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

Too late

[sopssa]

They're too late to join the game. The problem is that Facebook already has everyone you know, so everyone joins it because everyone else already is there. Some random mumblings about walled gardens and open source won't make normal people switch over.

Difference with AOL (never even heard about Prodigy) versus email is that a lot of people used the standard email. I think AOL was mostly just US-centric too, I don't know anyone who would had actually used it. This was also time when internet was mostly used by geeks who understood it and valued open standards.

Someone in these kind of stories always suggests that you set up your own Facebook-like service or just a website. That's just thinking too much of yourself - why would people visit your site just to see your stuff? Facebook is great because it lets me easily see them from all the people, even if I don't keep in touch with them so much.

Also, how do you handle things like Facebook games and cooperation with people in them? Oh, you say Facebook games are stupid and people shouldn't play them. Arrogant attitudes like that don't really help either, because people obviously like the games. We aren't the ones to tell other people what they should or shouldn't like.

In Facebook's case one big service works a lot better than thousand small ones. How would you even search for people, places, events and so on with them? It would go back to the @something.com convention which defeats the whole purpose.

When I was recently visiting a different country I could easily search for the one guy I knew. From his connections I found everyone else I had met and also saw a lot of interesting events and businesses I wouldn't had otherwise known about. You can't really use a search engine for something you don't know about. This was the first time I actually understood how great service Facebook is - you just have to use it correctly.

Re:Too late

[Spad]

I will not sign up for a Facebook account unless something serious changes with regards to privacy and security. However, I *would* sign up for a service that allowed communication with Facebook users, so that I can more easily keep in touch with people, without exposing myself to all the Facebook crap that I want to avoid.

Such a service would provide a gateway through which people could move away from Facebook if they don't like it without having to deal with the problem of losing access to all their friends and profiles.

Re:Too late

[eldavojohn]

They're too late to join the game. The problem is that Facebook already has everyone you know, so everyone joins it because everyone else already is there. Some random mumblings about walled gardens and open source won't make normal people switch over.

Well let's travel backward in time to when Facebook was starting. Now let's rephrase your statement:

They're too late to join the game. The problem is that MySpace already has everyone you know, so everyone joins it because everyone else already is there. Some random mumblings about really bad user design and spam won't make normal people switch over and all the bands will stay on MySpace since Facebook doesn't host music.

Now if we go a little further back to when MySpace was starting:

They're too late to join the game. The problem is that Friendster already has everyone you know, so everyone joins it because everyone else already is there. Some random mumblings about ... about ... what was wrong with Friendster again?

Obviously the barrier you speak of has been broken down and it can be broken down again. You just have to understand your users better than Facebook does. And given the user feedback wouldn't you say that's possible to do?

I would counter that the real big dealbreaker would be ability to import all pictures and posts from Facebook into the new system. So you would have the user run an app from their local machine that needs their username and password and then scrapes everything off of Facebook while a loading bar processes it and then loads it into the new system. Option at the end to delete the Facebook account and maybe send an e-mail to Facebook telling them that if they don't permanently remove your user data from all their servers, you will get litigious. Of course, that's just a fantasy of mine ...

Re:Too late

[mdwh2]

In Facebook's case one big service works a lot better than thousand small ones. How would you even search for people, places, events and so on with them? It would go back to the @something.com convention which defeats the whole purpose.

I'm not sure what the problem with that is. I much prefer the current situation with email, where we have thousands of email services (they don't have to be "small", btw - e..g, GMail), but I can email someone on another service.

Compare with Facebook, where you can only message or read someone's status etc, if you join. And if they're on some other blog/networking site, you can't easily communicate.

As for searching, well, I think we've managed to do reasonably well at being able to search information on the Internet on multiple sites...

A similar issue applies to instant messaging - there is Jabber at least.

There have been some attempts to interoperate and promote open common standards - things like OpenID, RSS, FOAF. Unfortunately part of the problem is that it's a much harder problem to crack (e.g., how do you deal with things like privacy settings, so that a status/blog entry is only visible to certain people?)

