The big picture
What you're really doing
Every online community lives somewhere. Most live on platforms that you have no meaningful control over. Acorn changes that.
Acorn Dashboard
Acorn is your control room. It's where you, the steward, shape and manage the community: customize how it looks, create and curate feeds, invite and manage members, and set your moderation rules. This side is for the stewards as opposed to the community members.
Your community client
The community client is the branded app your members open and live in: reading the feeds, posting, following each other, being part of the place. You can style it so that it matches the look and feel of your community. It is available via browser with an app coming soon!
Your data
During sign up, you provide a domain. That domain points to a Personal Data Server (or PDS) where all of your community's data is stored. This is where Acorn's promise becomes real. Because your community controls the domain and the data is stored in such a way that it can be exported or backed up, you are always free to use another service to host your data and point your domain there. If you ever decide to leave Acorn, you can, and every member can leave with you, taking their data with them: their posts, their likes, their follows, and the relationships they've built.
That's the line between owning a community and renting one. On big tech, leaving means starting over from nothing. Acorn cannot keep you captive, which means we need to provide you with the best service possible to keep you here.
For what leaving actually takes, see Leaving Acorn.
Who touches what
Acorn
- Customize the look
- Create & curate feeds
- Invite & manage members
- Set moderation rules
Community client
- Read the feeds
- Post & follow
- Build relationships
- Belong to the place
both connect to ↓
Your community account
@ your.address · on your data server
feeds · lists · starter packs · members · posts
Where your community's things live
Feeds, lists, starter packs, your members, their posts: none of it lives in a private Acorn database. It all lives under your community's own account, on your data server. Acorn writes to that account on your behalf; the client reads from it for your members.
The open network underneath
The reason any of this is possible: Acorn is built on AT Protocol, an open network that, by design, makes leaving hosting providers while maintaining your relationships possible. Think of it like switching mobile phone carriers - you still get to keep your phone number and text everyone in your contacts, even if the network responsible for sending and receiving your messages has changed.