Great to see others talking about decentralized social networking
For the past few years, I’ve been assuming that folks would come around to my way of thinking in regards to social networking. These giant, centralized, lock-in beasts had to end.
It just made sense. Metcalfe’s Law simply does not apply to human beings. Having more the merrier DOES NOT make for beter conversations. It just create cacophony.
So as I’ve watched first Friendster, then MySpace, then Facebook/Bebo, whatever, explode - I knew this hoiuse of cards had to come crashing down. It has to.
Because there is no benefit to human beings for clustering with 1,000,000’s of other human beings. Yes - having lots of people helps bands promote themselves or marketeers reach these folks, but it doesn’t directly help end-users any.
Humans cluster between 15-25 - and 150 or thereabouts. That’s why military units are organized as companies and squadrons and businesses have departments and middle level managers. No one can remember more than 150 people’s names.
So the logic follows that social networks should be MUCH smaller - certainly under 10,000 - and more likely under 1,000.
We currently have almost 300 networks running at PeopleAggregator - with the largest one having only 192 members.
Someone named Khoi Vinh posts “Network Once, Socialize Anywhere” asks when can he move his data between social networks and complains about the same suff I’ve been saying - for years. If you look in the comments of this post - OpenID is first (falsely) claimed to be the end-all solution, but then luckily other commentors correct this falsehood, but point out that OpenID is a good place to start.
Khoi also points to a ‘Decentralized Social Networking’ post I saw earlier from Jeremy Keith called More thoughts on portable social networks which pretty well covers the main issues and dives into some scenarios of using XFN as a way of expressing and moving entire social networks - between systems.
Yah gotta love guys like this! These are my kind of people!
Check it out dudes - we’ve got a decentrealized social networking platform. And its only getting better. Source code is available and we’re building a business up around it (and there’s plenty of money to go around for others.)
And any standards we evolve to inter-connect networks together and all the knowledge we learn regarding rules, practices, norms, defaults and exceptions - we’ll give away as well.
That’s the only way you can decentralize and inter-connect social networks together. It’s through cooperation and friendships. Not through proprietary technologies or business models.
“We currently have almost 300 networks running at PeopleAggregator”
What bullshit…look at the posts and there is virtually no activity….seems 90% of the posting has been done by fatty Marc himself.
Watch out Adobe!
Yo ho ho
“We currently have almost 300 networks running at PeopleAggregator”
What bullshit…look at the posts and there is virtually no activity….seems 90% of the posting has been done by fatty Marc himself.
Watch out Adobe!
Yo ho ho
“We currently have almost 300 networks running at PeopleAggregator”
What bullshit…look at the posts and there is virtually no activity….seems 90% of the posting has been done by fatty Marc himself.
Watch out Adobe!
Yo ho ho
I think you’re totally right on about this Marc. My only concern is how such small groups will be monetized sufficiently for you to make a solid return.
I think you’re totally right on about this Marc. My only concern is how such small groups will be monetized sufficiently for you to make a solid return.
I think you’re totally right on about this Marc. My only concern is how such small groups will be monetized sufficiently for you to make a solid return.
oh wrt monetizing the smaller networks… if you are looking at advertising then the aggregate of many smaller networks will work as well as a bigger monolithic network.
but I’d dare to say more: having smaller, more specific, social networks give a new dimension to the possibility of defining a target for thos ads or even it would give the partecipants a way to express their interests in specific commercial informations (much more than what a huge network can do)
oh wrt monetizing the smaller networks… if you are looking at advertising then the aggregate of many smaller networks will work as well as a bigger monolithic network.
but I’d dare to say more: having smaller, more specific, social networks give a new dimension to the possibility of defining a target for thos ads or even it would give the partecipants a way to express their interests in specific commercial informations (much more than what a huge network can do)
oh wrt monetizing the smaller networks… if you are looking at advertising then the aggregate of many smaller networks will work as well as a bigger monolithic network.
but I’d dare to say more: having smaller, more specific, social networks give a new dimension to the possibility of defining a target for thos ads or even it would give the partecipants a way to express their interests in specific commercial informations (much more than what a huge network can do)
Aren’t ‘decentralized distributed social networks’ the thing that it has always been? Our shit is in a million places and no site will ever gather it in one place. And then, there’s so much emphasis on the public transparency of it— until you get into that stick place of humans, who might actually want to quietly and discretely nudge someone out of the picture.
And then if you COULD get all the networks together, you have to worry about the people in the social networks bitching at each other. My blog network don’t care about my Second Life network, but does care about my Warcraft network, which some of my blog network doesn’t care about, but my iPod/Apple network does. My Apple network is also my XBOX network for some reason. And what if we need to hide part of our network from the other?
I need the platforms to talk to each other and because we all want our stuff to be THE thing, it won’t happen.
To me, ‘decentralized distributed social networks’ = what we’ve always had: chaos, anarchy, rationality and irrationality, emotion, and tech, with a focus on self.
My social network is me, all about me. Nothing is serving the ‘me’ market. Why?
Aren’t ‘decentralized distributed social networks’ the thing that it has always been? Our shit is in a million places and no site will ever gather it in one place. And then, there’s so much emphasis on the public transparency of it— until you get into that stick place of humans, who might actually want to quietly and discretely nudge someone out of the picture.
And then if you COULD get all the networks together, you have to worry about the people in the social networks bitching at each other. My blog network don’t care about my Second Life network, but does care about my Warcraft network, which some of my blog network doesn’t care about, but my iPod/Apple network does. My Apple network is also my XBOX network for some reason. And what if we need to hide part of our network from the other?
I need the platforms to talk to each other and because we all want our stuff to be THE thing, it won’t happen.
To me, ‘decentralized distributed social networks’ = what we’ve always had: chaos, anarchy, rationality and irrationality, emotion, and tech, with a focus on self.
My social network is me, all about me. Nothing is serving the ‘me’ market. Why?
Aren’t ‘decentralized distributed social networks’ the thing that it has always been? Our shit is in a million places and no site will ever gather it in one place. And then, there’s so much emphasis on the public transparency of it— until you get into that stick place of humans, who might actually want to quietly and discretely nudge someone out of the picture.
And then if you COULD get all the networks together, you have to worry about the people in the social networks bitching at each other. My blog network don’t care about my Second Life network, but does care about my Warcraft network, which some of my blog network doesn’t care about, but my iPod/Apple network does. My Apple network is also my XBOX network for some reason. And what if we need to hide part of our network from the other?
I need the platforms to talk to each other and because we all want our stuff to be THE thing, it won’t happen.
To me, ‘decentralized distributed social networks’ = what we’ve always had: chaos, anarchy, rationality and irrationality, emotion, and tech, with a focus on self.
My social network is me, all about me. Nothing is serving the ‘me’ market. Why?
Nice post, but no one can remember more than 150 names? I don’t think that’s what you really meant to say. Maybe 150 is a fast cache, but you can probably remember thousands of names.
cheers,
tom
Nice post, but no one can remember more than 150 names? I don’t think that’s what you really meant to say. Maybe 150 is a fast cache, but you can probably remember thousands of names.
cheers,
tom
Nice post, but no one can remember more than 150 names? I don’t think that’s what you really meant to say. Maybe 150 is a fast cache, but you can probably remember thousands of names.
cheers,
tom