Facebook is great because it lets me easily see them from all the people, even if I don't keep in touch with them so much.

Yes indeed - but how well does it work when you're updating on Facebook, someone else is on Twitter, and another person is on LiveJournal? RSS helps in this regard.

Re:Too late

[DarkSarin]

Problem is that most services (currently) that can communicate with FB users requires that you have a FB account--so that it knows WHICH FB users to communicate with.

Re:Too late

[PerfectionLost]

Try trillian. They have a facebook plugin.

Re:Too late

[PerfectionLost]

Unfortunately part of the Terms of Service of the Facebook API prevents storage of data received through the API on a remote source.

Re:Too late

[poetmatt]

uh, facebook had intertia. note the word. should a new site start grabbing people's interest and show that they aren't abusive of people's rights like facebook, facebook will be dropped as quickly as myspace was/is.

Re:Too late

[DJRumpy]

I also had to laugh a few of the choice comments in there.

(never even heard about Prodigy)

Someone in these kind of stories always suggests that you set up your own Facebook-like service or just a website. That's just thinking too much of yourself - why would people visit your site just to see your stuff?

You'd be surprised at how many people just surfed to find other people's 'home pages' on the net. I remember when I downloaded my first browser, I sat there for hours just trying random URL's to see what was out there, and trolling user home directories for HTML, Pics, etc. People have an unending curiosity about other people. Social sites like Facebook are the ultimate peeping tom sites. You get to peek into random people's lives and that seems to satisfy some weird internal need that humans have. Waaay back in the day, personal web sites were the epitome of lame, with pictures of their cats, dogs, houses, and then it just went down from there, but it let people put there stamp on a new electronic frontier of sorts. It didn't do much except to say "here I am", and it was enough.

The draw of these sites is undeniable. If they should standardize on the protocols, the existing sites would adapt, and possibly new sites would pop up. As with all things social, fads come and go, people will move from site to site, and life goes on. Even Facebook will eventually become the next AOL, even if these standards never materialize. There will always be a new site to replace it that's shiny in some weird way.

Re:Too late

[tomhudson]

Wo says they'd have to visit your site? All your site has to do is serve out the data to any app or plugin that they want to run. You're thinking too 1990 here.

And btw, open source won't turn facebook into another aol - facebook is doing that all by itself.

Re:Too late

[ledow]

As does pidgin - because Facebook now supports open standards:

http://www.facebook.com/sitetour/chat.php

Re:Too late

[jridley]

Totally doesn't hold up. Back when MySpace was big, I don't think I knew more than 2 or 3 people with MySpace pages. It was pretty much exclusively a teen/college hangout.

These days the only people that I know who do NOT have Facebook pages are people without internet connections at all (lots of my family) and people who are security curmudgeons (like me). Even people who barely get on the internet use Facebook. Lots of people only even have an internet connection so that they CAN use Facebook.

Re:Too late

[Lumpy]

AOl and Prodigy are the mee-too latecomers to the party as well. Compuserve was the king of them all and could not be de-throned...

Until Prodigy came along with their clever GUI and lower rates...

Then AOL ate prodigy's lunch with an even better dumbed down GUI and clicky interface as well as even lower rates..

Then the internet happened, delivering more content. People could get even lower rates and avoid the busy phone line..

Then broadband happened, this event ate AOL's lunch hard.

Then friendster, Myspace, Facebook, etc.... If you offer something better that people like they will leave. Facebook is a tower of cards waiting to topple just like all the rest of them were.

Re:Too late

[zr-rifle]

You can communicate with your friends without exposing your personal information to Facebook:

1. Register an account with a false name and leave it devoid of any personal content.
2. Add your friends telling them it's you, without revealing your complete name
3. Download the Pidgin IM (gratis & libre) client and use it to message your friends
4. Delete all your browser cookies relative to Facebook
5. ???
6. PROFIT!!!

