Alternative to Facebook
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I found this article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12about.html about a bunch of guys creating an alternative to FaceBook. Here’s the thing, BuddyPress is all packaged and ready to go. The only thing it’s missing is the “node” concept they talk about. So that each individual can host their own site and connect with the sites of others via a meta-network…
Any thoughts?
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BTW, to answer your question more concisely, I am aware of Tim Berners-Lee’s vision (a more 3-dimensional web, if you will), and even have my own radical views of what that might entail.
I like the idea of using WordPress and BuddyPress to create a decentralized social network and am even considering starting a plugin to implement it. I’d like to hear people’s thoughts how each necessary feature would be implemented and integrated with WordPress and BuddyPress, as well as share my own ideas on how it would be done.
This is an interesting read: http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2010/05/16/combing-openid-and-oauth-with-openid-connect/ @jeffsayre — what say ye on that one?
I couldn’t access the link. Chris’ site just keep trying to load and then threw a 503. I’ll try again later.
In general, as you know, I have issues with using OpenID in a distributed environment because it requires a lot more server calls and a 3rd-party provider / verifier. This basically locks individuals back into the same mantra of depending on another provider. Decentralized services are best, IMO, managed and controlled by each individual. This is where FOAF+SSL-backed WebID shines. It does not require a 3rd-party authenticator and the process takes significantly fewer steps.
Of course, that does not preclude offering both options–the Open Stack and their SemWeb counterparts.
Maybe you all should liaise with Ostatus
How likely is it that you or any of the other developers you’ve been talking with would make a plugin that adds WebID to WordPress in the near future?
It depends on your definition of “near future”. Since all authentication is handled by WordPress, not BuddyPress, this project is truly a WordPress-specific feature. We are forming a group to work on this issue and also discuss the possibilities of implementing Semantic Web and / or Open Stack protocols in BuddyPress.
But, this will not be a core WP feature–at least not in the near term. I imagine that we will let the WP 3.0 series work out any new issues once that series is released. So, sometime around the WP 3.1 or 3.2 public release might be a reasonable target for releasing a WebID plugin for WP.
Do you have any specific interest and / or experience with WebIDs?
@jeffsayre — i trust and get your concern w/ openid. That said, it’s hard to stop a moving train. I just don’t want to completely disregard all the motion going on elsewhere. So call me the healthy skeptic in the room — that should be a good thing, right? It just means that as we move forward you’ll have someone voicing alternate points of view. But I’m still on board to make *something* happen. (Btw, Chris link works for me. Maybe the site was just having a bad day :p ).
Have we set up an actual group for this? I think that might be a good place to start.
@arxpoetica et al –
I just created the private BP group Semantic Web and Open Stack Integration to focus our discussions. As it is a private group, you must request membership. I felt it was better to create a private group so that we could ensure the conversations are maintained at the proper level.
You were one step ahead of me. I was just creating a group avatar. :p
I just found this discussion. Interesting
In the past I did some posts in http://edward.de.leau.net/about/brainstorm and http://edward.de.leau.net/about/idea (not all of them are applicable though).
But i think my scope goes wider than just the semantic web and open stack integration.
My main focus is the end goal which is why i once created http://householdframework.org but never came to it to really expand on this.
It’s nice to see another step closer to this direction.
I think we’re heading in a certain direction. IBM has opened the connected planet initiative. It means that everything will be connected with everything. The problem is that the large companies are mainly focussed on other companies and not on households. But households are little companies. They face the same problems as any other organizations.
Households until now have been immature. They have an addressbook while companies have CRM systems. They have a grocery list while companies have ERP systems. they have no requirements management, no configuration management and they don’t do projects.
Households do use software, unfortunately they have to buy them in a store, whole no household group ever made a list of requirements first and only then a bunch of software writers would write a solution matching those requirements.
Now what are the use cases present in a household?
But most of important of all, they lack any processes while companies have been doing process improvement for years.
The funny thing is that households, companies, countries are scalable organizations. You find the same processes though only on a larger scale. Large enterprises have been able to invest a lot of money to invent wonderful things. I think many of these can be scaled down to household level. The benefit of this is that a household can easily grow to a company to a enterprise and already know that the architectural patterns behind it are correct.
Problem is households are chaos and are lacking budget.
Some households members though have already installed a server in their home. And some software. They are represented as nodes but they lack both professional software and processes.
So how are we going to improve households? One thing we know is that many household members are at least part of a social network. Unfortunately there is not much coding we can do there. Intuitively many household members have started a `weblog`.
What they are actually doing when `weblogging´ is representing pieces of their requirements hierarchy whether it is about their goals, interests, project in their households, todo items it boils down to an unstructured representation of something that could be somewhat more structured. They auto discover their goals.
So we have to treat each household as a `node`, and we also have create an architectural reference household framework on which each household can leverage to pick out the elements to create their own implementation.
And yes, of course that includes their social network also. But also their budget management, the goals of the household and the budgets the household assigns to certain posts to reach those goals.
So… uhm… no i’m not drunk p.s.: http://edward.de.leau.net/why-the-whole-world-is-wrong-about-weblogs-20081117.html (why the whole world is wrong about weblogs)
Wow, that was weird. I wanted to comment on the first post, re: “The only thing it’s missing is the “node” concept they talk about”, but realized there was no comment form.
You have to go to the last page for this? Not even the ReplyTo function that’s now Core?
You’re kidding, right?
*blink*Interesting:
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