

Ask HN: Open Social Network -- is now the time? - lukeqsee

Perchance a group decided to launch a fully open -- per EFF standards, etc. -- social network. That was fully transparent and the data is yours. Maybe Creative Commons licensed?<p>Would you and could you see a market for it? Or is the sheer size of Facebook/Twitter too much?<p>FWIW, I am mulling the idea.
======
iamdave
I'm seeing this topic come up more and more frequently, but here's my two
cents:

The average user doesn't care about Creative Commons licensing, or GPL. The
average user cares about the following interaction:

LogIn->Read Status Updates->Talk to Friends->Make Status Update->Upload
pictures

Where average user being 80% of the FB userbase who log on everyday and remain
completely oblivious to what's happening with Facebook, The EFF, the FTC and
most recently, Zynga. They don't know these things, so they don't care.

I say that to say this: if someone plans to build the next social network,
build it with the users in mind. Don't try to build a platform with some
Utopian framework in mind, build what works, and keep it simple. If you do
this, you'll win.

~~~
lukeqsee
Absolutely.

I like your picture of the common interactions, it really boils it down to a
kernel of core functions.

------
cmelbye
I wouldn't want the things I upload to a social network to be creative commons
licensed; I'd want all of the rights to remain in my possession. If an open
social network is to be made, I don't think it should be the Wikipedia model
where you relinquish rights to everything you do on the site.

 _(If you were referring to licensing the actual code as Creative Commons,
don't. Creative Commons recommends GNU
GPL:<http://creativecommons.org/software>) _

~~~
lukeqsee
I was meaning _maybe_ as in it's their rights to license it anyway they please
and retain full rights to their data. For instance, _if_ they wanted to, they
could upload an album of pictures as Creative Commons, or _if_ they wanted
retain full copyright.

My point is, it's your data, you can do whatsoever you wish with it, including
delete it all.

