subscribing to use

Ryan: 53:39

The platform.

Mubs: 53:40

Blue Sky Yeah. As a platform, that should go to pay to support the platform. It shouldn't it shouldn't go back to people who are posting stuff and being viral and and and so that kind of stuff. So so so I'm hoping that, you know, over the next few months at least, I over the I'm hoping that subscriptions are, like, the next thing that comes out because if they can't because exactly like you said, if they can't make if they can't if they can't build sustainable business, then, yeah, in in a year or so, we'll be looking for a new place to hang our hats, unfortunately.

Ryan: 54:14

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm definitely down. I'm I'm paying day 1, like, whenever they drop day 0.

Mubs: 54:23

I mean, I and, look, honestly, it's not that expensive. Right? Like, I mean, even Twitter was, like, was 8 $8 a month or whatever. You know? That's 2 lattes a month.

Mubs: 54:33

Yeah. It's 2 lattes a month or whatever it is. Like, I I on on the platform that I use, I'm sure other people use it more than I do, but you're using it for hours a day. Like, I mean, you're really you know? And and the value that you're pulling out of it too in terms of the kind of information that you get and the kind of, opportunities you get to talk to people that you wouldn't normally be able to talk to, that was that was the things I loved about Twitter and AXA recently too was it wasn't so much that I was I was just, you know, out there posting into a void.

Mubs: 55:04

It led to meeting lots of interesting people. It led to work. It led to job opportunities, freelancing opportunities. Not because I just went there and posted on looking for a job. Like, it was because I was having conversations with people, making relationships with people that led to those things just all all all panic way instead.

Ryan: 55:26

Yeah. Totally. And I feel like with the track record so far, they've made a lot of the right decisions. You know, obviously, keeping everything as open as possible. The fact that I can pull down a GitHub repo and potentially even tweak the client that I'm using and build my own if I wanna use 1, you know, I mean, that's pretty rad.

Mubs: 55:47

Yeah. Yeah. And, look, I'm I'm sure they're gonna make mistakes along the way because they're human, and everybody's gonna I mean, like, there's been controversies about, like, who do you ban and who do you not ban and what do you ban them for and things like that. Like, I mean but that's that's also the point of building a federated experience too. Right?

Mubs: 56:06

Like, I mean, I know it's there's not too many people running their own instances yet of of, you know, sort of their own app view and their own PDFs and things like that. It's still fairly new. It's still it's yeah. People are still working out how it all works. But, you know, long term future future tense, anybody can run their own PDFs, anybody can run their own app view.

Mubs: 56:26

They can ban whoever they want to. They can make sure they don't see content from those people. That's the federated future. That's the future where you exactly, you know, some things you said earlier about you being able to control your experience. You you control what feeds you see, what lists you see, the people that you see.

Mubs: 56:43

Yeah. We we have some control over that now with with with with the functionality that's there. But long term, I think, you know, that's just only gonna increase over time. And and also, I think, also get easier over time. Right?

Mubs: 56:56

Right now, it is fairly complicated to set up your own PDFs. But it was it was somewhat complicated to set up your own feeds until somebody, you know, raise and blue sky feeds have made it where you can point and click now and make your own feeds as well. And I think as the platform matures, there's gonna be more of those kind of things where it's now gonna just be I'm gonna run my own server. Okay. Just gonna point and click here, and now I've got my own server running instead.

Mubs: 57:24

And I can I I can control I can set my own rules about what's acceptable and and kinda what's not?

Ryan: 57:31

Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be cool, though. Watch it all go down and try to be part of it.

Mubs: 57:39

Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan: 57:42

I mean, I guess regarding Blue Sky Directory, obviously, you're talking about profiles and stuff. What other kind of things are you thinking about doing to evolve it? Or

Mubs: 57:53

Yeah. I mean, I think I mean, I think I want it to be longer term, I think I want it to be more self-service. I mean, at the beginning, the idea was that it was just gonna be, like, a manually kind of curated thing, right, in terms of, like, somebody being the filter in terms of what's listed and what's not listed and and things like that. I think moving forward now that, you know, now that I've got sort of OAuth working and, you know, I I know who's logged in. I know who they are.

Mubs: 58:20

Wanna list your own starter pack. You know? I know who you are. I can go look on your account. Like, what's the other packs you've made and and things like that.

Mubs: 58:27

Like, I I you know, we can do things like that now. So I think moving along, I think it's it's just it's gonna be leveraging the the potential, I think, that because I was there early, got all those cool backlinks from all those really high authority sites, I think I'm at a 44 domain ranking already. Congrats. Which is pretty after, yeah, after, like, 2 months, it's pretty insane. According to a according to AH reps, it's obviously we don't know what Google's kind of hating of that is.

