I really like the idea of Scuttlebutt. I think there are a couple of things it needs on top of what it already has; Right now, your public key is who you are,

I really like the idea of Scuttlebutt. I think there are a couple of things it needs on top of what it already has; Right now, your public key is who you are, which I think is a mistake. It's easy to imagine a world where we have a "web of trust" solution here, where you can scan someone's public key from a QR code straight off their phone, and then sign said key so other people who trust you know that the key is legit. Then you could use that key to sign future keys, allowing easy key rotation. It would also be easy to post a message signed with your private key that revokes a key and all messages it has authored/all keys it has signed. I also think there needs to be multiple transports for posting content - if I want to send a message to my buddy Dan, I should be able to send it directly to him if he's online. If he isn't, though, I should be able to let other users whom we both know grab a copy to pass on to him later, or maybe have a "deaddrop" server or a "pub" where I can stash messages and have them get picked up by someone else later. It needs a top-notch client, too. Something to compete with Facebook and Twitter. But it's a very promising start, and it's the way this needs to go if we're ever going to escape the surveillance players in this industry - we need a social network that's truly distributed, based on open standards that anyone can implement.