6 ms·

There is an Open Source Rival to Facebook: WordPress

82 points by ekaln 14y ago

mgkimsal 14y ago
jetpack and buddypress together would seem to give you a distributed-facebook experience.
- ekaln 14y ago
  True, and BuddyPress has a history with Automattic. Even more simply, to create a powerful identity platform, they'd probably just need to improve the Public Profile area on WordPress.com. At the moment there's just First Name, Last Name, Public Display Name, About Us and Gravatar (another Automattic product and the key image identity platform for the web)
- jonnyscholes 14y ago
  Wordpress should take on Buyypress' profile information management system [xprofile], that would make Buddypress much more attractive imo. The fact that a user sees completely different information in the wp-admin dashboard from the data they entered into the Buddypress front end is very confusing and messy from a UX stand point.
webwanderings 14y ago
Give me a break. My family isn't using Wordpress and I don't see them use Wordpress in near or far future.
- ekaln 14y ago
  True, at the moment it's only site owners and WordPress.com bloggers who are really tapped into this network. We're talking about potential here. As more end-users features like comments get added to JetPack, the chance is there to entice more users like your family.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
hackNightly 14y ago
This is a very interesting analysis. It's one that I would've never thought of, but seems accurate. The fact that wordpress powers a great majority of sites would be a huge factor in their success at playing the "social" game. Funny, though, that most of those sites also incorporate FB "like" buttons. Good read.
k3n 14y ago
WordPress: PHP-Nuke for the new generation.
benatkin 14y ago
When you look at open and portable software for personal sites, as people in the Indie Web community do, WordPress is an obvious frontrunner. Facebook and WordPress started in very different places, but because they've expanded to provide a lot of tools for establishing an online presence, there is certainly some overlap. For instance, some businesses use their Facebook page as a blog. By the way if you like running your own site and can make it to Portland at the end of the month, consider going to http://indiewebcamp.com/ http://indiewebcamp.com/
LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago
I see the Jetpack plugin as a way for Automattic to get their tendrils into your self hosted blog. Installing the plugin integrates your blog in such a way that if you remove the plugin or otherwise detach your blog from wordpress.com a large portion of your data, such as all of your comments, is gone.
drcube 14y ago
I don't see how this is different from saying "The World Wide Web is the open source rival to Facebook". It's true. There isn't anything about Facebook you can't do with your own website. Facebook just centralizes it and makes it easier on the digitally challenged. It's the Geocities of the 21st century. And it too shall eventually crumble, while the Web continues on. Make it easy to host, set up, administer and link websites and you will have defeated Facebook. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. People have been trying for 20 years.
- JumpCrisscross 14y ago
  I read it more as Wordpress does Diaspora better than Diaspora than it as a serious competitor (without the open qualifier) to Facebook.
  - ekaln 14y ago
    Yes, that's huge part of it ... "stop talking about never-will-make-it projects like Diaspora" But there is a strong part of me that thinks WordPress could become a serious (although very different) competitor to Facebook.
    - rb12345 14y ago
      > But there is a strong part of me that thinks WordPress could become a serious (although very different) competitor to Facebook. I'm not sure that Wordpress will ever be a real competitor or replacement for Facebook, although Wordpress is pretty popular as it is today. Whatever "the next Facebook" turns out to be, it is unlikely to look anything much like Facebook! It will need to do one or two features well that Facebook does badly or not at all, and be a means to a particular end. For example, the original focus of Facebook was to share contact details and let people communicate about events within a relatively small group of people (students in specific universities). The interesting stuff happened elsewhere; the site merely allowed it to happen more easily. I don't think that an open/distributed clone of present-day Facebook is going to be enough, which rules out Diaspora and friends.
- 14y ago
paulsutter 14y ago
The pendulum does always swing away from a walled garden. The author makes a compelling case for Wordpress as a distributed and open potential social platform. Love to hear what Matt thinks about it.
- JumpCrisscross 14y ago
  »"The pendulum does always swing away from a walled garden" I sympathise with the sentiment expressed but must point out that there is no market force that prefers un-established open products to established walled gardens save for a fraction of hackers' tastes and preferences. Most people don't care, for rationally self-interested reasons, whether the product they use is open or closed as much as whether it works or not.
  - xtractinator 14y ago
    >>I sympathise with the sentiment expressed but must point out that there is no market force that prefers un-established open products to established walled gardens save for a fraction of hackers' tastes and preferences. Oh, yes there is, it's called change.
    - JumpCrisscross 14y ago
      The point isn't that established players are immortal. It is that the role of open v closed in that usurpation process is negligible. Closed systems overturn open systems just as much as the other way around (or closed v closed or open v open). Very few people outside hacker culture care whether what they use is open or closed.
  - paulsutter 14y ago
    I'm making a cathedral v bazaar argument. Openness itself is of little benefit to end users, but open systems have a potential for distributed evolution that's lacking in centrally planned systems I'm not predicting that Wordpress will supersede Facebook, but I do predict that something will eventually. Of all the alternatives known to me, Wordpress is a fascinating suggestion.