Mubs: 59:04

But but, yeah, just trying to leverage that now. Like, just trying to make sure that, you know, when people come, they land on the website. They they kind of they kinda get the information that they're looking for. I think just trying to figure out what people are looking for, because I think that's the that's the challenge of running a directory is that you almost have to know what people are looking for and make sure it's there before they know that they're looking for it. Like, that was that was kind of, before they know that they're looking for it.

Mubs: 59:29

Like Alright. That was that was kind of the sort of fortunate thing about the starter packs, which I started building and started collecting, archiving them before they were really in a hoe. And so when people started looking for them, that's where they came. And so now I'm trying to figure out, like, what's next in terms of, like, what are what are people gonna be looking for in the in February, in March, in April, that, you know, hopefully, they'll find on the directory. And that's partly why I think I wanted to add profiles was because I saw this trend of people were searching for, you know, first name, last name, blue sky.

Mubs: 01:00:10

Searching for first name, last name, you know, Twitter even. People looking for people's Twitter accounts and things like that. And so, added profiles so that I could capture some of that. So because I think that's that's why I think, like, starter packs are cool, but, ultimately, you follow people. Right?

Mubs: 01:00:29

You follow topics. You follow people. And so if you can build a direct fee that has the people in it and that has them organized in a way that kinda makes sense as well, I think yeah. I'm using I'm not sure if you if you remember it, but, Kevin Rose started, this thing called We Follow back in back in back in the day, when he worked at, like, the the tech TV and dig dig and stuff like that back then. He started a thing called we follow, and it was basically for Twitter, but it was just it was just an organized directory of

Ryan: 01:01:12

people. Yeah.

Mubs: 01:01:13

And so I'm using that as an inspiration that I I think people are still trying to figure out on social media. Who do you follow? Who's posting about these topics and these interests and things like that. It was acquired by about.com and then shut off. So it's not it's not even live anymore.

Mubs: 01:01:30

So

Ryan: 01:01:31

No reference. You had to go way back machined.

Mubs: 01:01:34

I just got I think yeah. Just in case somebody's looking for it, it's not it's not it's not actually live anymore. But, but I I think that model still works in terms of how you find people to to to follow on social media. I I think it's still a good model. I think from a search engine standpoint, that's the right way to it's the long tail version of, like, what do you do for search media.

Mubs: 01:01:56

It's it's the sort of long tail. I've already seen, I think I was getting something like, like, 2,000 impressions a day on on, like, people searching for starter packs and things like that.

Ryan: 01:02:10

Mhmm.

Mubs: 01:02:11

And then I started adding profiles to the directory, and my impressions have got to about 20,000. So, so yeah. So because people are searching for George Conway and Oli Yang, Fast and you know, just all and I a bunch of people that I don't even know. But, you know, it's all automated in terms of, like, once they're added to the directory, then they just automatically get added to the site map, automatically get submitted to search engines. And so it's it's a flywheel that I'm hoping just as more people join Blue Sky, more people search for people on Blue Sky, and just, like, just continues to snowball from from from there, I think.

Mubs: 01:02:57

But, and it but it's it's funny, though, because, originally, the idea for the directory was to was to build a distribution opportunity, I think I called it originally, which is, like, gonna build a directory. People are gonna come to the directory to find cool stuff. I'm gonna build other cool stuff that people will find in the

Ryan: 01:03:17

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Totally.

Mubs: 01:03:19

Yeah. Like, I mean, like, that's the obvious thing. So yeah. So I'm gonna fill

Ryan: 01:03:23

this thing with all my tools for Blue Sky. Exactly. And I also own the the store. Like, the

Mubs: 01:03:30

I I I own the way that people are gonna find the things they wanna buy, hopefully. So yeah. So that was that was originally that was originally the idea, but, obviously, the the the directory itself is now much larger than it was originally intended to be. So I think it's gonna take a lot of it's gonna take a lot of energy to kind of maintain that. But, yeah, I think, ultimately, long term, I think long term, the idea at least is to just build some of my own tooling and then have access to, hopefully, tens of thousands of people who are on the mailing list who come to the website every every week, every month, and then say, hey.

Mubs: 01:04:04

Look. I built this cool thing. Maybe it's something you would actually pay to use every month instead, of it being a free item. So that was originally the idea. And I think eventually because I think that's the best way to to actually get money from the platform, I think.

