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Creating a Better Facebook

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the empty-is-not-god dept.

Fed up with Facebook's insatiable need to continue to expose your personal information to ever widening circles, four NYU students have decided to build an open source, distributed competitor to the social networking behemoth. They've raised a few grand, but I imagine it will be harder to convince your mom to log in.

35 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. Social networks by sopssa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unfortunately Facebook's power is in that everyone uses it, and that is what they use to get new users too. Alternative projects are a humble goal, but especially with social networks you are quite much locked in to a single existing network just because everyone else you know uses it, and they in turn use it because you use it too.

    Interestingly creating a network like this means you have convince everyone to forget about Facebook and move to this platform. Even if it would become successful, once these four students have millions of people in their social network, they most likely will change it the same way that Facebook did. Remember that Facebook also was a hobby project made by students.

    1. Re:Social networks by ThePangolino · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The difference is that Diaspora is to be released under the aGPL license. Making it free software. Free as in both free speech and free beer probably.

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      My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
    2. Re:Social networks by epiphani · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Its been done before - facebook is the new myspace is the new yahoo chat is the new geocities.

      If they get their idea nailed down well, with a clean, easy user interface and a simple deployment mechanism and method for growth with privacy in tact, they may have a shot at it.

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    3. Re:Social networks by sopssa · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I think you missed the point. Even if it is aGPL, how do you convince everyone, your friends, sisters, parents, relatives and so on to use it? Social network isn't good if you can't use it for, well socializing. For that you need everyone else to use it too.

    4. Re:Social networks by Fnkmaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People said the same thing about Friendster, for certain values of "everyone" at the time that Facebook started up. They said that MySpace was toast and that Friendster was taking off. Then Friendster just let the whole thing rot and people moved en masse to Facebook. It turned out it wasn't really that hard to pick up and move your social networking to another site - because really, most of the historical content was either not that relevant or not that hard to move.

      Now, Facebook has tried hard to make that less true with features with tagging of images that build up their own database of historical information that is a bit harder to move over to another site.

      But the reality is that like a club or social venue, the crowds can pick up and move to a new place when the last place becomes passe. And when your grandmother and your parents are all on Facebook, it's safe to say it's less cool than it used to be. More people, but because that network is now *so* broad, from people you went to school with, people you work with, your family, your parents, your kids, etc. it's hard to share anything but the lowest common denominator of information on there, especially with their continual stream of privacy gaffes. Which makes it distinctly less useful to many of us - more like a public website, less like a way to share information with friends.

      People can pick up and move to other social networking venues. They aren't realistically going to abandon Facebook of course, but they can add a new social networking venue and just not update their Facebook profiles as much. That's what I did with Friendster. Then after a while, when you notice that nobody else is updating their Friendster profiles either, it stops being interesting going there. As a result, I haven't logged in for probably two years now, but it was a slow withdrawal process.

      Don't overestimate the strength of Facebook's network effect. It's there, but it's not all-powerful. Shit on your customers for a while and alternatives will pop up, it's inevitable. I have no idea who will "win" in the long run and I don't think Facebook is going away anytime soon, but there is certainly still room for new entrants.

      I think the key is that "openness" in and of itself isn't a feature. There needs to be more of a killer feature to get people to try something new. An open social networking framework is geek-cool, but if there are one or two things you can functionally accomplish there that Facebook can't or doesn't offer, that will get people to sample the new product and consider adopting it.

    5. Re:Social networks by sopssa · · Score: 0, Insightful

      And once they have grown, they will use the project to make money. Not only because they'd like it, but they would need to employ 1000+ employees, pay them every month and get the money for that. Actually this is exactly the same way how Facebook started.

      They will make humble promises now so that they actually have even some change in creating their social network, but once it becomes large social network it will work just the same way like every other social network out there.

    6. Re:Social networks by Aeros · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Then we will have to start up a *NEW* social networking site that promises privacy..

    7. Re:Social networks by epiphani · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You obviously didn't read the article. They're trying to build a decentralized, p2p-style facebook application.

