Could Open Source Render Facebook the Next AOL?

joabj writes "Now that Facebook has amassed more than 500 million users, a growing number of open source social networking developers are wondering if Facebook's photo sharing, status updates and other features wouldn't work better as Internet-wide standardized services. At the OSCON conference last week, the head of Identi.ca, an open source Twitter-like microblogging service, likened today's social networking services to the enormously proprietary online services of the early 1990s, like AOL or Prodigy. He suggested that just like SMTP and Sendmail standardized what were previously propriety e-mail services, so too could open source social networking stacks, like OStatus, render walled garden services like Facebook obsolete."

Comments

Re:Too late

[EvilBudMan]

You DID sign up for Facebook when you signed up for /.

Re:Render Facebook Obsolete?

[drinkypoo]

A lot of people are spending less time on their now than they did before

Yeah, they spend it in the past, it's called Nostalgia.