Mubs: 01:04:21

Is that I don't think I could plaster the directory with lots of ads and, you know, that people could you know, but I'm sure people would be willing to pay to to kinda be on the directory itself. But to some degree, I think there's a fine line between lots of ads and not any ads at all. But, you know, how much money can you make without it cheapening the sort of Yeah. Of value there as well? So I think I think that's something if I can if I can get away with less ads, I think I would like to.

Mubs: 01:04:54

And I think the sort of the sort of the obvious way is to use it as the distribution opportunity that I think it originally was That that that I think it was supposed to be.

Ryan: 01:05:06

Yeah. Promote basically, use it to promote the other apps that you're building that you might be able to charge money for and then just keep that as just, like, kind of free discovery point that happens to promote the

Mubs: 01:05:18

the actual I'm not I've had ideas that I wanted to build for Twitter and, you know, be because the API cost and things like that, I I wasn't able to do that. And so I think there's some of those things, like, I'd like to build a scheduler, for example, that is doesn't work like the normal scheduler. It's it's got to do with more sort of evergreen content rather than, you know, posting content once and it just kinda landing, and it just appearing once. So there there's there's I I always like to build things that have their own unique twist to them. And so yeah.

Mubs: 01:05:52

So a scheduler, but not like a normal scheduler that, you know, you don't just pile content in and it just appears. I'd rather build, like, a library of content because even even in an ideal world, even in the following feed that we have on on blue sky, people still aren't gonna see all of your content because they're gonna be asleep. Why when you post the you know, there's you know? Or you might just not be on the platform that particular day because you have a life, and and you can't be on social media all the time. That's right.

Mubs: 01:06:22

And and so, you know, there's ways that we can repost content from a library of content as a as a way to, like, fill in when we're not active, so that your so that your old content can be seen by other people again. Or it might just be they wanna see it again because it's still a element piece of content that you might have posted a week ago or a month ago, kind of things like that. So scheduling for the evergreen content, I think, is is is like an is is, like, is something I like to explore some more. I think people would be willing to pay for that because because it helps expand their reach and and has their competency by by by more people as well.

Ryan: 01:07:02

Yeah. No. That totally makes sense. Yeah. I think working on starter packs and getting involved in the Blue Sky API and using all their SDKs and stuff, definitely a lot of ideas come to mind.

Ryan: 01:07:17

It's just hard not to find them.

Mubs: 01:07:20

Yeah. And, I mean, I and and just being on active on the platform. Right? Like, you see the opportunity because if you do actively engage with other people on the platform, you see what people are doing, how they're doing it, and you see opportunities there in terms of how you're engaging, how you're deciding what to engage with as well and things like that, I think, is is gonna be really important. There's gonna be a lot of tools that are out there that I think are gonna be are gonna add a lot of value, not just, you know, not just AI automation stuff.

Mubs: 01:07:52

Like, I mean, I'm trying to stay far away from that as I said because even though I love AI, like, I use it when I write code and things like that. Like, I think when it comes to social media, like, I you know, the worst thing I think you know, I could do right now is build, like, a a tool that automatically replies to everybody who follows you. You know? Like, no. I don't wanna do that.

Mubs: 01:08:10

Yeah.

Ryan: 01:08:12

I mean, I think that's where yeah. AI is great for coding. But, like, I don't wanna have a podcast that AI is just regurgitating some information either based off of, like, my activity or not and trying to, like, generate all these random follows. And, and like, I don't know.

Mubs: 01:08:36

I mean,

Ryan: 01:08:37

it's kind of even similar to like starter packs just to get back on that just for a second. I think the starter pack is cool, but I think I'm also in some starter packs where, like, I'm getting a lot of follows that I probably don't want or need. Right. So it's, like, great for my inflating my ego and thinking that I have this amazing, follower base. But at the same time, I think being in some of those starter packs, it's it's really not providing the true value that you need.

Ryan: 01:09:10

So to your point, like self selecting and and and also not having these weird AI automated things to try to inflate numbers artificially

Mubs: 01:09:21

Right.

Ryan: 01:09:22

That actually aren't really in creating any real connection or any real engagement.

Mubs: 01:09:28

Yeah. I mean, I think that I think there's like like I said, there's lots of value in AI, I think, in terms of assisting you in in the work that you do. Like you know? And and I think to some degree, there is value in automating some interactions. But this is meant to be social media.

Mubs: 01:09:44

It's meant to be your social network. It's meant to be your social interaction. If if if AI is doing everything for you, then it's it's not you anymore. Right? Like, people are unengaging with you.

Mubs: 01:09:54

People are engaging with with these AI agents and things like that instead. And and yeah. Look. You can't stop people making these things. You can't stop people using these things, and people will get successful with them.