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    8. Re:Social networks by Daengbo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I really don't get this. Everyone seems to be talking about Diaspora, which is still vaporware, when there are actual products that work right now. You can either go with the StatusNet + plugins route (implementing OStatus), or you can choose OneSocialWeb (XMPP+extensions). Both are Free software. OSW is Apache licensed, FFS: how much more could you ask for?

      Both of these products actually exist and work now. StatusNet is mature. OSW is still alpha, but fairly complete. It would be much better for everyone to hitch their wagons to one of these than to support some college students who may or may not know what they're doing and whose goal appears to be to "scrape Twitter and Flickr." That will never work. You have to be able to post status updates, pictures, videos, and blogs all within the same interface and have people be able to comment on or "Like" directly from that same interface. You can't expect people to leave Facebook for something cobbled together from pieces and lacking half the functionality.

      I hope I'm wrong about this project.

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      Put identity in the browser.
    9. Re:Social networks by AnnoyaMooseCowherd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They're trying to build a decentralized, p2p-style facebook application.

      The problem with facebook is not the centralised nature of the application, but the lack of control a user has over their data and what facebook intend to do with it

      In the case of a p2p, decentralised system it is surely even less clear as to where your profile data (embarrasing photos, etc) will actually be stored, who will have access to that data and how can you ensure you can delete it when you want to.

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    10. Re:Social networks by Jarik_Tentsu · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Dunno about Friendster, but MySpace was somewhat different to Facebook. Sure, it was insanely popular with younger crowds, but I think the biggest difference was everyone used fake names. So to add someone on MySpace, people would need the person's username - "Hotchick577228" or whatever. On Facebook the norm is to use your real name. This means that people you meet in real life, log onto Facebook and try to add you - almost expecting that you'll have an account. Or at least, it's certainly that way at uni.

      The power isn't just that your friends use it, and other people use it, and you can give your username to them. The power of Facebook is the way anyone can search for your real name, with the probability that you have an account, and add you. The only way that's going to change if Facebook dies suddenly due to an external factor (legal, goes bankrupt, etc) and everyone moves to another alternative.

      Most people don't care about the sharing of private information really. I mean, the primary reason I signed up was I was sick of not being invited to events (which seemed to be completely planned on facebook). Are you going to protest the way Facebook handles your data by boycotting it, and boycotting half the social events that may pop up over time?

      It's no longer about being in this cool, online environment with your friends (MySpace) and more about an expected form of communication and networking - like a mobile phone, email address, etc.

    11. Re:Social networks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Diaspora isn't scraping anything. Facebook isn't the only show in town that gets data from Flickr et al. Friendfeed and Windows Live both do it. Aggregating data from multiple web services -- including Facebook, because Facebook has user RSS feeds -- isn't hard. No reason why Diaspora or anyone else couldn't do it.

    12. Re:Social networks by FictionPimp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The same way everyone got sucked into myspace, then facebook, then twitter, etc. If it's good people will use it and they will invite their friends.

    13. Re:Social networks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Exactly. The entire perceived 'problem' with Facebook is that they are decentralizing your data to third party sites rather than keeping it locked up on your profile page. So the solution is to further decentralize?

      People who can't manage their facebook privacy settings are certainly not going to be able to manage profile replication and multiple privacy policies. Oh, but they can audit the source code :rolleyes:.

    14. Re:Social networks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Yes, but people didn't have such a place yet at the time. It will be more difficult now that Facebook is a de facto gathering place.

    15. Re:Social networks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      FFS: how much more could you ask for?

      marketing buzz.

    16. Re:Social networks by adamofgreyskull · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Probably trolling, but there are social networks, like Faceparty, MySpace, LiveJournal and Friendster that pre-date Facebook. Apart from Faceparty, which was a fairly UK specific site, at some point those were all the place to be. This is all very recent history, ~10 years..I'd expect ignorance like this from some 13 year old on Facebook, but on /.? There was a time when a lot of people would have scoffed at something that could usurp MySpace. Can anything beat Facebook?