Just don't be too revealing about yourself in your instant messages :)

Re:Too late

[hedwards]

Sigh, AOL if it existed now would be superior to AOL back then as well. It's a fair comparison, it's a walled garden with a huge share of the market. Back when AOL was huge, there wasn't much internet to speak of, and due to it's huge slice of the market it was tough to compete with since few people really knew how to use the internet.

Re:Too late

[imakemusic]

I assume you're talking about Facebook instant messaging. Facebook have since changed their chat to use XMPP which means that most multi-protocol messengers can use Facebook chat. You still need to have a facebook account to use it though, so it doesn't really help Spad. I guess you could register an account and not enter any details...

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither Trillian nor Pidgin allow one to communicate with Facebook users without becoming a Facebook user oneself.

Re:Too late

[commodore64_love]

You seem to have a lot of hatred for AOL, but I remember when it was called Quantum Link (see link) and offered in the mid-80s a web type interface before the web existed. It also provided the earliest Online Sims games (called Club Caribe). And although I preferred to use FIDOnet and Usenet, AOL did have decent forums for asking questions. Those posts were answered by a national audience, which was a huge step-up from the local BBSes.

My memories of AOL are generally positive, and I still use them today. $7/month is a hard-to-beat deal for net access.

http://www.qlinklives.org/

Re:Too late

[Archangel Michael]

The problem with Facebook, is the very thing that makes it work. People like you want walled garden for your life, when in reality, there is no such thing.

You want privacy, but on the other hand, you want people to know how to find you, which means breaching privacy.

I haven't gained any friends since joining FB, and I'm not losing any friends if I leave FB. I don't count new people "friends" and online people are not friends until we've become involved IRL.

Lastly, I don't put anything on FB that I don't want the whole world knowing. Most of the "Privacy" crap people complain about is laziness and stupidity. Most of the information on FB about me can be found elsewhere by Googling me. And it isn't that much.

Re:Too late

[snowraver1]

Also, if you would like to communicate with your friends, you can also:

1. Call them (yes on the telephone).
2. Visit them.
3. Use one of dozens of Instant Messanger applications including: SMS, MS Messenger, and Blackberry Messenger.

Re:Too late

[BrokenHalo]

You can communicate with your friends without exposing your personal information to Facebook:

Yep. I don't have a Facebook account, primarily because I don't care for the way it seems to swallow up the lives of its users. However, I and most of my friends use Skype, which works elegantly as a combination of IM and VOIP. Skype makes it clear when one is or is not available to be contacted, so no-one has to get huffy about whether or not you've seen such-and-such a Facebook message or email.

I'm not about to apologise for such an old-school approach - but it does help me define clearly how much I'm ready to let the internet intrude in my life..

Re:Too late

[0100010001010011]

Definitely not too late.

My Parents are now on facebook. As are all of their friends, which is great for them and reconnecting (VS something like classmates.com). However when they let anyone register it turned it into Facebook's own Eternal September. "Likes" and "Groups" are thankfully replacing the stupid forwards that people send out.

I'd say 1/4 of LameBook and FailBook posts are because you friended a parent and they commented on stuff. The groups are nice, but a pain to setup as are controls of who can see what. I want an entire sandbox (without the pain of having to create an entire separate account).

You bet your ass I'm going to be looking for the next best thing, as are any college students that would have fit the original Facebook demographic. My facebook page is going to stagnate as I move on just like my MySpace page did when I moved to FaceBook as did my Geocities page when I moved to MySpace.

Re:Too late

[painandgreed]

Also, if you would like to communicate with your friends, you can also:

1. Call them (yes on the telephone).

Let's see, time to call all my 254 friends to tell them the URL where the photos of my latest vacation are: Somewhere around 21 hours if I don't stop to talk about anything, eat, or go to the bathroom. Even if I limit to the friends that are local because I'm inviting them to BBQ this weekend, it's still around 10 hours.

2. Visit them.

Multiply the above times by 6 for local friends or turn hours into days for non-local friends.

3. Use one of dozens of Instant Messanger applications including: SMS, MS Messenger, and Blackberry Messenger.

Less people use those than use Facebook and you'd have to use multiple methods and keep track of which methods were used to contact which people.