Mubs: 01:10:08

They will get more followers. But like you said, ultimately, you know, like, who who is that follower that you're getting? Like, you know, the the the they they just try to randomly engage with some AI agents. It's it's not gonna be the kind of audience that you want. It's not gonna be the kind of people that you want to talk to.

Mubs: 01:10:24

It's not gonna be the kind of people that you wanna engage with. It's much better in my view to grow slowly, purposefully than, yeah, use all these automation tools just to get that number to go higher.

Ryan: 01:10:40

Totally. Yeah. I couldn't agree more.

Mubs: 01:10:43

Yeah. And, you know, but but the numbers are good. Like, I'm I'm close to 10,000 followers. Like, the numbers are good too.

Ryan: 01:10:51

Keep putting them keep putting mugs in the packs. Keep

Mubs: 01:10:54

following all. Keep liking my post, please.

Ryan: 01:10:59

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Like, repost, quote, quote, post.

Mubs: 01:11:05

But, you know, like I said, though, I'm like I haven't used any of those still. So the fact that I'm goes to 10,000 means that I I think that means that, you know, people are liking the stuff that I'm I'm putting out there, and they're following me. And, yes, people are I'm sure people are adding me to to start effects. I have no clue that what the heck the starter pack is about. But, but, ultimately, you know, people will keep following me, hopefully, you know, because they like the content that I'm putting out.

Mubs: 01:11:29

So yeah.

Ryan: 01:11:30

So, hopefully, we'll see if it all works out.

Ryan: 01:11:34

Well, cool. Yeah. That's good stuff. I guess any other side projects that you're jamming on right now?

Mubs: 01:11:40

You know, I mean, I I thought about what I was gonna do for 2025, and I was like, well, it makes sense to kinda lean into what's working. You know? And and I've I've yeah. I've had lots of different side projects. I've had well, I think I've built over a 120 of them now.

Mubs: 01:11:56

I think it's in my list, And and it's pretty awesome to have all of those side projects. Yeah. And they'll they'll I mean, there's there's probably, like, 10 or so that I do keep make sure that they're still running, actively maintain them, update them, stuff like that, which I will continue to do because it they're they're all kind of related to my hobbies. Like, you know, like, I love sports and I love movies and things like that. So there's, like, 3 or 4 different size points that I have that are kind of associated with those things, which I think I'll continue to push.

Mubs: 01:12:26

But I think, yeah, since this is working, I think I'm gonna lean into it. Like, I will continue to work on the, loose guide directory. I think if I do side projects this year, it's gonna be those other kind of applications tools that are associated with Blue Sky that I have a way to kind of share with people and and kinda have a you know, have have access essentially. Like, in some ways, I I think unfortunate in that I haven't solved, but I've, you know, I've got inroads in the distribution side of things now that to not leverage that would probably be a very bad idea or I think.

Ryan: 01:13:08

Yeah. Totally. I mean, eve I guess it doesn't necessarily need to be blue sky specific, but you just have enough eyeballs coming to the site that it would be foolish not to post something to let them know that there's some other stuff that's going on, whether it's directly related to blue sky or something tangentially related to social or community or what have you.

Mubs: 01:13:36

Yeah. I mean yeah. I think yeah. I think I've got you know, even, like, with the scheduling tool, like, I mean, I know we, you know, we talked about who would but it being too expensive and stuff. But, like, if it works, it works.

Mubs: 01:13:48

Right? Like, it and it it work on Blue Sky or work on x as well, and assuming that it can pay people. I think it shows how much you charge. Right? Like, if if if if the x API is too expensive, you wanna use x, then it's gonna it's gonna be more expensive.

Mubs: 01:14:03

But if you can show that the tool works, I think I think I think people would would would be interested in that. So I yeah. I'm I'm I'm absolutely building social media tools, not Blue Sky specific tools. Like, even, like, the that scheduler works across all platforms, LinkedIn, x, you know, all of those things. So but now you focus where where you kinda have access.

Mubs: 01:14:25

And so the when when the first version comes out, we'll absolutely support blue sky for sure, but there's the opportunity to expand out, after that as well.

Ryan: 01:14:35

Yeah. I totally agree. Yeah. I mean, I've definitely started thinking about Tools that wouldn't necessarily be starter pack specific, but more general to the ecosystem and actually just kind of like to your point and social media in general, like understanding followers and work where's opportunities for conversations and stuff, because I'm sure there's some conversations that I'm missing out on that I would like to interject in and have a point of view on or, or just say, hell yeah. And support someone in there, but you you know, you miss those things.

Ryan: 01:15:13

So

Mubs: 01:15:14

Yeah. Even something as simple. I mean, I know some people have tried to build or some people have started to build, thread composer tools that allow you to build threads so that you can post them in a in a efficient way. But just I I I love long lived threads. Right?

