I actually think this is fair and I’ve been talking pretty openly lately that we failed to identify a solid market for Beaker. This is why we’ve turned our focus lately to other tools in the ecosystem and been looking more closely for a PMF for the p2p tech. Happy to share more on HN but I’ve talked a lot about it on my YouTube channel already

While it's fair, I think the world is a better place for having projects like Beaker. It's important because despite not having a business case, it's a groundbreaking exploration of what technology can be and a platform for really free experimentation.

I've spent several hundred hours just experimenting within it and testing out ideas or refining things that were not previously tractable. In many cases, simply having beaker with its unique possibilities and constraints as a playground has helped inspire new ideas.

Unfortunately that doesn't automatically translate to anyone getting paid, or widespread adoption, or many other things people use to measure value. But many of the most important things aren't the ones we measure or celebrate.

Looking forward to checking out your videos pfrazee.

While your review makes sense, it feels biased towards the viewpoint that Beaker, and the underlying hyper protocol, are commercial products in search of a market. I don't believe it is the case, the most sensible metric is not always the number of users.

Here's an answer to your question (what is one usecase that Beaker does that existing solutions can't) : Beaker is the easiest way to publish content without forfeiting control. No account to create, no giving away my data, no server to install and sleepless nights to maintain it, no need to remain always up and running for my content to be accessible. The few solutions that exist in this space still rely on some form of hackish UI, if they even have one. With Beaker all you have to do is launch it and use the microblogging app.

On thr contrary, Beaker may not be a product in the nkw usual meaning but that's because it is not an honest comparison: Beaker is a platform to help build products easily, as can be seen by the microblogging "example"

Nothing in my post assumes that Beaker is a "commercial" product, nor that it's in search of any market that's necessarily measured in dollars.

My claim is that projects like Beaker neglect to ensure that any handful of 1-100 people will ever have any desire to use it in their life over their next-best available alternatives, even for free.

When you point out that Beaker is a platform, that doesn't change my claim, it just makes my claim imply that no developer will have a desire to build on it.

Honestly, if there was a reliable public gateway between Hyper and HTTP, Beaker would probably be the easiest possible platform for blogging, with its instant Markdown editing & publishing. Maybe with hashbase as the freemium "hosting provider". Some extra development could then make it a WYSIWYG blogging tool (so even easier) or a photo gallery maker. I would instantly recommend such a gallery tool to all my friends and family. If creating a free account on hashbase was integrated in the gui and easy enough.