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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.
Is it just me, or does the OSS communitity have more trouble naming things the other industries? Seriously. -5 troll anyway.
Steal This Book? No, steal this business!
And programmers wonder why they're unemployed.
Listen, this is great. I mean, I like receiving a gift as much as the next guy, but...
I always wonder what people are thinking when they start a business like this and then immediately open source the code and make it publicly available so that anyone and everyone can immediately compete.
Oh, wait. They're going to make their money on support. Or is it custom applications?
And just how do you explain this to the VC? How do you word this on the prospectus?
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
If you're a cubicle rat, then yeah, I guess the whole FOAF thing seems a little too much like high school dating logistics. But if you translate introductions into opportunities and know how to write a compelling message, then some of these social networks are godsends.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
At least with an open-source community, we will not have our socieities social structures dictated by large corporations. Face it, using the internet as our primary means of communicating is inevitable. We should at least try to keep control of our communication rather than pass control over to some corporation who treats their bottom line as more important than society as a whole.
What ever happened to people meeting at the mall, bars, concerts, school, etc
Not everybody knows how to drive an automobile. Not everybody drinks alcohol. Not everybody can afford tickets to those few live performances offered at venues friendly to those who either by choice or by statute do not drink alcohol. Some students ride a bus to and from school and thus do not have time to meet beforehand or afterwards.
In addition, electronic FOAF systems are much cheaper than inter-city bus fare or airplane fare for meeting friends who have interests that aren't all that common in smaller cities of 50,000 or so.
I've been carrying out an experiment over the past few months to get in touch with a famous author/mathematician. He's written on the subject and it just absolutely fascinates me. The idea is to send a few letters to friends and see how quickly it can reach the destination through the hops. Theoretically you could get to the author with just six or seven hops. I sent a few letters to some associates but these got only to the third or fourth level before dying out. I'm going to increase the initial broadcast with a different, more academic oriented group this time. Software like the link shows (well, what I got before the ./ing) is almost perfect to track the results.
On a related note, a book called "Nexus" by M. Buchanan discusses social and other networks. Decent treatment, but unfortunately no equations or numbers.
I need Charlenes here people. Claires. Colettes. Tortured twentysomething souls who lean forward in sleazy web cam shots just to show a little cleavage.
I think you're looking for Orkut.
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Create your wireless web site
Self/self-group(the group is the self) masturbation for sure. Everyone just ambivalently "holds" everyone else in the group up: everything is always "postive" and weak. It's like the LiveJournal hordes, and if someone posts something that upsets their soft, narrow world-view they delete it immeadiately instead of trying to learn something. This emerging internet society, instead of being the kaleidoscopic meeting of hundreds of cultures as foretold, is just a banal droning of entertainment and pointless discussion.
FOAF documents are, in essence, machine-readable home pages.
So, when you're buying antique vases, buy ones with fish. They're worth the most.
All of the friends and acquaintances I know who use social networking are NOT geeky (but then i have few geeky friends, all of whom don't use social networking). All of the people I know using these sites are totally not geeky and are mostly somewhat trendy if a bit on the counter culture side of it believe it or not. I'm 19 however, and people of my age are significantly more tech savy. Perhaps as you get into older people technophobia creeps in.
Just go on friendster or myspace sometime and you'll notice the fact that most people there are not geeky at all, and that there's probably an even mix of boys and girls.
Photos.
I can only hope that we, the net citizens, will eventually push back on these mega sites to get some standards produced.
Imagine if each ISP ran a standards-compliant IM server for its users. No more "Do you use Yahoo or MSN? No, oh well, we can't chat." Instead, each IM server vendor would compete to have ISPs install their server but work with all other vendors' products instead of segregating users into disparate networks.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
Social networks are only as useful as your own perceptions. While not a proponent myself, I've seen valid declarations for and against them (in general), open or closed (to the public), etc. It seems that those that look to them for substitutions for an actual social life are typically disappointed since male to female ratios are nominal at best. On the other hand those that look to these networks as opportunities to meet people (or keep in contact with people) from varied backgrounds and locations who share interests or needs (programming help, contractors, games, etc.) generally have much better luck than say randomly talking to someone in a bar.
If these networks were to try and cater to the lonely hearts out there, they would be no better than dating services, except they would likely prove to be disappointing in that regard, little better than just jumping into any of the myriad chat rooms out there. Perhaps this is validating invitation only networks (ala Orkut), who's to say?