Mubs: 01:15:29

Like, I I love just adding to Totally. Especially with, like, the building public stuff. I don't think there's very good tooling around that at at the moment either. Like, in terms, like, I have to go find the post that I made on my profile. Scroll down.

Mubs: 01:15:45

Scroll down. And then find the post, and then I can hit rip rip rip apply to it so that I can continue the thread. Like, there shouldn't be a tool where I could just say, look. This is a thread about this, and it should know what the last time I posted on that particular thread. And then I should just be a add to it easily.

Mubs: 01:16:00

You know? So things like that. Like, I think there's I think there's opportunities around things like that that we haven't really explored because we haven't been able to on x. But because of the way that Blue Sky works and things like that, I think it's gonna be a lot easier to Yeah. To be able to make things like that as well.

Ryan: 01:16:19

Yeah. I totally agree.

Mubs: 01:16:21

Alright. Let's get grab some water.

Ryan: 01:16:25

Yeah. I know we've been going. We're almost hour and a

Mubs: 01:16:28

half here. How about you, though? So what's what's some of the stuff that you're working on?

Ryan: 01:16:34

You know, I definitely say towards the last quarter of last year was pretty much starter pack specific. You know, I, when I first started checking it out, I wanted to figure out the OAuth stuff. And that actually took me a while to kind of wrap my head around. It took me at least a few days just to get the actual, like whole all off though, set up. And then recently I refactored that to where now I can kind of keep the tokens fresh in the background via, like, a scheduler, just to kind of keep those things going, and be able to do stuff like on behalf of people, in the background.

Ryan: 01:17:17

But, hopefully gonna be pushing that out the site soon. I've been kind of kicking a little bit slow because I don't know. People are still visiting the site a lot. You know, I think, I'm not quite getting your numbers, but I think I'm

Ryan: 01:17:31

getting, let me see what the latest thing is here.

Ryan: 01:17:37

Maybe a couple thousand people a day. Nice. Nice. Yeah. About I

Mubs: 01:17:45

mean, that's way more

Ryan: 01:17:46

2 to 3000 people a day. You know?

Mubs: 01:17:49

That's way more than I thought I was gonna be getting.

Ryan: 01:17:51

Yeah. Totally. It's

Mubs: 01:17:54

pretty amazing.

Ryan: 01:17:57

And it's been indexed really well on Google. So I think that's part of it. And I'm also seeing a lot of random traffic from chat GPT, which is kind of an interesting refer that I haven't seen before.

Mubs: 01:18:08

Right.

Ryan: 01:18:10

So doing that, but then, you know, before I was working on anything starter pack related, I was working on a couple of different things. Like I have this thing called link cards, which is like a OG image generator. And that's actually an old Laravel project that, one of my other sites that I use it on kind of DDoSed it again. So I have this, MPM directory Explorer called package stats, Dom, package stats that come and all those pages actually have an OG image. So it's generated over 3,200,000 images.

Mubs: 01:18:52

Oh, wow.

Ryan: 01:18:52

And so, and it's continues to grow by like a 100000 every other week. Wow. So I'm actually gonna rewrite that and make it to where that's a little bit more efficient and actually try to start selling that, and actually expand it beyond just OG image, but actually manage, like, the open graph data around your site and being able to optimize it. So, yeah, open graphs.com is,

Mubs: 01:19:26

the

Ryan: 01:19:26

one I'm gonna probably be jamming on. And then, you know,

Mubs: 01:19:29

I would Pretty good name. Pretty good name.

Ryan: 01:19:31

Thank you. And actually, I I got the dotcom. It was a premium domain, but it wasn't ridiculous. So I figured I'd just buy it now instead of waiting later.

Mubs: 01:19:43

Yeah.

Ryan: 01:19:46

And then actually, you know, we're doing this podcast and last may I published my first kind of podcast over on my all play podcast. And, I really like just the I or, like, talking and getting ideas out of my head.

Mubs: 01:20:04

Right.

Ryan: 01:20:04

So I started working on a little app called transmits, which essentially is like a like a field recorder of sorts, where I can just log my voice memos. And then I'm doing some local, transcription via like the whisper, or like the local whisper model. And it's all working in the browser offline. And, I've had plans on growing that a little bit as just like a platform for audio. So kind of similar to like Vimeo, where you could just post up a single video or multiples or have a playlist or whatever.

Ryan: 01:20:44

I feel like there's not a great place just to put audio and embed it and have like a page where you could send someone to to review it if you wanted to Right. And keep it private or keep it public or whatever. I mean, there's SoundCloud and some other stuff, but I still feel like that were works for just, like, spoken word. You know? Yeah.