      There's a little boy and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse... and everybody in the village says, "How wonderful. The boy got a horse" And the Zen master says, "We'll see." Two years later, the boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, "How terrible." And the Zen master says, "We'll see." Then, a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight... except the boy can't cause his legs all messed up. and everybody in the village says, "How wonderful."

    17. Re:Social networks by Da_Biz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm going to replace a few words from the OP, using a little story from 1977:

      Unfortunately IBM's power is in that everyone uses it, and that is what Big Blue uses to get new users too. Personal computers are a humble goal, but especially with centralized computing you are quite much locked in to a single computing architecture just because everyone else you know uses it, and they in turn use it because you use it too.

      Interestingly creating personal computing means you have convince everyone to forget about IBM and move to this platform. Even if it would become successful, once these Two Steves have millions of end users, they most likely will change it the same way that IBM did. Remember that transistors also was a hobby project made by somebody.

    18. Re:Social networks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Given that Twitter & Flickr both have RSS feeds *and* an API, I'm sure they're being idiomatic in their use of "scrape". There is no Earthly reason any app would need to scrape Twitter. Or Flickr.

    19. Re:Social networks by Nerdfest · · Score: 2, Insightful

      P2P, decentralized, or managed by FaceBook, as soon as anyone, including your "friends" has a copy of your data, you've lost control of it, and there is really no way to regain it.

    20. Re:Social networks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is unfortunately exactly correct.

      I boycotted Facebook, until I realized it was negatively effecting my social life. Then I created an account with a fake name. It helped, but I was still getting excluded because few people knew my fake name. A lot of people seem to friend people their friends are already friends with after they meet them in some social context. That would never happen to me because they didn't see my actual name on their friends friend list.

      I finally gave in and created a Facebook account with my real name (and no other personal info). Within a week I was plugged in to all my friends networks of friends. I get invited to events all the time now, friends who never emailed will write on my Facebook wall, I am no longer "out of sight, out of mind". I meet new people and we get to know each other via Facebook updates, we get invited to the same events because of mutual friends, we become friends. It's had a noticeably positive effect on my social life.

      Basically, what it comes down to is that Facebook has leverage over your social life now. It's ingrained itself into our culture in a way that no previous social networking website has. With MySpace you didn't have to be a member if you wanted to get invited to the bar with your friends. With Facebook you have to be a member or else you will become unintentionally ostracized.

    21. Re:Social networks by drooling-dog · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Are you going to protest the way Facebook handles your data by boycotting it, and boycotting half the social events that may pop up over time?

      The beauty (tragedy?) of FB and sites like it is that they've convinced us to turn over the management of our social lives and public identities to a private business, in exchange for... well, we're not quite sure what, yet. In the beginning it's a convenience, but then you find you can't have friends at all without them.

      And these people who won't invite you to their "events" if they have to shoot you an email... You call them "friends"?

    22. Re:Social networks by rudy_wayne · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Then again, MySpace did have a userbase comparable to Facebook. And yet it seems to have gone from being the the place to be to "are you still on myspace?" in a very short space of time. If social networks function in the same way as (say) eBay, then you'd be right. In that case the size of the user base is itself a resource that draws in more users. But suppose there's a different dynamic at work. Suppose it functions like a fashion accessory. Then users could prove a lot more fickle that you'd expect.

      Social networking is very much a fad, like a "fashion accessory".

      Geocities --> Yahoo --> Live Journal --> My Space

      At one time, each one of these was very popular. It was "the place to be". Then the popularity died out as people moved on to the "the next big thing". Facebook is currently "the place to be" but the last 10 years suggests that it won't last.

    23. Re:Social networks by AnnoyaMooseCowherd · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You really need to read the article.

      I did

      You'll host your data on your server, so there'll be no p2p stuff going on on dynamic IPs. It's p2p between servers, not in the same way bittorrent works.

      Ah, so the millions of people who currently use facebook will get themselves a server with a static ip address and set up and maintain their own copy of the new system? ...nope, can't see any major problems there.

      This is the real problem they need to solve - how non-techies can get set up. But presumably you'll be able to have 3rd parties providing hosting like with wordpress.

      Oh right, so lots of third parties will host the user's data? Doesn't this bring us back to the point I made regarding who knows who those third parties are and who has access to the user data they now control instead of facebook?

