5 ms·

I agree that popularity of social networks is faddish, and that Facebook will follow that rise and fall pattern, however... I think that an open, distributed s

I agree that popularity of social networks is faddish, and that Facebook will follow that rise and fall pattern, however... I think that an open, distributed social networking protocol is a game changer. If there exists the ability to move between social networks while maintaining your social graph, that makes the way that social networks rise and fall very different than when sites hold your social graph hostage if you try to leave.

glhaynes 16y ago
It continues to be hard for me to envision what that would really look like in practice. I don't mean from a network typology standpoint; I mean how would it look in my browser?
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  Here is my Appleseed friends list: http://developer.appleseedproject.org/profile/michael.chisari/friends/ http://developer.appleseedproject.org/profile/michael.chisar... Keep in mind, this is beta software in active development, so you'll notice a few bugs here and there (and the live server is missing a major update I'm running locally).
  - glhaynes 16y ago
    Thanks! I'm interested specifically in the day-to-day usage: the situations of signing up, finding/adding my friends, posting statuses, reading and commenting on other peoples', sharing media like photos, etc etc. So to start with a simple one: how does one add somebody else? Can you just search by name? I'm just having a bit of difficulty imagining how that sort of thing would work well in a truly distributed, federated way. But I haven't done much thought on it so I'm interested to hear.
    - michaelchisari 16y ago
      If you'd like, you can get an Appleseed invite. Send an email to invite@appleseedproject.org and I'll send you one back right away (this is open to anyone, by the way). You can sign up for the main beta test site (currently around 500 users). Searching is being worked on, that's coming in the next update, but yes, you just search by name (or other attributes). Distributed search is difficult, but only on the backend, on the frontend, it's similar to what you're used to. Only caveat is that it is not exactly real-time, and is more like a P2P search than a google search. Once you find someone you're looking for, you identify yourself to their site by remotely logging in. This is as simple as giving your ID, which looks like an email address (username@domain). Then you click "Add as friend", and they're sent a friend request. When they approve it, you are mutual friends. You can post stuff to your "page" (what appleseed calls your wall), and an update will be sent to your friends list. You upload a photo, and an update shows up in your friends lists newsfeeds. They click on the thumbnail and it takes them to your photo album on your home node, etc. Some other distributed social networking sites are breaking from convention in a lot of ways, but Appleseed's goal is to try and make it work as much like the current systems people are used to as possible. Certain growing pains are inevitable, but so far it's pretty similar after the first couple minutes.
      - glhaynes 16y ago
        Perfect, thanks! I wish you guys luck.
  - wyclif 16y ago
    I'm glad to see that it's under the GNU license, are there invites?
    - michaelchisari 16y ago
      Send an email to invite@appleseedproject.org and I'll send you an invite.
      - wyclif 16y ago
        Thanks, Michael. I'm liking what I'm seeing here.
dominostars 16y ago
> If there exists the ability to move between social networks while maintaining your social graph Facebook Connect accomplishes most of what you want here. At least, it could.
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  Except that's a thoroughly one-directional approach. How can I log in to Facebook with an external identifier, without having a Facebook account? How can I add someone on Facebook as a friend, while maintaining my identity on another site? Until it can accomplish those basic things, it's less than a solution.

glhaynes 16y ago

It continues to be hard for me to envision what that would really look like in practice. I don't mean from a network typology standpoint; I mean how would it look in my browser?

michaelchisari 16y ago
Here is my Appleseed friends list: http://developer.appleseedproject.org/profile/michael.chisari/friends/ http://developer.appleseedproject.org/profile/michael.chisar... Keep in mind, this is beta software in active development, so you'll notice a few bugs here and there (and the live server is missing a major update I'm running locally).
- glhaynes 16y ago
  Thanks! I'm interested specifically in the day-to-day usage: the situations of signing up, finding/adding my friends, posting statuses, reading and commenting on other peoples', sharing media like photos, etc etc. So to start with a simple one: how does one add somebody else? Can you just search by name? I'm just having a bit of difficulty imagining how that sort of thing would work well in a truly distributed, federated way. But I haven't done much thought on it so I'm interested to hear.
  - michaelchisari 16y ago
    If you'd like, you can get an Appleseed invite. Send an email to invite@appleseedproject.org and I'll send you one back right away (this is open to anyone, by the way). You can sign up for the main beta test site (currently around 500 users). Searching is being worked on, that's coming in the next update, but yes, you just search by name (or other attributes). Distributed search is difficult, but only on the backend, on the frontend, it's similar to what you're used to. Only caveat is that it is not exactly real-time, and is more like a P2P search than a google search. Once you find someone you're looking for, you identify yourself to their site by remotely logging in. This is as simple as giving your ID, which looks like an email address (username@domain). Then you click "Add as friend", and they're sent a friend request. When they approve it, you are mutual friends. You can post stuff to your "page" (what appleseed calls your wall), and an update will be sent to your friends list. You upload a photo, and an update shows up in your friends lists newsfeeds. They click on the thumbnail and it takes them to your photo album on your home node, etc. Some other distributed social networking sites are breaking from convention in a lot of ways, but Appleseed's goal is to try and make it work as much like the current systems people are used to as possible. Certain growing pains are inevitable, but so far it's pretty similar after the first couple minutes.
    - glhaynes 16y ago
      Perfect, thanks! I wish you guys luck.
- wyclif 16y ago
  I'm glad to see that it's under the GNU license, are there invites?
  - michaelchisari 16y ago
    Send an email to invite@appleseedproject.org and I'll send you an invite.
    - wyclif 16y ago
      Thanks, Michael. I'm liking what I'm seeing here.

dominostars 16y ago

> If there exists the ability to move between social networks while maintaining your social graph Facebook Connect accomplishes most of what you want here. At least, it could.

michaelchisari 16y ago
Except that's a thoroughly one-directional approach. How can I log in to Facebook with an external identifier, without having a Facebook account? How can I add someone on Facebook as a friend, while maintaining my identity on another site? Until it can accomplish those basic things, it's less than a solution.