It would be perfectly possible (and, in fact, easy) to set up an app that people could "host" which would handle all their posting, status updates, events, phot

It would be perfectly possible (and, in fact, easy) to set up an app that people could "host" which would handle all their posting, status updates, events, photo's etc (indeed it's basically just a bit of an advanced blog). You could easily put together a standard for sharing this information between sites; so people could either run their own page (mypage.com) or go with a provider (username.socialnetworkofthefuture.com) and yet information could be permissively shared. The problem is as follows: - aggregating data into a stream (a large overhead if every time you post it has to be sent out to X number of sites) - finding people/friends (no single search - which is useful) - getting people to understand the concept That last one could be a killer blow...