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I'd really like to see that as well, though it's been tried a few times and found wanting.

What Social seems to be based around is:

⚫ The directory. A set of users who are known and authenticated.

⚫ Notifications.

⚫ Search. Note absolutely essential (both Ello and G+ launched without it), but I find systems lacking this crippled.

⚫ A posting format. My general preference is for a minimal set of HTML, of which Markdown is nearly perfect (though other lightweight markup languages similarly work). Wrapping that in a user-friendly editor for those who prefer that, butalso preserving raw access, would be ideal.

⚫ Support both bloggy and lightweight ("tweet") type posts.

⚫ Some form of private messaging (Ello lacks this, G+ has a couple of inadequate and annoying options).

⚫ Notifications. These are key. I've argued that (despite many UI/UX failings) this is G+'s secret sauce. Ello lacks a few concepts (especially "subscription" style notifications), but otherwise does well.

⚫ Noise and moderation tools. Another glaring lack of many systems. Reddit's moderator tools are a moderately useful model.

⚫ Tags and/or channels. Another area in which many existing tools are poor (G+'s recent "Collections" is an utter clusterfuck). Old-school blog tags aren't bad.

⚫ In general, something that could be bolted onto a blogging engine would be really useful.

⚫ Syndication. Both inbound and outbound.

I've been casting around for options, nothing's really caught my fancy.




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