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Kenneth Reitz
240 lines
8.5 KiB
HTML
240 lines
8.5 KiB
HTML
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<title>The Call for an Open Source Social Network</title>
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<a href="http://github.com/kennethreitz/">
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<h1>
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<a href=".">Kenneth's log </a>
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</h1>
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<a href="./category/Life.html">Life</a>
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<a href="./category/Code.html">Code</a>
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<section id="content" class="body">
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<article>
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<header> <h1 class="entry-title"><a href="the-call-for-an-open-source-social-network.html"
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rel="bookmark" title="Permalink to The Call for an Open Source Social Network">The Call for an Open Source Social Network</a></h1> </header>
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<div class="entry-content">
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<footer class="post-info">
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<abbr class="published" title="2009-08-16T20:16:00">
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Sun 16 August 2009
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</abbr>
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<p>In <a href="./category/Code.html">Code</a>.
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</p>
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</footer><!-- /.post-info -->
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<p>Lately, I've been tossing some ideas around that I feel would
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benefit the Social Web as a whole. It’s been going through some
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rough times lately, and I think it’s time for a change. Or so I
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thought. My first idea was to create a site that was rather
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decentralized, allowing all of your content to exist on other
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sites, but still allowing for you to interact without locking a
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user in. As it turns out, this site already exists. It is called
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<a class="reference external" href="http://friendfeed.com/kennethreitz">FriendFeed</a>.
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<em>`I love FriendFeed <http://kennethreitz.com/blog/friendfeed-is-awesome/>`_</em>.
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About a week after I decided that I wanted to get into it,
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<a class="reference external" href="http://kennethreitz.com/blog/friendfeed-is-awesome/">Facebook decided to purchase it</a>.
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How sad. They claim that it will still be up and running, but we’ll
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see if that proves to be the case (I have my fingers crossed).
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Pownce (which was powered by Python / Django) was shut down when it
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was purchased. I pray this not be the case. Think about this now:
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<strong>Why is that even an option</strong>? Social networking is all about
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community and building tribes – So why do we need to have an
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organization in charge of our chosen communication platform?
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<strong>Here is my proposal</strong>: Create a community-driven,
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community-developed, and community-controlled social networking
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site that is truly open source. The community could take care of
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everything from feature development to content control. No random
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shutting down, buy-outs, or merges. No more random change of
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Privacy Policies or Content Ownership battles. No more worries. The
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only group of people who would be benefitted would be the community
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itself, not some company. An open minded network full of open
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minded people working for the better of the community. # The Open
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Web of Flow</p>
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<div class="section" id="step-one-solid-platform-choice">
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<h2><strong>Step One</strong>: Solid Platform Choice</h2>
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<p>The platform choice is the most important. You've seen what happens
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when the wrong tool is chosen for the job: look at Twitter: Bad
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Planning. We're all familiar with the Fail Whale but we shouldn't.
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At all. So what do we use? There's an array of options. .NET? HAHA!
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Did you know that there's even
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<a class="reference external" href="http://membertomember.com/">a social platform built on top of Microsoft's Sharepoint</a>?
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I bet you didn't. I've installed it a number of times. It's
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fantastic (for people who need it). But we don't. At all. What type
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of open source project aside Mono is driven by NET developers
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anyway? They are in an entirely different mindset than us. Anyway,
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the answer is obvious: Django on a LAMP Stack (Linux + Apache +
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MySql + Python). We can all agree that Python is freaking amazing.
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And it's certianly not going anywhere any time soon. I think google
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has proven time-and time again that Python is the language for just
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about any job. And when Google's unlayden-swallow project is
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complete, all (typically negligible) performance issues will be
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eliminated. Done. ### <strong>Step Two</strong>: Basic Information Architecture</p>
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<p>We need to decide how the whole system will work. FriendFeed has an
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excellent system in place. Lets use it. Users can tie everything in
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from all of their other websites and steam it on their profile, and
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display it all on one page. Everything's streamlined, commentable,
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hookable, and readily accessible. Google Profiles rock. But that is
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definitely an abandoned project. Lets mix that with a
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FriendFeed-style activity stream. Done. ### <strong>Step Three</strong>:
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Sustainability, Audience, and Accessibility</p>
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<p>How will we pay for it? How will we get people to contribute? How
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will be get people to use it? Answer: Twitter is getting old and
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it's getting old fast. It's time for something new. Lets blow them
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away and they will ALL hop on board. Allow for easy
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external-account migration and account creation and we'll be
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golden. ### <strong>Step Four</strong>: Technical Planning and Engineering</p>
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<p>This is all the stuff end users don't have to worry about.
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Performance. Design. System Administration. Database Engineering.
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The geek stuff. I mean come on guys, how awesome would it be to be
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able to make a commit to the Twitter live SVN Branch? Epically
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awesome. ### <strong>Step Five</strong>: Community + Collaboration</p>
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<p>Once the community gets going, there will be no stopping it. In
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conclusion, think about what we have to lose? Are you with me?</p>
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</div>
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</div><!-- /.entry-content -->
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</article>
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</section>
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<section id="extras" class="body">
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<div class="blogroll">
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<h2>Links</h2>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="http://github.com/kennethreitz">GitHub Repos</a></li>
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<li><a href="http://flickr.com/kennethreitz">Photography (Flickr)</a></li>
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<li><a href="http://twitter.com/kennethreitz">Latest Tweets</a></li>
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<li><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/kennethreitz">Résumé</a></li>
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<li><a href="http://pick.im/kenneth-reitz">Design Portfolio</a></li>
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<li><a href="http://laterstars.com/kennethreitz">Later Stars</a></li>
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</section><!-- /#extras -->
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<address id="about" class="vcard body">
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© 2011 Kenneth Reitz & co. All Rights Reserved.
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