Last night I received a "google+ link", something about a conversation etc etc.. I was assuming that even though I don't have a google account I could probably read and maybe even participate in the conversation. Not. I was obnoxiously invited to create a gaccount.

This morning I followed a friend's link to an article on google+, it says that google+ will force facebook to be more open to other platforms. Of course the previous experience showed me that I will absolutely need a gaccount before touching anything.

First reaction to the article is, IF and really IF google does anything to "open" other online social networks then we must note that they are very far from being the first to help. Just the fact that it is not by default designed from ground up on that basis is already a problem. Actually, I don't see any mention of their platform even remotely wanting to be capable of interacting with other servers (Alert: could be wrong).

For me the projects that will have had anything to do with opening anything up are:

• GNUSocial and StatusNet
• Friendika (used to be Mistpark)
• CrabGrass
• Diaspora

Finally Diaspora is ready, after 3 months and 200 000 dollars it is finally ready for pre pre alpha beta alpha testing. It seems they have kept it to the strict minimum, I mean no extra features, plugins or add-ons or fancy poking beer racing card games, I like that. So after installing about millions of software and then starting the server I logged in and found that basically nothing works, then some things did work, and then uploading photos did not and then with some browsers weird things happen. I think there has been alot of work on the interface.. . maybe that could be a problem.

This still led me to wonder what else has been going on, and after stumbling on jappix and appleseed I found the truth, of course, that is where my search should have started: GNU-Social. I am going to say that I did not see the benefit of projects like StatusNet until now. They have developed ways to connect nodes. Without having to open extra ports and install half of the internet and steal CPU.. This is like Diaspora but in Php/Mysql ! You can sign up, upload photos and connect with other instances of GNU-Social. So you don't have to build a dedicated (v)server just for this to reserve certain ports and block others etc (and keep your other systems clean), all you need is a basic LAMP setup.. . I like. (it's still in beta but it works.)

With all these open/free projects, some even a bit old, I do still think we can has cheeseburger one of these days.

/addon:
I just realised today why I was not getting anything from the mailing list I signed up to. Because the real mailing list is somewhere else, it's on.. google mailing lists !

A few years back I heard quite a few times things like "What do I need a website for ?", some would add things like "Why would I ever post photos of my last vacation, family and/or pets online ?". Today, almost everyone I know has a social network profile (orkut, friendster, myspace, facebook, twitter, etc etc). Of course there is one major difference; Everything is neatly centralised and completely out of the control of those who create all the content. A few side effects are:

• Communications between 2 peers always goes through a third party (and their sometimes partners) system, and stays there
• Loss of publishing freedom
• Limited formats/method of communication (videos, image sizes, things like that)
• Censorship
• Terms of service - nobody ever reads this stuff ! Why ?
• Copyright issues - because this is not a private space and we must all obey United States laws
• Targeted advertisement, because of course it is not free (IMHO having advertisements in a "private" space can be slightly annoying)
• Personal data and anything you do on the site can be used for marketing studies.. up to you to weigh the good/bad

So what now ? Well this situation has created a need for something more Internet-relevant and voilà, 4 guys have decided to dedicate their summer vacation to creating an open platform that will allow people to be their own part of the social web. The idea is to provide a CMS type application that people can install wherever they want, just like a personal web site. This means you would have control over your stuff and communications would not go through a central 3rd party service and get read/analysed, altered, moderated, censored or any such thing.

This is not even about being against social networking sites but more about the limits of their design, a commercial website must follow rules/laws/regulations etc, in short they have to take some responsibility for the published content as well as the interactions between users of their service. Of course you can (and should) also add the fact that the main interest of most (if not all) of these social networking sites is revenue by advertisement, this kind of means that the user is not the real client and hence is not the most cared for.

Because each node runs completely independently the whole network is never directly connected, meaning if you wish you may completely isolate your node from the public eye, restrict access to it to specific nodes or even run a set of nodes on a private network for some kind of intranetish activities.

This project should hit the first usable stage somewhere in September so stay tuned to: Joindiaspora.com.