I feel like the technical challenges involved in a distributed social network that the author mentions -- keeping profile views secret, for example -- could easily be overcome if the network were implemented over an encrypted layer such as TOR.
Wikipedia has a list of distributed social networking projects [1], many of which support such encryption. I suppose the problem then becomes one of adoption more than anything else. I could see the latency issues associated with encryption and anonymization being an issue in this respect. It's another Catch-22.
I suspect the only thing that can dethrone Facebook will be a significant event that will trigger a mass exodus.
Edit: After reading through the site a bit, it seems that Friendica [2] is indeed production ready. They definitely need some better marketing.
1 comment
[ 549 ms ] story [ 431 ms ] threadI feel like the technical challenges involved in a distributed social network that the author mentions -- keeping profile views secret, for example -- could easily be overcome if the network were implemented over an encrypted layer such as TOR.
Wikipedia has a list of distributed social networking projects [1], many of which support such encryption. I suppose the problem then becomes one of adoption more than anything else. I could see the latency issues associated with encryption and anonymization being an issue in this respect. It's another Catch-22.
I suspect the only thing that can dethrone Facebook will be a significant event that will trigger a mass exodus.
Edit: After reading through the site a bit, it seems that Friendica [2] is indeed production ready. They definitely need some better marketing.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_social_network
[2] http://friendica.com/