----- Original message ----- Ted Smith wrote: > Right now, I would say that the biggest hole in the free network service > landscape is Facebook. The Free World needs to fill that hole as quickly > as possible. There are a myriad of attempts that have been made to fill > that hole, and so far all of them have failed. Even within the anarchist > community, the AGPL'd app Crabgrass at we.riseup.net hasn't been widely > used, and it was created specifically to be a facebook replacement for > social justice activism. We need to succeed.
I'd hazard a guess that one of the reasons we.riseup.net hasn't been widely used, without knowing anything about it, is that it's described as a "facebook replacement for social justice activism." One of the reasons for Facebook's success is that it's a general purpose site. A niche social networking site is naturally going to have a very hard time competing... BUT I think that's one of the most exciting things about Matt's proposal. It would give niche social networking sites a chance by really allowing them to interface with a broader network of social networking services. That's really cool and could be really empowering. It'd be worth a deeper look at Open Social though, in terms of what it gets right, what it gets wrong or misses, and why it really hasn't been very successful. Not sure what my point is... just throwing a few thoughts out for smarter and more experienced people to pick apart, build on or dismiss...