Face it, your solutions are trivial and irrational. We already used those methods and still have them to use. If it was easier, quicker, or of better quality to use those methods, Facebook and other social networking services, or even the internet never would have become widely used. It's like telling people to go back to reading magazines and dead tree newspapers rather than use the internet. Next you'll be telling people that if they want to visit friends or family, they can use a horse and buggy instead of a car. The simple matter of fact is that Facebook has features that work better than other methods and has reached critical mass where it can be considered a standard. For making announcements, posting photos, or scheduling events, there's not much else that does it as well with as many people using it. It is also one of those "dozens of Instant Messanger applications" that you were talking about.

Re:Too late

[snowraver1]

I said communicate with friends, not "friends". I doubt that more than 10% of those 254 "friends" give a shit about your last vacation, and maybe 25% of that 10% give a shit about your BBQ.

Re:Too late

[vux984]

Even at 10%, assuming I knew which ones they were, phone calls would take a couple of hours and visiting probably a couple of days if kept to local friends.

God forbid you spend a couple hours or days talking with and/or visiting friends.

You seem to rely on facebook to maintain stronger friendships, while offloading and distancing yourself from the actual interaction that stronger friendships result in.

Re:Too late

[skiman1979]

Let's see, time to call my 254 friends...

I guess the term 'friend' is being used somewhat lightly.

Re:Too late

[FlyMysticalDJ]

I said communicate with friends, not "friends". I doubt that more than 10% of those 254 "friends" give a shit about your last vacation, and maybe 25% of that 10% give a shit about your BBQ.

If that is your experience, then I suspect your life is sad and lonely. I can tell it's already bitter since you've degenerated into swearing.

Seriously? You're calling a guy sad and lonely because he only has two dozen people to tell about his vacation and 6 good friends to come to a BBQ at his house? That seems a little extreme. I doubt that anyone truly has time to connect deeply with 254 people.

Great, open source

[elrous0]

An OSS Facebook will have hundreds of competing distros, several dozen kernel forks, Countless different versions of the standards that developers will argue over for years, horrid UI's, and no documentation. New users wishing to convert over from commercial Facebook will be told "Well, first you have to decide if you want to go with a RTH, KJG, RTY, or TTTY desktop interface; then you need to pick a client from this list which you can download from this obscure irc channel; then you need to config it to your router and find the drivers for your system; and you might also need to download and install Java, Greasemonkey, and a compiler to create binaries for your particular OS" and presented with a long list of bug fixes in lieu of a user manual.

And before you mod me troll, know that this is exactly what Linux (and plenty of other OSS) looks like to a non-geek user.

Re:Great, open source

[Spad]

Except that all that will need to be done by the people hosting the services, not the users using them.

Re:Great, open source

[RabbitWho]

I think you're confusing OS - Operating system with OS - open source. They won't be making an operating system, they'll be making a website.
To front-end users it doesn't have to be any more complicated than facebook or bebo or orkut, the same types of processes will go into making it but the processes will not be secret. That's what open source means.

Re:Great, open source

[kaiser423]

Huh. Are you on some irc channel of basement dwellers that got caught in a net-split back in the 90's and got stuck in that time period?

You'd make a great find for some anthropologists.

Re:Great, open source

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the ones that are. Firefox is the best example of this but there are many more like Pidgin and VLC. But this isn't about open source its about open standards. No one is saying that the future of social networking should be open source, just that it should be open standard. How many of these "non-techies" have a problem using HTTP? PNG? They don't because they don't have to interact with them directly, they are just standards.

Re:Great, open source

[timeOday]

Did that save Usenet from being marginalized by proprietary web boards? Look at the iPhone, with a centralized "app store" and a separate app for everything, displacing the idea of interoperable web services accessible from any Internet device. Do we see a network of bazaars where we can put items for sale on web pages using a markup so they are searchable, or one big monolithinc website, ebay? Even email is being marginalized by texting and twitter (which are essentially services, not standards) and gmail (which is still email but centralized on a massive scale and with no need for pop and smtp in many cases, when two users on the same webservice email each other). The vast majority of IP addresses aren't even permitted to originate email any more, being in black holes and/or blocked by the ISP.