Mubs: 01:21:07

It's more for, like, music and snippets of music and things

Ryan: 01:21:10

like that. Exactly. Yeah. So Right. Kinda playing around some of those different ideas.

Mubs: 01:21:18

Yeah. It I mean, that since I mean, I know there's been a lot of interest. There was a lot of apps for, like, recording, you know, people recording voice memos and having them converted into AI and summarize the doing all that kind of I mean, I think people are selling those apps for, like I think they were kinda one time thing, but it was, like, still, like, 60, $70. Hopefully, we had them buy the app. But then it it it will like, you know, much much like yourself, it kinda runs a lot of the transcription stuff offline.

Mubs: 01:21:51

So, yeah, it's not I don't think there's an ongoing expense really to kind of operate against that. I do like the idea of the field notes, because I yeah. I think just having a way to kind of come back to those and refer to those, I think, is the interest of it because I I've I've always around this time of year, I always think, like, I should journal more. I should write in a diary more. But am I really gonna sit down and write in a diary and and type out something like that?

Mubs: 01:22:22

Like but if it was as easy as I could sit down at the end of every day and, like, 5 minutes just, like, speak, I think that's more likely that I would I would do that. And then if it could then transcribe that for me so that I could then search on that device and everything that I talked about, or it could automatically categorize things for me, you know, using AI and stuff. I mean, like, that, I think, was really interesting. I you know, obviously, the the iOS tools are kinda heading in in that way. I think they added the journal app, but I don't I don't know how much it will do, you know, some of the things that we just talked about.

Mubs: 01:22:58

But

Ryan: 01:22:59

Yeah.

Mubs: 01:22:59

But, you know, I I I think that I think, obviously, people like to talk. We like to talk. I really like to talk, but, but I think we should talk more to ourselves. I think that's something that I I don't think we do enough of. It yeah.

Mubs: 01:23:14

We always wait to have a conversation with a friend as opposed to just we should have a conversation with ourselves so that we can remember the things that we that that we that we want to in the future. Even if it's even if it's, like you said, more converted to text, so it's it's searchable indexable, it would be awesome if you did have that that you could hand off to your kids or your Total. Grandkids or whatever it was at some point as well. Obviously, depends what you spoke about. It's not an issue right now.

Mubs: 01:23:42

Yeah.

Ryan: 01:23:43

You might wanna do a selective edit. Exactly.

Mubs: 01:23:46

So I think I think that's that's an interesting tool. I I think I think people have started to think about, you know, personal archives and personal things like that a lot more. And, yeah, I think that could be very interesting thing to explore.

Ryan: 01:23:59

Thank you. Yeah. I mean, the other podcast I run is basically like a solo kind of journal update thing. You know, it's like, I try to keep it around 10 minutes and just talk about what's going on. It's a little bit of my, like, first build in public, just like contribution to try to get stuff out there and obviously share stuff on the socials.

Ryan: 01:24:23

But I do find that it is a little hard, especially like working from home and like working on client stuff. You kept so many of these things in your head. It's just nice to talk about it and actually hear yourself say something and actually reflect on that even because

Mubs: 01:24:43

Right.

Ryan: 01:24:43

What am I saying? And like, Do I really believe that? I don't know. But

Mubs: 01:24:53

Yeah. It is. It's it's funny. Yeah. I think I think, I there's I think that people find a bit surprising, but so my first work from home job, I did in July of 2000.

Mubs: 01:25:05

So I've been working from home for, I guess, about 24 years, 24 and a half years now. So, well, it's changed a lot since then. Technology's changed a lot since then. You know, we didn't do video calls and things back then. It was all on the on the phone and stuff.

Mubs: 01:25:22

But, it is it was very easy when I was in an office to just, you know, randomly run into people or randomly have a conversation after work. You're walking home, walking from work to the subway station or whatever. Right? You're just randomly having those conversations where you articulate thoughts that you don't normally have to articulate if you're talking to somebody else. And so, yeah, I think that's one of the advantages of of having, like, a a a journal like that, where where you're trying to articulate thoughts for yourself or or or to share with other people, but, working from home and a lot more isolation these days, not just working from home, but, you know, people just seem to spend more time at home.

Mubs: 01:26:04

People don't seem to spend time out as much as they used to anymore. And so I think, I think I think, yeah, finding, finding different outlets, I think, is is, like, an interesting thing that, I think we're we're all trying you know, to some degree we we're I think we're still trying to figure out how do we make friends. You know? As as we get older, it's harder to make friends, I think. But, maybe we don't need to make friends.

