Slashdot Mirror
PeopleAggregator - An Open Source Social Network
prostoalex writes "When Orkut, LinkedIn, Friendster, Zaibatsu and Tribe.net just don't cut it, meet PeopleAggregator, an open-source, PHP-written, FOAF-based social network. There's the site and there's the source in case you decide to launch your own. I found out about PeopleAggregator reading this interview with Mark Canter on Read/Write Web today." I wish such sites would provide profile-conversion tools to encourage jumping ship from one to another.
Slashster is an Open Source PHP / Mysql based FOAF.
Congrats to PeopleAggregator for making Slashdot though. Dunno why my site didn't make front page... Heh.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
What ever happened to people meeting at the mall, bars, concerts, school, etc...??
I hate to admit it, but I imagine most of these social-network people are the nerdy type. Not that I'm saying that's bad, but most of us probably already have some nerdy friends. Why not get out and meet people in real life to havae a well-balanced friend social network?
Although the open-source project is cool.
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You mean "the wonders of bad programming techniques"
That has nothing to do with PHP.
That comes from an incompetent server admin.
Rule #1 for production PHP:
php.ini -> display_errors = Off
I've ever come in contact with can hardly read or write (some can't do either) and are not computer savvy and don't have computers. It seems to me that internet-based "society" will be as boring, and as socially stimulating as being a white anglosaxon protestant male and attending a white anglosaxon protestant male boarding school. ie. Lotsa self and group masturbation but no clue what the real planet is about.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The value in friendster is not the technology really -- witness the number of open-source ripoffs (there are several more besides this one, even -- slashster and others have been mentioned) and so on. It's the critical mass of millions of users they've attained.
You can have the slickest and fastest social networking site (or IM client, or p2p client, or "portal"...) in the world but without users (no, being open source is not a "feature", end users don't care), a killer feature/gimmick, or an insane marketing budget, it's useless.
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
So true. And whereas this was an obvious Slashdot Effect joke, there is some insight hidden behind the idea.
Obviously the concept of a social network site where the entire network has to register with one site is going to be doomed to failure in the end.
The first problem is that in order to build a social network big enough to fit everyone interested in being registered on the network, you need a cluster big enough to store every user on the Internet. By my guess, Orkut is the only one with access to this kind of cluster size, because it is hosted by Google.
The second problem is that as soon as you have two social network sites, you have a problem where someone wants to be on both sites. Then you add a third site and you have a problem where that person wants to be on three sites. How many social network sites are there now?
This is the same problem we already see with instant messaging, and is why the newer, more sophisticated IM systems such as Jabber allow the servers to intercommunicate. You can be on whatever server you want, and have contacts on your list who are on whatever server they want.
So here is my idea: distribute the social networks. A user joins the server they want, is allocated a user id which is user@domain.com, analogous to a Jabber ID, and they can add people to their network who exist on other servers.
Communities would work similarly with community@communities.domain.com, people join a community by registering their user ID on the server which hosts the community. For instance, the Slashdot community might be slashdot@communities.slashdot.org.
Now, if all these communities can export FOAF and RDF and agree on how to do any other kind of data manipulation, any program can easily merge cross-site data together to form larger networks if they need, and the work won't have to be done by a single server, it can be done on the client at the user's leisure.
And more importantly, the solution will actually scale.
Who's with me?
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
What ever happened to people meeting at the mall, bars, concerts, school, etc...??
... move them rhymthmically around the dance floor ... and they love it.
I'll second this.
I'm a nerdy, basically shy person myself.
Learning to dance saved my social life -- talking ballroom dance here, swing and waltz and foxtrot.
Women go for that stuff, trust me on this one. The fellow who knows how to waltz has got it made. You get to approach strangers, make conversation with them, lead them onto the dance floor, put your hands on them, your arms around them
Paradise!
-kgj
-kgj
It would be very cool of the Open Source network sites had a way of generating GUIDs for each user and the ability to link together.
Amazing magic tricks
Is Slashdot not an Open Source Social Network?
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I didn't read the article so sue me!
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
The idea behind social networks is that in theory, when everyone participates in a social network, you can easily find people through your connections.
But once you have so many networks (and the craze is only starting) then even in theory you can't have all your friends on the same network.
At least I know can't possibly be active on all of them.
I think what networks are aspiring to do is unachievable because their scope is so small. We already have our social network, it's called Internet and it is successful because there is only one Internet.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H.G. Wells, "The Outline of History"
It's not even a case of being a great dancer, or takeing someone home with you, it's just a case of doing something together, and having fun. And that's one of the first steps towards a social life.
... it's a joyous thing to do.
... but in my experience, people go dancing to have a good time, not to be "better" than other dancers. Even really good dancers! Some of the best dances I ever danced, my partner was a professional dancer, way more experienced than my amateur self ... and she made me feel like I had all the right moves. Go on, try it -- you'll like it.
... which means, the leader decides what to do, and the follower follows. Yes yes, the way a follower follows does influence how a leader leads ... but there's the mystery, my friend: there's no way to explain leading a priori ... you simply have to do it until you get it. And when you do, the world's your oyster, mate!
Good points.
You make friends, you have fun.
Sure, it can be part of a courtship ritual -- yes, you might get laid -- hell, you might even get married: I did! -- but all that stuff can seem very secondary, when the dance is swinging just right
-kgj
PS - Note to newbie dancers: stop worrying about it, nobody is staring and judging. It's not that you're invisible
PPS - THE BIG SECRET: learn to lead. (Talking ballroom dance here -- it's different in some other forms of dance.) It's not really about steps! It's about leading
-kgj
Unless virtual is prelude to physical.