Sadly, ALL the momentum is AWAY from shared protocols and interoperation, and towards centralized, smoothly integrated services.

Seriously

[alinuxguruofyore]

Yes, and just like Sendmail prevented Microsoft from a $1 Billion a year messaging platform (Exchange) and Linux prevented Microsoft from a $15 Billion a year Server platform. *yawn* Nothing to see here, please move along.

Re:Seriously

[bsDaemon]

Exchange uses SMTP to send and receive mail. Linux and unencumbered BSDs pretty much killed off the commercial UNIX market. Solaris is limping along, and AIX is off in its little world, but that's not really saying much. OS X technically counts, but their target market isn't really the same. What happened to the gazillion other Unicies? All dead.

I'm not sure I get the fixation everyone has with Microsoft. Exchange provides additional services which many people apparently find useful. Zimbra is a competing open source product, not SMTP. SMTP and IMAP is good enough for my purposes, and I suspect good enough for many other geek types, however we generally also attempt to avoid meetings and other crap that calendar sharing and whatnot provided by Exchange, Zimbra, Google Apps, or Lotus all provide.

Farmville!

[AntEater]

Unless they can get Farmville ported to an open platform most facebook users will never leave no matter hope open or technically superior an alternative is.

Re:Farmville!

[OzPeter]

Unless they can get Farmville ported to an open platform most facebook users will never leave no matter hope open or technically superior an alternative is.

But Farmville *is* an open platform. Anyone can go there and try their hand at farming!

Re:Farmville!

[ArsonSmith]

I thought slashdot was a browser game.

ArsonSmith has made a post on Slashville. Do you have moderator points? ArsonSmith would like you to moderate his post up.

Technology isn't Facebook's value per se

[MikeRT]

Facebook provides a few things, in no small part because of its sheer size:

1) Ability to find most of the people you know easily.
2) Ability to share a lot of information in a really, really easy with people.
3) Ability to do web-based social gaming in that same context.
4) Bring together basic blog and community organizing features.

The open source hurdles are really:

1) Discovering users.
2) Sharing assets between sites.
3) Coordinating communications between sites (if one wants to create something analogous to Facebook's wall).

Those are big hurdles, especially the ability (or perception of being able) to accurately discover other users one knows. Most of us here know that there is no guarantee that someone who claims to be a particular identity on Facebook isn't Chester the Molester, an enemy masquerading as a friend who didn't have an account before, etc. However, Facebook is perceived as safe by a lot of people, and an open environment would be perceived of in quite different terms.

We need peer2peer social networking

[coder111]

This is the only way to ensure you control it. Distributed hosting, where friends host their friends' status if they are offline. Everything crypted/signed with public/private keys to ensure no spoofing. Ability to create pseudonyms and enter as much personal data as I want, and possibility of anonimity.

Something like that I'd actually sign up for.

--Coder

Like AOL? Really?

[nateand]

Did AOL ever have even close to 500 million users, much less worldwide? If facebook ever dies, it'll be a slow and drawn out process.

Re:Like AOL? Really?

[jeffmeden]

It's not impossible. Remember, no one is paying to be on Facebook (well except the advertisers) so no one has a buy-in mentality other than the time spent on their profiles. If there were a site that offered better privacy (by default), the ability to "suck" all the profile information from Facebook (simple API trick) and better features (like NO FUCKING FARMVILLE ALLOWED) then I think a lot of people would switch. Heck, you could have a service that simply pushed/pulled Facebook info to sync it up with this new site, so you wouldn't have to give up your facebook contacts as much as you would just have to give up visiting their godawful website.

Something will topple Facebook...

[Fortunato_NC]

It might be open source, or it might not be, but eventually, someone will come along with a "better Facebook than Facebook", and it will slowly die.

That's just creative destruction at work. It ALWAYS happens.

Facebook was a better MySpace than MySpace.
MySpace was a better Friendster than Friendster.
Friendster was a better Classmates.com than Classmates.com. ...and so on...

