Years ago Circle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(file_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(file_system)) had a distributed news system cal

Years ago Circle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(file_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(file_system)) had a distributed news system call gossip. It pretty much operated as a trust network. You'd pull down gossip from people you knew and republish it (if you chose) along with a trust metric. These days I'd probably go for something RESTful in website form. The trick would be to clearly define the various roles and make it easy for people to slot in and build compatible parts of the network. Then pump in the hype.