Mubs: 01:26:28

Right? Maybe we just need to find different ways to explore our thoughts.

Ryan: 01:26:33

Yeah. Well, you know and, hopefully, people are still making friends. You know? That's actually the one thing I was thinking about AI, people are still making friends. You know, that's actually the one thing I was thinking about AI is, when people start having all their questions answered through this robot that's that's kind of with you all the time, people stop reaching out to their friends who might know an issue.

Ryan: 01:26:52

And so I feel like there is a little bit of communication breakdown with some of the AI stuff that hopefully keeping stuff like this going and a little bit more, like, genuine kinda analog y, conversations going will still be fruitful.

Mubs: 01:27:12

Yeah. I I mean, I I'm so unfortunate because I've been doing this for a long time. I've kinda made that conscious effort to, you know, reach out to people that I would you know, that you know, if you're in an office, you kinda expect things to happen by accident, but they happen often enough where you don't have to think about making them happen. And so over the years, having worked from home for so long, like, you know, like, don't have, like, your personal CRM or anything like that. But in the back of my mind, I'm always thinking, well, I haven't spoken to that person in a few weeks.

Mubs: 01:27:41

I haven't spoken to that person in a few weeks. Like, I should reach out to them just to see how they're doing kinda thing. I think more of that, you know, if if I can if a if AI can help with stuff like that, I think that would be awesome. But but, yeah, I think that's also it it gets harder as you get older because I think it's harder to to know who when when you're younger, you're put into situations where you run into people that you have interest with. As you get older, that stops happening.

Mubs: 01:28:10

Right? Like, you have to go make the effort to find the people that you might have things to interest with. And it and where do you do that? How do you find that? And, honestly, you know, things like your social media and stuff, that originally was, like, the cool thing was that I could talk to anybody anywhere in the world who like to who like to build software.

Mubs: 01:28:26

Software. Like, that was the very cool, awesome thing about it, and I feel we lost that somewhere along the way. And, hopefully, with act more access, more people having access to the underlying information, who's posting what, we can make that easier again in terms of, like, these are the kinds of people. These are the here's a list of people who you might enjoy having a conversation with Yeah. With actual real, you know, real thought about why why you might kind of, like, engage with that person as opposed to just a random AI being matched.

Ryan: 01:28:58

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. But, yeah, you know, so many ideas, so little time, balancing client stuff with projects and even multiple projects trying to compete with time.

Ryan: 01:29:12

You know?

Mubs: 01:29:13

Yeah. Gets tough gets tough for sure.

Ryan: 01:29:17

Yeah. Get stuff. Well, cool, Mobs. I mean, I think is there anything else you wanna touch on? Or

Mubs: 01:29:26

No. No. This has been a lot of fun. It's I think we've we've me we've wandered through lots of different topics of conversations. It's been it's been it's been really interesting and fun.

Mubs: 01:29:35

I'm I'm, yeah, I'm just kind of I'm very interested, very curious to see what happens with Blue Sky over the next year or so. I think, you know, by by this time next year, we'll know pretty clearly if they figured out what the long term strategy is in terms of building something sustainable. If they figured that out, I think it it opens up lots of opportunities for people to build on top of what they've already, established. And, hopefully, for some of us, we've been, you know, along with with the ride, which means that we've already accessed a lot of those opportunities already. But, I mean, I I think that that that to me I I think this is gonna be one of those interesting years to, that could see it's not gonna be like a sudden shift, but I think, you know, like I said, like, we we could be seeing next year thinking, how do we get to a 100,000,000 users?

Mubs: 01:30:26

Because it's gonna sneak up on us. I think I don't think it's just gonna it's gonna it's not gonna happen overnight, but it's suddenly, we're gonna wake up one morning.

Ryan: 01:30:32

Consistent bumps and waves that

Mubs: 01:30:35

Right.

Ryan: 01:30:36

Eventually get there. Yeah.

Mubs: 01:30:37

Yeah. So I'm I'm I'm kinda curious. And I'm curious to see what other opportunities it it actually opens up for everybody as well. Because I think that was the sad thing about Twitter is that for a while at least, they had, you know, open access to APIs and things like that. And then they shut the they slammed the door shut on everybody.

Mubs: 01:30:56

So we thought we had lots of opportunity, and then it all kinda went away. And with police guy, you really can't. So, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens with the network and then kind of what how much more we can do, I think, is gonna be an interesting thing.

Ryan: 01:31:13

Totally.

Ryan: 01:31:16

Awesome, man. Yeah.