nchuhoai 14y ago
I think people on HN tend to forget that most people dont care about the technical requirements etc. The reason people use facebook because its usage is clear and defined for what its build. You go on Facebook to check in with your friends, see photos, chat/message. You just dont do it with a blog. It's like saying you could use paper towels as toilet paper. There is probably some overlap in functionality, but people clearly associate types of products with their specific use case
- herval 14y ago
  The analogy here would be more like using books as toilet paper....
  - nchuhoai 14y ago
    Indeed, I should step up my English skills
motters 14y ago
The main open source alternative to Facebook is Friendica. It has more features than Diaspora, encrypted communications, emphasis upon decentralization and you can install it easily on a LAMP stack. You don't have to settle for being data mined and sold by Mr Zuckerberg, or owned by the Communications Data Act.
dsirijus 14y ago
Sites aren't people. It's linking wp sites. Don't even see how this stands even in general concept of 'facebook rival'. Technically, it sounds plausible (?), but that's irrelevant.
- ekaln 14y ago
  Yes, it's plausible and that's the main thrust of the argument. I'm not even sure Matt M. has a clear idea of how the direction this might play out but it might be like this: - build a huge set of site running the same codebase (done) - start to connect them on the admin level (doing) - start to connect the on the user-facing level (starting)
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
naner 14y ago
I see we are continuing the tradition of shoe-horning WordPress into roles it was not designed for.
- zach 14y ago
  As I understand it, Emacs was originally a text editor.
- Terretta 14y ago
  Well, WordPress no, but BuddyPress yes.
- will_work4tears 14y ago
  You aren't a maker/hacker are you... edit: I should clarify - A LOT of people shoehorn many things into functions they aren't designed for.
- batista 14y ago
  That's one of the quintessential characteristics of invention and technological progress: using things for new functions they have not been designed for. You know, like using computers not to do math but to leave comments on a social news site.
jaaron 14y ago
The issue isn't publishing, or even selective publishing, it's smart aggregation. You'd still need a solution like a feed reader or a site like FriendFeed. And even then, you don't have the interactivity of FB with the ability to "like" content, comment, and tag. It's the content that brings people to FB, the opportunity to see who's up to what, look at funny photos and chat and gossip with friends.
kijin 14y ago
The author seems to conflate WordPress the software and WordPress.com the service. > You control the source code. You can easily export your site from WordPress.com and take your site with you. Only if you download WordPress from wordpress.org and install it on your own server (or shared hosting account). The dot-com version contains a lot of proprietary code. > WordPress.com has already become a login option on many different websites. Only if you opt to host your blog with them. WordPress.com is a great service, but hosting your blog there is mutually incompatible with having complete control over the source code. Besides, half the WordPress sites out there are self-hosted, and WordPress.com logins don't work there. Some of the features the article mentions, like JetPack, may be available for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs. But that's just comments. There is no meaningful aggregation between WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs when it comes to posts and pictures. Until there's an easy way to follow a lot of WordPress blogs no matter where they're hosted (hello, RSS), it will be difficult to make the argument that WordPress the software makes a promising social networking platform. What we really need if we want a distributed and open-source social networking platform is improved interaction between independent sites. Not with newfangled stacks like Diaspora, but something that can be slapped onto any existing blog, microblog, or photo sharing service as a plugin (again, think RSS but much more powerful). Why limit your network to WordPress.com users, or even all WordPress users? Give me a common API that lets me follow folks on WordPress.com, DeviantArt, and Pinterest at the same time, a gem that I can add to my Rails-based blog to support this API, and a nice open-source client that ordinary people can use to access all that data. If a few companies like Mozilla and WordPress.com started collaborating on this, it would be a thousand times more viable than Diaspora can ever be.
- dbh937 14y ago
  I agree with you, but I think the author is trying to get at what WordPress _can_ do, not what is currently in place.
  - ekaln 14y ago
    Yes, very much so. This post was about the cards that Automattic hold in their hands and really is just one idea about how they could play them.
danso 14y ago
Sorry but this just seems to miss the point of how Facevook bested competitors that, in theory, covered the same ground as FB did (Friendster, MySpace, xanga, etc). Execution is as important as e idea...and FB, by focusing on a narrow band of features and customization, created a service that was easy to use and addictive. Nothing about Wordpress or the plugins required to get it to FB functionality will match this. This is like saying that WP is the open-source alternative to Titter, except that you can write more than 140 characters and even add photos/tables/anything...Twitter is more than just a text and newsfeed platform
kcbanner 14y ago
Nope.
sadlyNess 14y ago
<$0.02> Android not WordPress</0.02> Its not about Open 'source' but simply 'open'. Weak proof of this is the Facebook Phone rumors a while ago. What if FB could at this stage own Android? FB wants/needs hardware presence for longer term. Too bad Google is too focussed on "Social" as defined by FB.

