Re: [Social-discuss] What should GNU social be?

[Melvin Carvalho]

On 5. März 2010 00:39, Blaise Alleyne <address@hidden> wrote:

On 10-03-04 02:38 PM, Ryan Prior wrote:

 On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 5:55 PM, Matt Lee<address@hidden>   wrote:

 Should GNU social be a straight up replacement for existing social
 networks? I don't think so.

 Should GNU social include the creation of a protocol for decentralized,
 encrypted communication between social networks? I think it should.
 . . .
 We may decide to create a simple, Facebook-type UI as a demo for
 one of the possible applications of GNU social, but let's also consider
 the future and other ideas for social software.

 Hey Matt,

 I agree with you totally on your second point, but I think that we do
 need to create a straight-up replacement for existing social networks.

 The #1 thing that I want to bring out of GNU Social is a response to
 the question "What else should I use?". If I see somebody frustrated
 with Facebook and have a conversation about how it's harmful to trust
 all your social data to a closed network, that conversation can only
 go so far: whereas I can suggest to a disgruntled Windows or Mac user
 that GNU offers a great alternative, I have no such offering for the
 unhappy Facebook/Twitter/Myspace/LinkedIn user.

I agree with both of you, in that GNU Social should be so much more than
a Facebook replacement, but that a Facebook replacement may be
necessary... but we can't underestimate the social challenges of
creating a replacement that don't exist elsewhere. Daisycha.in might
give us a free software social networking service to use, but it doesn't
solve the problem of communicating with other people if other people
aren't on Daisycha.in. See Identi.ca/Twitter... I'm very active on
Identi.ca, but I also feel the need to maintain a presence on Twitter
because there are so many people I want to communicate with who aren't
using Identi.ca.

So, my first comment is just that we can't understate or underestimate
the challenge of the network effect in replacing social services.

A question arises though... To what extent would we be willing to
connect with other proprietary web services, to set up a bridge (in the
way to emacs is available on Windows, or that Identi.ca has a Twitter
bridge)? I'm not proposing this, because I haven't thought it through,
I'm just raising the question -- would we entertain the idea of creating
a Facebook app, or using Facebook Connect, to allow someone to bring
their Facebook activity over to a new, free social networking service?
To connect with friends on a proprietary web service, to the extent that
it's possible via their APIs?

It reminds me a bit of the linux kernel.  While it works well as an OS in itself, there's also a team of people building 'drivers' other technologies.  To the extent that it's legal, I think it's a valid goal of daisycha.in to create bridges/drivers other services, starting with the low hanging fruit of open APIs.
 

--
http://www.alleyneinc.net/



--
http://www.alleyneinc.net/