Right now, these guys are thinking about development, but they should already be thinking about "adoption".
If it's too geeky, it will never take off. It needs to be trendy and sassy, whether you like it or not. The "if we build it they will come" approach may shoot this thing in the foot.
On another note, are we putting data in control of the "user" or their "isp"?
This feels like the Kazaa or Napster of social networking, which can so easily be shut down by ISPs.
Lastly, people use Facebook at work and at home, and they log onto it from their friend's houses, their phones, etc. If it's all on my "node" at home, do I have to leave my stuff running all the time? That's not very convenient or green. And I don't want my bandwidth at home being eaten up every time my friends want to look at my vacation photos.
Anyway, kudos for the ambition, but the idea needs more time.
I think, it's too early to think about mainstream adoption.
With luck, what they will be able to do by the end of the summer is build version 0.01 of core social network codebase and gain enough interest from open source developers for the project to keep rolling. With luck, over time the project will develop to the point that real social networks for casual people will be built upon it. With luck, those will gain traction.
These guys want to build Linux 0.01, you want "Linux On The Desktop". Not saying it is implausible, just quite different stages of product development.
Lastly, people use Facebook at work and at home, and they log onto it from their friend's houses, their phones, etc. If it's all on my "node" at home, do I have to leave my stuff running all the time? That's not very convenient or green. And I don't want my bandwidth at home being eaten up every time my friends want to look at my vacation photos.
What you really want is a central repository where your encrypted data can be uploaded to and only decrypted by those you choose (not the host itself).
Honestly, I think I would be fine with a unencrypted central repository that just isn't evil. Something with a very clear policy on what data is stored and what is done with.
I assure you the mechanics of how the data is stored is not of interest to 99% of people. Nobody really understands encryption anyway. Or is this site exclusively for geeks?
Whether or not people understand encryption doesn't change how well it projects them. The difference between "encrypted" and "unencrypted and not evil" is like the difference between a car with airbags and a car that has a little sticker on the dash that says "Try not to crash."
Obviously, no security is perfect, and given sufficiently evil central repository you'd still end up a situation of mistrust. But rather than take a chance with my private information simply because the people holding it tell me they aren't evil, I'll take responsibility for my own data and do my best as a user to make the right choices about how to treat that which I desire to keep private. If that means being picky about what I share/post, that's fine. If that means I need to run my own host and control access myself, well that's the burden I can choose to take to give me the peace of mind I'm looking for.
At one time, Facebook's ToS were quite friendly and unintimidating. Encryption means that a repository that "isn't evil" today, stays that way forever.
Additionally, if done right, the users do not need to know a whiff about encryption. I'll point to "https:// as a more successful example.
that is actually a success of sorts, encryption that goes unnoticed by users in a great model. it is up to application providers to make it a standard.
surely there is a great market share for ubiquitous encryption.
And what happens when I want to remove one of my 200 friends? Conversely, what happens when I want to add a new friend and give them access to my 200 photos? The only answer I can imagine involves a (#friends X #resources) duplication of storage, processing, etc.
Maybe. This is how backup services like Carbonite work. I can create a key that they don't have, and if I lose it, I'm locked out, bye bye data. Otherwise, where there's a key, there's a master key, and we're right back where we started.
I was just thinking, they may want to try to prey on the weak, capitalize on Ning's downslope. Anybody could set up a small social network in their school, at home, etc. Not having to worry about any aspect of Facebook they don't like. And then they could start to federate with other networks, and then everybody would suddenly have an account. That might get a foothold.
But the ISP controls data transmission, not storage. The ISP can't go sell your private information to someone, short of logging packets and extracting the data, which they have no authority to do. The point of distributing social networks is moving control into the hands of users rather than big business, and this makes sense because social activities off the net operate this way.
So make it compatible with various cloud providers. Better yet, start a nonprofit that transparently hosts the nodes on various cloud providers for a fee. When a provider starts misbehaving, transparently move those nodes to the others.
This way, the FB-alternative becomes a voice in the free market for respecting privacy.
That's basically what I'm saying too. The user needs to be in control, but this idea needs work. Simply going with the "node" route is giving ISP's too much control over the distribution, and hence, your data is still being "controlled" by a big corporation, just in another manner of speaking.
If it's too geeky, it will never take off. It needs to be trendy and sassy, whether you like it or not. The "if we build it they will come" approach may shoot this thing in the foot.
On another note, are we putting data in control of the "user" or their "isp"?
This feels like the Kazaa or Napster of social networking, which can so easily be shut down by ISPs.
Lastly, people use Facebook at work and at home, and they log onto it from their friend's houses, their phones, etc. If it's all on my "node" at home, do I have to leave my stuff running all the time? That's not very convenient or green. And I don't want my bandwidth at home being eaten up every time my friends want to look at my vacation photos.
Anyway, kudos for the ambition, but the idea needs more time.