82 points by ekaln 14y ago

mgkimsal 14y ago

jetpack and buddypress together would seem to give you a distributed-facebook experience.

ekaln 14y ago
True, and BuddyPress has a history with Automattic. Even more simply, to create a powerful identity platform, they'd probably just need to improve the Public Profile area on WordPress.com. At the moment there's just First Name, Last Name, Public Display Name, About Us and Gravatar (another Automattic product and the key image identity platform for the web)
jonnyscholes 14y ago
Wordpress should take on Buyypress' profile information management system [xprofile], that would make Buddypress much more attractive imo. The fact that a user sees completely different information in the wp-admin dashboard from the data they entered into the Buddypress front end is very confusing and messy from a UX stand point.

webwanderings 14y ago

Give me a break. My family isn't using Wordpress and I don't see them use Wordpress in near or far future.

ekaln 14y ago
True, at the moment it's only site owners and WordPress.com bloggers who are really tapped into this network. We're talking about potential here. As more end-users features like comments get added to JetPack, the chance is there to entice more users like your family.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

hackNightly 14y ago

This is a very interesting analysis. It's one that I would've never thought of, but seems accurate. The fact that wordpress powers a great majority of sites would be a huge factor in their success at playing the "social" game. Funny, though, that most of those sites also incorporate FB "like" buttons. Good read.

k3n 14y ago

WordPress: PHP-Nuke for the new generation.

benatkin 14y ago

When you look at open and portable software for personal sites, as people in the Indie Web community do, WordPress is an obvious frontrunner. Facebook and WordPress started in very different places, but because they've expanded to provide a lot of tools for establishing an online presence, there is certainly some overlap. For instance, some businesses use their Facebook page as a blog. By the way if you like running your own site and can make it to Portland at the end of the month, consider going to http://indiewebcamp.com/ http://indiewebcamp.com/

LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago

I see the Jetpack plugin as a way for Automattic to get their tendrils into your self hosted blog. Installing the plugin integrates your blog in such a way that if you remove the plugin or otherwise detach your blog from wordpress.com a large portion of your data, such as all of your comments, is gone.

drcube 14y ago

I don't see how this is different from saying "The World Wide Web is the open source rival to Facebook". It's true. There isn't anything about Facebook you can't do with your own website. Facebook just centralizes it and makes it easier on the digitally challenged. It's the Geocities of the 21st century. And it too shall eventually crumble, while the Web continues on. Make it easy to host, set up, administer and link websites and you will have defeated Facebook. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. People have been trying for 20 years.

JumpCrisscross 14y ago
I read it more as Wordpress does Diaspora better than Diaspora than it as a serious competitor (without the open qualifier) to Facebook.
- ekaln 14y ago
  Yes, that's huge part of it ... "stop talking about never-will-make-it projects like Diaspora" But there is a strong part of me that thinks WordPress could become a serious (although very different) competitor to Facebook.
  - rb12345 14y ago
    > But there is a strong part of me that thinks WordPress could become a serious (although very different) competitor to Facebook. I'm not sure that Wordpress will ever be a real competitor or replacement for Facebook, although Wordpress is pretty popular as it is today. Whatever "the next Facebook" turns out to be, it is unlikely to look anything much like Facebook! It will need to do one or two features well that Facebook does badly or not at all, and be a means to a particular end. For example, the original focus of Facebook was to share contact details and let people communicate about events within a relatively small group of people (students in specific universities). The interesting stuff happened elsewhere; the site merely allowed it to happen more easily. I don't think that an open/distributed clone of present-day Facebook is going to be enough, which rules out Diaspora and friends.
14y ago

paulsutter 14y ago

The pendulum does always swing away from a walled garden. The author makes a compelling case for Wordpress as a distributed and open potential social platform. Love to hear what Matt thinks about it.

JumpCrisscross 14y ago
»"The pendulum does always swing away from a walled garden" I sympathise with the sentiment expressed but must point out that there is no market force that prefers un-established open products to established walled gardens save for a fraction of hackers' tastes and preferences. Most people don't care, for rationally self-interested reasons, whether the product they use is open or closed as much as whether it works or not.
- xtractinator 14y ago
  >>I sympathise with the sentiment expressed but must point out that there is no market force that prefers un-established open products to established walled gardens save for a fraction of hackers' tastes and preferences. Oh, yes there is, it's called change.
  - JumpCrisscross 14y ago
    The point isn't that established players are immortal. It is that the role of open v closed in that usurpation process is negligible. Closed systems overturn open systems just as much as the other way around (or closed v closed or open v open). Very few people outside hacker culture care whether what they use is open or closed.
- paulsutter 14y ago
  I'm making a cathedral v bazaar argument. Openness itself is of little benefit to end users, but open systems have a potential for distributed evolution that's lacking in centrally planned systems I'm not predicting that Wordpress will supersede Facebook, but I do predict that something will eventually. Of all the alternatives known to me, Wordpress is a fascinating suggestion.

nchuhoai 14y ago

I think people on HN tend to forget that most people dont care about the technical requirements etc. The reason people use facebook because its usage is clear and defined for what its build. You go on Facebook to check in with your friends, see photos, chat/message. You just dont do it with a blog. It's like saying you could use paper towels as toilet paper. There is probably some overlap in functionality, but people clearly associate types of products with their specific use case

herval 14y ago
The analogy here would be more like using books as toilet paper....
- nchuhoai 14y ago
  Indeed, I should step up my English skills

motters 14y ago

The main open source alternative to Facebook is Friendica. It has more features than Diaspora, encrypted communications, emphasis upon decentralization and you can install it easily on a LAMP stack. You don't have to settle for being data mined and sold by Mr Zuckerberg, or owned by the Communications Data Act.

