I don't think the problem is fundamentally about centralization, it's about ownership. At FB, the customer is the advertiser; the product is your personal infor

I don't think the problem is fundamentally about centralization, it's about ownership. At FB, the customer is the advertiser; the product is your personal information. Unless that equation is changed, you'll just get the same thing all over again. To some extent, a distributed system helps solve the ownership issue -- there can be for-pay services and ad supported services coexisiting. But this space needs a business visionary (like Mathowie with Metafilter) or some new cooperative ownership model more than it needs technology.