Ryan: 01:31:18

This has been a super fun conversation. I think we went a little bit over out of everything from old agency days to New York to, you know, juggling side projects and making way too many forgetting about it at some point, probably.

Mubs: 01:31:34

Yeah.

Ryan: 01:31:37

Yeah. I know I used, your what I worked on?

Mubs: 01:31:41

I worked on. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan: 01:31:43

Yeah. I post some stuff Yeah. I got every every now and then on that.

Mubs: 01:31:47

Yeah. I got tired of I I I really had it on my own personal site, and then I'd make a new version on personal site. I didn't wanna, like, update all the side projects on on the new site and stuff. So, yeah, so that was a fun little way to list everything I'd worked on.

Ryan: 01:32:01

Yeah. And actually, on your, building threads thing, one of the things I was thinking about making is this thing called product tapes. So essentially, a way of having, like, change logs that you could kinda post to a single thing, but then having the option of those then being essentially appended to the same thread on, on like a social media thing. I think that they'd be kind of cool just as a way to aggregate all the projects, aggregate your updates, and then have a API that you could embed on your site or on your product site. So I don't know.

Ryan: 01:32:39

Too many ideas. No.

Mubs: 01:32:41

That was that's cool. I, friend of mine used to, used to own ShoutOut, not so ShoutOut, where it was like you could just embed, like, a wall of post that people had made about you or your product or whatever. It was, you know, it was kinda I I think there's an opportunity there to do the same thing for Blue Sky as well because, you know, like, the people you engage with are on this platform. Now they're gonna they're gonna give recommendations and shout outs to you, but there's no way to easily embed all of those on, on sort of on your site for Blue Sky. Now, obviously, you know, it doesn't have to be just Blue Sky.

Mubs: 01:33:20

It could also include, you know, other social medias as well. But, yeah, I I think there's there's lots of opportunities for, like, tools that exist that only work for Twitter, that only work for the Clari and other platforms, that that we can now say, well, let's focus on making them work really well for Blue Sky. Oh, and then now that they work well for Blue Sky can expand those to to the other social media as well. So

Ryan: 01:33:46

Yeah.

Mubs: 01:33:46

Lots of opportunities.

Ryan: 01:33:50

Well, cool. So what's the best way for people to follow along on your builder journey?

Mubs: 01:33:56

Yeah. I mean, right now, I'm really only posting on Blue Sky, so, abasherball.com. On Blue Sky, also, Blue Sky directory.com, leveraging the domain feature, to to kinda make all of that stuff work as well. So, I think it's very cool to be able to associate those those accounts and and actual sites that you work on as well. It makes much easier to kind of find them as well.

Mubs: 01:34:28

That's really the primary places I have. My own personal site is, come stop me. Don't really post much there anymore. Mostly post mostly post online now, but, I think that's that's the easiest way and probably the most active way.

Ryan: 01:34:47

Totally. Well, awesome, Mobs. It's been great having you and talking and finally catching up. I hope we can catch up again soon. And, obviously, I'll I'm gonna go check out that profile feature on blue sky directory.

Ryan: 01:35:01

As soon

Mubs: 01:35:01

as we get it. Please do. If you haven't listened to yourself

Ryan: 01:35:04

another profile to your, pool. Yeah.

Mubs: 01:35:07

Yeah. I'm hoping to get I wanna get to yeah. That's one of those ones where I I'm doing it manually, but also encouraging people to do it themselves as well. But, I I wanna get to I think I've set 800 right now. I think my goal is to get to 10,000 by the end of the year.

Mubs: 01:35:26

But then, obviously, that would be 10,000 really well curated, profiles in specific, sort of areas of interest

Ryan: 01:35:34

as well.

Mubs: 01:35:35

So I think I think that I think that could be really awesome. Obviously, if it starts to work, if it starts to take up, then people come and list themselves manually as well. And there's 25,000,000 people on the platform, 26,000,000 people on the platform now. We have 26,000,000 people on in in the directory as well.

Ryan: 01:35:51

Totally. Well, awesome, man. I guess we'll end it there. So thanks for listening to jam sessions. I hope you all had a good time.

Ryan: 01:36:03

We didn't capture any questions from anyone, but, I think people are going on. I'm actually having a weird issue with Ecamm right now. Okay.

Mubs: 01:36:13

Where it's

Ryan: 01:36:13

not showing how many people are watching, but I'm sure we had a few in here. And, Yeah.

Mubs: 01:36:18

That's that's great.

Ryan: 01:36:19

And I'll let you know when this is up, and we'll go from there.

Mubs: 01:36:24

Okay. Sounds good. Alright. Thanks a lot.

Ryan: 01:36:26

Alright. Have a great one. Later.