dsirijus 14y ago

Sites aren't people. It's linking wp sites. Don't even see how this stands even in general concept of 'facebook rival'. Technically, it sounds plausible (?), but that's irrelevant.

ekaln 14y ago
Yes, it's plausible and that's the main thrust of the argument. I'm not even sure Matt M. has a clear idea of how the direction this might play out but it might be like this: - build a huge set of site running the same codebase (done) - start to connect them on the admin level (doing) - start to connect the on the user-facing level (starting)
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

naner 14y ago

I see we are continuing the tradition of shoe-horning WordPress into roles it was not designed for.

zach 14y ago
As I understand it, Emacs was originally a text editor.
Terretta 14y ago
Well, WordPress no, but BuddyPress yes.
will_work4tears 14y ago
You aren't a maker/hacker are you... edit: I should clarify - A LOT of people shoehorn many things into functions they aren't designed for.
batista 14y ago
That's one of the quintessential characteristics of invention and technological progress: using things for new functions they have not been designed for. You know, like using computers not to do math but to leave comments on a social news site.

jaaron 14y ago

The issue isn't publishing, or even selective publishing, it's smart aggregation. You'd still need a solution like a feed reader or a site like FriendFeed. And even then, you don't have the interactivity of FB with the ability to "like" content, comment, and tag. It's the content that brings people to FB, the opportunity to see who's up to what, look at funny photos and chat and gossip with friends.

kijin 14y ago

The author seems to conflate WordPress the software and WordPress.com the service. > You control the source code. You can easily export your site from WordPress.com and take your site with you. Only if you download WordPress from wordpress.org and install it on your own server (or shared hosting account). The dot-com version contains a lot of proprietary code. > WordPress.com has already become a login option on many different websites. Only if you opt to host your blog with them. WordPress.com is a great service, but hosting your blog there is mutually incompatible with having complete control over the source code. Besides, half the WordPress sites out there are self-hosted, and WordPress.com logins don't work there. Some of the features the article mentions, like JetPack, may be available for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs. But that's just comments. There is no meaningful aggregation between WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs when it comes to posts and pictures. Until there's an easy way to follow a lot of WordPress blogs no matter where they're hosted (hello, RSS), it will be difficult to make the argument that WordPress the software makes a promising social networking platform. What we really need if we want a distributed and open-source social networking platform is improved interaction between independent sites. Not with newfangled stacks like Diaspora, but something that can be slapped onto any existing blog, microblog, or photo sharing service as a plugin (again, think RSS but much more powerful). Why limit your network to WordPress.com users, or even all WordPress users? Give me a common API that lets me follow folks on WordPress.com, DeviantArt, and Pinterest at the same time, a gem that I can add to my Rails-based blog to support this API, and a nice open-source client that ordinary people can use to access all that data. If a few companies like Mozilla and WordPress.com started collaborating on this, it would be a thousand times more viable than Diaspora can ever be.

dbh937 14y ago
I agree with you, but I think the author is trying to get at what WordPress _can_ do, not what is currently in place.
- ekaln 14y ago
  Yes, very much so. This post was about the cards that Automattic hold in their hands and really is just one idea about how they could play them.

danso 14y ago

Sorry but this just seems to miss the point of how Facevook bested competitors that, in theory, covered the same ground as FB did (Friendster, MySpace, xanga, etc). Execution is as important as e idea...and FB, by focusing on a narrow band of features and customization, created a service that was easy to use and addictive. Nothing about Wordpress or the plugins required to get it to FB functionality will match this. This is like saying that WP is the open-source alternative to Titter, except that you can write more than 140 characters and even add photos/tables/anything...Twitter is more than just a text and newsfeed platform

kcbanner 14y ago

Nope.

sadlyNess 14y ago

<$0.02> Android not WordPress</0.02> Its not about Open 'source' but simply 'open'. Weak proof of this is the Facebook Phone rumors a while ago. What if FB could at this stage own Android? FB wants/needs hardware presence for longer term. Too bad Google is too focussed on "Social" as defined by FB.