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    24. Re:Social networks by mwvdlee · · Score: 1, Insightful

      facebook = face + book, two words every 4 year old knows.

      diaspora = di + a + spo + ra??? what? something you need to "crack a damn dictionary" for?

      It's not a fine name. Call it something simple like "mylife" or "aboutme" or whatever. Something a first-grader knows how to spell upon hearing it.

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      Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    25. Re:Social networks by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      All are one or two syllable words that are easily phonetically spelled.

      goo gle
      ya hoo
      bing

      Not just that they're easy to remember if you see it once.

      Right off the bat, without the dictionary, I'm not sure if it's Dee-a or Die-a. Then depending on accent it could be -spur-a or -spore-a. FaceBook (although it did used to be myfacebook), myspace, everything is freaking easy to remember, type and say. Imagine yelling 'diaspora' over a crowded bar.

    26. Re:Social networks by Eli+Gottlieb · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Am I actually the only person who thinks that the name "Diaspora" sucks because it means "large-scale exile from one's homeland"?

  2. While I admire their goals... by pedantic+bore · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ... after the first few million users, it'll be awfully hard to resist the siren call of megalomania.

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    Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
    1. Re:While I admire their goals... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It will be decentralized. If engineered correctly, they will be incapable of doing what Facebook has done.

      Even if engineered poorly, they will be incapable of doing what Facebook has done (but the poor engineering will either cause it to fail or kill the privacy they're looking for.) The point is, no one will own it.

  3. Fundraise call is fundraise call by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    These guys just want extra cash for the project, without giving out a clear view about how the platform will work or run?

    A facebook-clone in 3-4 months? Very unlikely.

  4. The vast majority by Adustust · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pay no attention to the amount of data they let loose upon their facebook pages. Nor do they care, as long as they can access their online farms. They're already giving out their credit card numbers to buy fuel for their tractors.

  5. X has been doing it for years! by DeanLearner · · Score: 3, Insightful

    First everyone hosted their own site themselves (I believe this was the case? I didn't really do that part)
    Then everyone had sites hosted elsewhere (geocities)
    Then everyone had a page on a single site (facebook)
    Soon everyone will have their own facebook (diaspora)
    And then everyone will have their own... everything on their own server... kinda like Unite by... Opera! Always two steps ahead

  6. Rebuttal of the "RFTA, it's distributed" responses by Rogerborg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Please apply 5 seconds' thought before getting all distributed up in my hizzizzy.

    For this service to be popular, Real People will have to use it, not just you, me and him over there.

    For Real People to use it, it will need to Just Work, First Time.

    To Just Work, First Time, it needs to rely on having a reliable server/seeder/aggregator/gateway present 100% of the time. Let's call it a metaserver, although it's just semantics. There needs to be one place where every peer goes to find out where other peers are.

    Who's going to run that default metaserver? Well, duh. The authors will run it.

    When - not if, when - they go Dark Side and release a client that injects ads or collates data, who's going to switch to a fork clients and a different metaserver and protocol version? That's right: you, and me, and him over there. Not Real People.

    If this takes off, then 99% of users will treat it exactly as they do Facebook, as a service that can (and will, eventually) do pretty much what it wants to them. Its success is predicated on being used by Real People, not you, me and him over there.

    You may now commence your explanations of why this time, it will be different, and Real People will care about the things that you, me and him over there care about. I apologise for the interruption.

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    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  7. Re:The key is in the protocol. by Rhaban · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Almost, except for the the fact that not at all.

  8. Freedom in the Cloud by Statecraftsman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    To me, software freedom is being able to choose and customize the software I use without limit. With applications like Facebook, I cannot of course do any more customizing than the Facebook allows me to. The FSF tried to address this problem with the AGPL and many web applications have rightfully chosen it as a way to give users freedom online. Unfortunately there's a rather big part of the equation that the AGPL and the four traditional freedoms miss. It's that our data is often stuck inside even AGPLd applications. If we want to have true freedom online we need The Freedom to Migrate and it seems Diaspora is trying to provide.