Google was a better Altavista than Altavista.
AOL Instant Messenger was a better ICQ than ICQ.
USENET was a better BBS than old-school dialup bulletin board.
Books were better scrolls than scrolls.

Something newer and better is going to come along. People talk about Facebook and the network effect "locking in" people, but creative destruction is even more powerful than the network effect.

Re:Just a thought

[c0d3g33k]

You're not "selling your data for nothing". You're exchanging access to your data for the ability to use a service without financial compensation to the service provider (who probably incurs substantial cost running said service). You deserve no "cut" - you already got access to Facebook. TANSTAAFL.

Makes sense

[MonsterTrimble]

I honestly think I could work pretty well. Basically a distributed client side setup with the big things that facebook does and (for the most part) does well: Share stuff with people you know - statuses, comments, messages, photos. Build something like a Pidgin/Yahoo messenger client which can pull status & wall feeds from friends who are online and from common friends who have updated information on friends who are not online. For photo sharing, have an interface with one of the big photo sites (or all of them) for photos.

FB Disks?

[spyingwind]

So I can get a Facebook Official diskette/CD?

Maybe Social Media will change

[Pete Venkman]

I don't want a "new facebook" even if it's open source. Social media started off great, but from what I've seen a lot of it turns into posts about what someone ate for breakfast or how they hate rainy afternoons. I don't CARE about 99% of the stuff that my "friends" post about. If the cost of dumping facebook is no longer being plugged in to the social scene, then I say someone else can have it.

I think a problem with social media is that there is a presumption that someone cares about YOU. Why do you make a facebook page? Because you want to let your friends know what YOU are up to. Who fucking cares? Do something worthwhile and then people who care can find out about you that way.

Render Facebook Obsolete?

[damn_registrars]

No, Facebook will render Facebook obsolete. A lot of people are spending less time on their now than they did before. The novelty is wearing off, and eventually people won't care about it at all. It will eventually be replaced not by one single thing but by a variety of better things, including actual human-to-human interaction.

Re:Render Facebook Obsolete?

[oodaloop]

It will eventually be replaced not by one single thing but by a variety of better things, including actual human-to-human interaction.

How, by teleporting me to see my friends all over the world? If you could teleport me across the internet, I wouldn't be using the technology to idly chat with relatives and old class-mates, if you catch my drift. I'd use it go get a Monster drink everytime I need one. Like right now. Oh sweet blue Monster, how I miss you.

Great, open standards

[mdwh2]

Throwing insults at open source gets you +5 on Slashdot - I'd never thought I'd see the day.

If you want an example of an open source social networking site, take a look at Livejournal. Are you seriously telling me that the closed source Facebook is a better website than Livejournal? The UI is far better than Facebook, it's easy to use and doesn't have bugs, plenty of documentation, and was doing all this long before Facebook.

Aside from your comments being false (I use Windows personally, but I tried Ubuntu recently and found it worked and looked just fine; I didn't even need documenation), you're missing the point. This is more about open standards than open source as such. If you bother to RTFA:

Just like open standards for e-mail and the Web broke users free from proprietary closed networks of the early 1990s, so too could a new set of standards allow people to share their thoughts, photos and comments across the Internet, regardless of what social networking services they use

It's clear that it's more about open standards, than necessarily open source alternatives. If there were open standards, yes there'd be a load more "Facebooks", but closed source sites would still be free to make use of them - just as we have closed source email clients. So even if you believed that giving away source somehow made an application terrible, you'd still be okay.

I take it you must absolutely hate email then, because that's based on open standards like SMTP? Obviously all email clients must have terrible UIs, no documentation, and be a pain to install, by your logic...

You Betcha!

[assertation]

I see articles everyday that satisfaction is low among Facebook users. They are hanging around, in part, because there aren't any worthy alternatives from their perspective.

Once Diaspora is out, I'm getting a few good friends to sign up with me, then I'm deleting my Facebook account.

