Sorry for being so snarky, but I really don't think you make any valid/coherent point I could see. Let me make a counterpoint, maybe someone can find holes in i

Sorry for being so snarky, but I really don't think you make any valid/coherent point I could see. Let me make a counterpoint, maybe someone can find holes in it: Imagine Twitter supported OStatus.[1] Anything going on between users signed up on Twitter would be instant just as it is now. Twitter could still have ads, and it could justify those ads by offering great features (OStatus et. al don't tell you what you can do, after all, they just restrict what you can share with other apps that implement it), and great speed. Twitter users could then still subscribe to someone hosting their website from their crappy DSL connection; just those updates would be slower. And it would be up to that person to either get a really fast server, and/or pay for a CDN etc., or simply suffer the cost of the delay, and the fact that some people might not even subscribe to them because of that delay. [1] Now image GitHub supporting OStatus.. Wordpress, forum software, everything. Why not? Turns out the content aggregator IS THE INTERNET, and the people who "don't get it" are those who desperately try to see it as a pie that can and should be carved up. But you cannot fool all the people all the time, and by the chain of logical fallacies based on wrong claims/assumptions, I really wonder what audience this is even aimed at. Hackers, or people with money/eyeballs? We - and I don't mean "hackers", I mean most people if you asked the question straight - do not need or want middlemen for something as basic as communication or trust. That's what it boils down to. Just like everybody should be able to read and write and do basic math, everybody should at least have the option to have their own address on the web, without being forced into one of the gated communities. There is a hope for an ironic twist: should protocols and DIY take off, Facebook and Twitter and others better support RSS, OStatus etc; because otherwise they'll just have walled themselves into a tomb, while we play in the actual garden. After all, a garden is where exciting things can happen, where people play games for fun, where they build crappy things with stones and branches and leaves, and where it's boring most of the time - in contrast, the alley is where people mistake drug addiction for fun, the mall where they mistake consumption for creativity, and the whorehouse is where the fun never stops. I know where I'd rather be. (no offense to prostitutes intended, I'm just running out of metaphors) To finish my rant: in the wake of the app.net enthusiasm I often read that even 10000 users would be great if those were "the right people". Well, I will not ever be able to get to know, much less dedicate time to, even a 1000 people. So give me a network of 10000 people who are willing to read manuals and fiddle, if they can keep their independence and dignity that way. I don't mean hackers, I'll never be a good programmer myself; I mean people who are semi-intelligent and stubborn like me. People who write for themselves, not for audiences, who not only don't care what's on TV, who don't even know. That's enough. A person in a rented apartment must be able to lean out of his window and scrape off the masonry within arm's reach. And he must be allowed to take a long brush and paint everything outside within arm's reach. So that it will be visible from afar to everyone in the street that someone lives there who is different from the imprisoned, enslaved, standardised man who lives next door. -- Friedensreich Hundertwasser