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Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

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Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#21

Post by sandee »

Detrus wrote: post #15

Yea let's get an open alternative, a few years of coding, a few years of Facebook screwing up, a massive hatefest, and it will have 30% penetration in 2018. By then there will be new technologies that will make the issue irrelevant. Same as Linux and Firefox. By the time the community effort got it together, most of the effort was obsolete. Google's Chrome OS throws much of linux away. NativeClient sandboxing turns b…

> Same as Linux ... By the time the community effort got it together, most of the effort was obsolete

Care to explain, how all the effort in Linux was obsolute ? (And i am on Ubuntu Linux typing this reply)

Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#22

Post by derefr »

sandee wrote: post #21
Detrus wrote: post #15

Yea let's get an open alternative, a few years of coding, a few years of Facebook screwing up, a massive hatefest, and it will have 30% penetration in 2018. By then there will be new technologies that will make the issue irrelevant. Same as Linux and Firefox. By the time the community effort got it together, most of the effort was obsolete. Google's Chrome OS throws much of linux away. NativeClient sandboxing turns b…

> Same as Linux ... By the time the community effort got it together, most of the effort was obsolete Care to explain, how all the effort in Linux was obsolute ? (And i am on Ubuntu Linux typing this reply)

I think he meant "most of the effort that went into a good userland GUI experience, from FreeDesktop et al" is wasted when your display is 100% filled by an HTML frame, ala ChromeOS. The Linux kernel is certainly not a waste.

Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#23

Post by mahmud »

Detrus wrote: post #15

Yea let's get an open alternative, a few years of coding, a few years of Facebook screwing up, a massive hatefest, and it will have 30% penetration in 2018. By then there will be new technologies that will make the issue irrelevant. Same as Linux and Firefox. By the time the community effort got it together, most of the effort was obsolete. Google's Chrome OS throws much of linux away. NativeClient sandboxing turns b…

FWIW, I have written a facebook clone in Common Lisp and took me 2 months. It has profile pages, a platform for 3rd party apps, elaborate RBAC-based security, and a rudimentary service API.

If anybody wants to take this in some direction, I am more than happy to come aboard.

Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#24

Post by anatta »

Detrus wrote: post #15

Yea let's get an open alternative, a few years of coding, a few years of Facebook screwing up, a massive hatefest, and it will have 30% penetration in 2018. By then there will be new technologies that will make the issue irrelevant. Same as Linux and Firefox. By the time the community effort got it together, most of the effort was obsolete. Google's Chrome OS throws much of linux away. NativeClient sandboxing turns b…

Interesting that you claim the efforts that have gone into developing Linux are now obsolete yet Chrome OS (which your offer will transcend "obsolete" Linux development) still depends on Linux as does a huge portion of the web.

Human progress is largely evolutionary and incremental. We stand on all that came before us. Facebook brought a new concept of interaction that has a downside many people are against. They address this by creating an alternative, and so goes history.

Progress is a dialog.

Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#25

Post by alanh »

Alex3917 wrote: post #5

"It’s time the rest of the web ecosystem recognizes this and works to replace it with something open and distributed." Before Facebook there was FOAF, which was exactly the same except for that it was open and distributed... And nobody used it. Being closed is the only thing that makes Facebook good.

FOAF is not a fair comparison. It meets only the "open and distributed" criterion. A Facebook replacement would, like the Wave protocol, allow users to chose a service as their delegate, and would not just be a way for nerds to mark up their meatspace and online-only friends.

Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#26

Post by alanh »

> I’d like to make my friend list private. Cannot.

> I’d like to have my profile visible only to my friends, not my boss. Cannot.

> I’d like to support an anti-abortion group without my mother or the world knowing. Cannot.

Great examples of what Facebook cannot do, and what the Facebook replacement must do.

Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#27

Post by wmf »

cookiecaper wrote: post #16

I've been thinking about doing some kind of distributed/open social network thing what with all the Facebook scandals cropping up, but it's pretty hard to do. The fact is for something like Facebook to function smoothly, it has to be centralized. There has to be a server somewhere out there that can be queried reliably for this data and that's the bottom line, even if you have something API-based like OpenSocial. It'…

The fact is for something like Facebook to function smoothly, it has to be centralized.

I hate to do this to you, but [citation needed].

for reasons all HN readers understand, [P2P] would be a huge, huge mess.

Count me as one HN reader who does not understand that. (But then, it's hard to get someone to understand something if his ideology depends on not understanding it...)

Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#28

Post by jasonlbaptiste »

facebook is now opt-out whereas it used to be opt-in. give me something like that with early 2006 facebook simplicity and id try it. ironically, ive always wanted a higher res community for the people here on HN. this might be the perfect seeding grounds for something to happen (early adopter, good sense of community, far reach,etc.)

Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#29

Post by c00p3r »

No way. You cannot attract so many people worldwide when the trend is already mature. The same with other mass hysterias like WoW, now the iPad, etc.

The Tipping Point is a good book to learn why not. In-browser social networks is a not a cool thing anymore. It is just some feature of the net.

What is really interesting - is an emerging market of the Android-powered devices. The hardware is powerful and cheap enough, and the platform is open and simple (unlike the Nokia's crap).

The next generation of the social communications should be something like "texting 2.0" - texting with easy integration of a rich content from phone's camera on the fly. Just because teens loves texting, taking photos and their mobile phones.

Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#30

Post by kingcub »

cookiecaper wrote: post #16

I've been thinking about doing some kind of distributed/open social network thing what with all the Facebook scandals cropping up, but it's pretty hard to do. The fact is for something like Facebook to function smoothly, it has to be centralized. There has to be a server somewhere out there that can be queried reliably for this data and that's the bottom line, even if you have something API-based like OpenSocial. It'…

What would be a mess about it? Couldn't we be clever enough to figure out how to do this with what we have?
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