Farcaster

Will we see feed-algorithms-as-a-service (FAAAS) someday? Whereby any FC client allows the user to select their preferred algo from a list of open-source options published in a standard format to GitHub.

Various algos would offer followers only, followers + their followers, language-specific, zero-censorship, OGs, etc

I call this idea the "feed marketplace" as opposed to "feed-as-a-service" which is what @openrank and others are doing. 

The challenge building a "choose your algorithm" is that the most interesting feeds are no longer just "algorithms" or fancy SQL queries.

Technowatermelon. Elder Millenial. Building Farcaster. 

nf.td/varun

Feeds are performance sensitive, and you cant just run a SQL query when someone is scrolling. 

Ideally, you have a very long cached feed for your users that can be quickly delivered on demand. This is computed and stored in a very fast in-memory datastore like Redis.

It would be hard for Warpcast to fetch and service a feed over an API. 

A more interesting approach is to get the algorithm and run it inside Warpcast's infrastructure. We tell you what data is available, you write a binary that can ingest data and produce a feed for a given user.

This is similar to what Numerai does for their hedge fund model. 

The only problem is that this stuff takes a long time to build and get right, so unfortunately not on the near term roadmap 🥲

Finding interesting content also relies on a lot of dervied data. 

Warpcast will take the number of times you've interacted with someone and divide it by the frequency with which they cast. This is "affinity" and it helps prioritize casts in your feed. 

Such metrics are difficult to calculate in real time.