A Call For an Open, Distributed Alternative To Facebook

qwerty8ytrewq writes "Ryan Singel, writing for Wired, claims that Facebook has gone rogue: 'Facebook used to be a place to share photos and thoughts with friends and family and maybe play a few stupid games that let you pretend you were a mafia don or a homesteader. It became a very useful way to connect with your friends, long-lost friends and family members. ... And Facebook realized it owned the network. Then Facebook decided to turn "your" profile page into your identity online — figuring, rightly, that there’s money and power in being the place where people define themselves. But to do that, the folks at Facebook had to make sure that the information you give it was public.' Singel goes on to call for an open, distributed alternative. 'Facebook’s basic functions can be turned into protocols, and a whole set of interoperating software and services can flourish. Think of being able to buy your own domain name and use simple software such as Posterous to build a profile page in the style of your liking.' Can Slashdotters predict where social networking is going? And how?" Relatedly, jamie points out a graphical representation of how Facebook's privacy settings have changed over the last five years.

Comments

And?

[dniq]

Maybe I'm an idiot, but isn't the whole point of being SOCIAL in sharing info with others? I mean, it wouldn't be a "social" site if it just locked all information up. If you don't want others to learn things about you you don't want them to learn - don't post them online.

Duh!

how does an open alternative break even?

[Harlan879]

I don't understand how this could possibly work. Web posting and bandwidth is not free. The only reason FB is is because of its advertising and other tie-ins, none of which would work well if they weren't targeted. No web site could get substantial portions of the world's population on board if they had to charge money to cover development and server costs. If you can come up with a non-evil social networking business model that allows your platform to attract and support hundreds of millions of simultaneous users, dominate the single largest sector of the Internet, and the resulting costs, with 99.99% uptime, you're not just a genius, you're a god.