Decentralized Social Networks

Seems that Loic once again brought a good discussion to the house that we have been having several times over though under the name of Open Social Graph. Where does my social graph reside, whom does it belong to? I am writing more and more about this first of all because it is a subject dear to my heard, second I am in lots of discussion with Dirk, one of Ormigo’s developers, about it, and third, it is relevant to what we do within Ormigo in terms of the long term vision.

What Loic really wants is already available through e.g. Noserub. The tools is only a side project but it is getting more and more attention and due to the fact that it is open-source, you can just install it on your server. id.thylmann.net/othylmann is my account on my own Noserub Server for example. I’m likely moving that soon, because the fun thing is that all the data belongs to you, you can ex- and import it, and you can add friends simply through adding any of their URLs. In the end it is all about the Data Portability that Michael talks about in his Techcrunch Post.

Noserub is just an example implementation of what it will mean in the end. Being able to port around your data, adding friends through URLs with the help of Google’s Open Social API, and more. And you can create special RSS Feeds within Noserub allowing you to then put that RSS Feed on your blog. But the thing is that even though Loic now believes that he wants his Blog to be the center of his life again, I am not sure he means that. We still need some new Design to handle all our social life and display it for all to see. It’s too much content and actually, privacy is still something that we really need to care for.