A drawback to social networks is end user propagation and activity. Maintaining, checking, browsing and so on seems, to me at least, like a time consuming activity. One which I lack the desire and the time to follow. I tend to be a bit of a hermit, often times putting my IMs as away just to concentrate on the task at hand while I sit at my computer. I suppose when the "killer" social network comes along, I'll sign up and stay, until then they remain little more than academic interests in a field that is reaching oversaturation and little innovation.
The success of a social networking tool depends on the people that use it - it doesn't depend on whether it is open source or not... If you are wanting to meet different beautiful people I suggest you stay away from a social network where the only people who are going to join are your existing group of friends!!
Face it, using the internet as our primary means of communicating is inevitable.
Please tell me where I can get off whatever train you're riding on, because I don't think your world is or will be a very nice place to live in.
75% of the communications I have with people are still good old fashioned face-to-face conversations, and I would venture a guess that for most people the number is not much different. For most people the internet is replacing the ways we would communicate over long distances (phone call, snail mail), but it's not, nor do I think it ever will be, a suitable replacement for real physical interactions. And if I am somehow proven wrong, please shoot me before it happens.
I agree with everything else you said. Developers have already decimated our town squares, traditional shopping districts, and other public spaces and replaced them with malls and other quasi-public areas, where the only speech and the only activities allowed are the ones they deem to be "appropriate". Why should we let them fully enclose our virtual commons as well?
fuck you.
Friendster's got 'em beat. Their technology is so good, they don't need a slashdotting to go under.
A few weeks back they implemented an emergency "how many degrees of separation do I want people to see" feature, and the default was pretty low. They had to do it because their MySQL database was choking for weeks to the point that you could log in, but any further activity would hang until the applet returned a connection-timed-out error.
Please help metamoderate.
Here are a few reasons:
Note that meeting people through the internet doesn't preclude following up by meeting them in real life. Just because you talk to people on the phone, that doesn't mean you never see them face to face.
Find free books.
Women go for that stuff, trust me on this one. I can validate this comment. We do love men who know how to dance, and it doesn't have to be a trendy hip-hop or house style. You can waltz, tango, or practically anything else because it shows you have a cultural side.
But if you really want to earn points:
1. Know something about wine. All men. ALL MEN should know about wine. At least understand the types of wine and how to evaluate a wine's flavor/
2. Ditch the false bravado. Machismo is attractive initially, but it quickly wears.
3. Take an interest in your date. Don't let her walk all over you, but show her you appreciate the time you're spending with her.
4. Be clean. Shave. Use cologne sparingly. Make sure you shoes and your belt match.
5. Be passionate about something. Have a social cause. Love poetry or literature.
6. Open doors for ladies, but don't order our dinners without our permission.
7. It's okay to be a geek. Geeks are sexy. They think about things, but don't brag or act superior because you know more about a subject than your date. Let her know that your geekness includes aspirations.
8. Pay attention to our non-verbal signals. Women average about 150 non-verbal signals every minute.
9. Don't be late, but be forgiving if we are.
10. Above all else, do not end the date with a heart-felt, "Gawd, I'd like to finger you" while escorting your date to her door.
And as a bonus for you college guys: don't do her homework for her, do offer to help tutor her if you'd like to help. And when you take her out on a date, don't take her to see a movie. 2 hours of silence in a theater isn't going to help her get to know you. Take her to dinner - it doesn't have to be a fancy restaurant, but it should be better than a fast food restaurant. If all you can afford is a corner dive, well, tell her. And tell her that you would (and will someday) take her to someplace much better. At least she'll know you're not just cheap, but that you are hoping for future dates. If she is worth her weight in RAM, she'll appreciate the honesty and be understanding without being judgemental. Go for a walk around town. Sit at an outside cafe and have coffee or ice cream. Go browsing through a department store 45 minutes before it closes. Buy her flowers. These are all good things.
The most meaningful communication generally happens face-to-face, and this is unlikely to change without some seriously dystopic biotech. However, in terms of the time I spend communicating, much of it isn't face to face, given that I sit in front of a PC all day. Rather, MSN and weblogs commenting forms a large chunk of my daily "chit chat".
content management for designers
All these social networks would be much more powerful if they could share data using a system like the Mailbox Reputation Network