

Ask HN: what happened to the first distributed social network, the blogroll?  - petervandijck

The blogroll + FOAF and such was the first distributed social network, as far as I can tell. It pretty much failed. Is there any real activity going on around these open standards these days, or has everyone given in to the FB juggernaut and the religion of walled gardens?
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sudont
The opportunity cost for Facebook and Twitter is much lower than blogging,
especially when most blogs were meant to target friends, relatives and co-
workers. Really, if blogging was meant to be taken as social networking,
there's no point in setting up something outside of what all of your friends
are doing unless it's a special case. And, right or wrong in terms of
openness, that's what's happening.

As per "special cases:" most blogs left tend to be dedicated and area-
specific, meaning that a blogroll is somewhat pointless. Look at Smitten
Kitchen: it's a highly targeted website about a specific area, not a general
purpose "Hey guys" website. No blogroll, no need for one. If you're doing
small-kitchen cooking, great. If not, you probably know about Serious Eats.

The few weblogs left are analogous to 'zines, when everybody else was mailing
letters and talking on the phone. "Revolution girl-style now" indeed.

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Andrenid
I always wanted to see a plugin/widget for WordPress (and generic JS plugin
for non-WP sites) that let you input the URLs for your friend's blogs, and it
pinged their site to tell their widget (if they had it) that you've added them
to your blogroll, and let them add you back.

A simple decentralized version of follow/friends for blogs and sites in
general, without them needing to be on the same platform.