If Facebook pulls another "We did this, we didn't tell you, we don't care and you'll like it" stunt after that point, many other Facebook users will dump them too.

You're Thinking About It Wrong

[eldavojohn]

Unfortunately part of the Terms of Service of the Facebook API prevents storage of data received through the API on a remote source.

I never said to use the Facebook API.

For a mental exercise let's imagine (and really maybe Perl is the better choice here) that I made a Ruby gem called SocialWalker or something of the sort and basically I used mechanize to log into Facebook after getting the user's credentials. Then the application connects to my webservice that sends the latest selector strings (harvested from the latest Facebook interface by hand with SelectorGadget) and also Nokogiri to quickly scrape off all the information and date/time stamps. I think the pictures would be a different kind of effort but completely feasible.

At that point, the user could save it in some documented open social file format that any application can read ... it would probably be a tree directory with a bunch of XML files and images. Maybe they want to put that into Diaspora and I would have a way that the system would autopopulate their diaspora with this archived data? Maybe they want to do their own thing with it? Maybe I could spend time doing this for Facebook and MySpace and Friendster and whatever you send me a link to?

Yeah, I might not be able to spider your posts on your friends walls and maybe I won't be able to get some information and maybe the new system won't let you back timestamp things so that data has to be put in the comments on your new photo albums.

Maybe Google could be petitioned to create this system instead of some developer who prefers to get drunk on the weekends instead of liberating social network users? Google is the god of scraping and caching after all.

But it would look like nothing more than one user looking at all their history one last time ;) No API ToS violations needed.

Yes, it could.

[HeckRuler]

Yeah, I've had this idea as well. Because Facebook is simple. It's a webpage with text and pictures uploaded by users that has interfaces with others' web page. Rather then facebook or myspace, an open source alternative that people would run on their own. Websites with "user" uploaded content are, you know, old hat, so this boils down to protocols to deal with interaction between sites. And remember, this IS the social portion of social networks.

so what are all these interactions that need protocols:
-Establishing networks of trust, friendship, and hate. That whole "friends request" thing.

And that's essentially the only one that's required to make an open source distributed social network like facebook. Everything else is, not trivial, but it's been done. If it can be made cheap and simple enough (that itself a monumental task), then the masses could use it. But they won't, as inertial will keep them in facebook.
The rest is just features:

-Poke. It's one freaking message.
-Post on another wall/picture/whatnot. It's been done.
-Search through others pictures for tags of you.
-Set up events, invite people.
-Establish groups of people. The owner would host of course, but transferring ownership could be interesting.

Facebook is all about the contacts

[jmyers]

Relating Facebook to its features and applications and how they could be replaced is missing the point. Facebook is all about the contact list. People will not move away from it and lose their contacts and seamless communication. i.e. importing the contacts somewhere else just adds complexity.

Like all things FB will eventually die but it will take some killer app that no one has seen yet, not just duplication of features.

Another way it may die is through a really bad event like major identity theft or a really nasty virus that causes people to flock away from it. Or possibly a bad DDOS attack that brings it down for an extended period.

Re:Exactly

[natehoy]

the back end of Facebook

His name is Mark Zuckerberg. And this isn't a family site, you don't need to use euphemisms. Calling him an asshole is OK.

I agree and disagree with the assumption

[prefec2]

First, I have to disagree. Facebook and AOL are two different situations. Facebook has a massive user base and it has a lot of gravity sucking in a lot of other people. Even though users have multiple accounts in different other social network platforms. Why is that so? Because these other platforms provide special services in certain domains. For example linked is not there to share you latest dog or pussy or "I am so drunk, look i fell in a pool and hit my head" photos.

AOL on the other side was a mee too e-mail and content-service. However, many people lived outside of AOL. And the user base outside of AOL was growing faster than AOL itself.

Second, I have to agree. Facebook alienated many people with its behavior. And as a commercial company they cannot stop, as their business model is based on selling your private information and information based on massive data mining on personal information. And while people have learned (at least partially) that it is better to control your personal information, they will be eager to switch to another service. For instance a distributed one. but only if it is as usable as FB.