On 24 Apr 2010, at 21:54, Henry Litwhiler wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On 04/24/2010 01:23 PM, Story Henry wrote: >> A good article, on the problem with centralised social networks. >> >> http://thefastertimes.com/mediaandtech/2010/04/22/my-facebook-problem-and-yours/ >> >> Henry >> >> http://bblfish.net/ >> >> >> > > Nice article, indeed. > > One thing that is important for us to take from this article is the bit > on verification and organization. We want to avoid creating a > MySpace-like network where everything is chaotic and disorganized, and > ascertaining the validity of any user's identity is rather difficult.
Yes, this is very good point. The best way to achieve this, in my opinions is again to think of Linked Data. The HTML front end can be human readable, and as such everyone can have their own visual persona on the web, which could be somewhat awkward in some circumstances as people move from one web page to the other. The MySpace effect. But that is not at all incompatible with the possibility of everyone having their own client that gives a harmonious view over the subset of LinkedData that interests them. This is what the Address Book I wrote a few years ago does for foaf. https://sommer.dev.java.net/AddressBook.html A lot of work can be done on that still. I did not pursue it because at the time I felt that foaf+ssl was even more important to overcome the biggest resistance to it. Henry > > Even as we move towards a decentralized social networking model, we must > keep in mind users' desires to keep their contacts organized, and to be > able to verify the identity of their contacts. I think that it might be > a good idea to look into creating a sort of web of trust scheme to keep > contacts verified and organized. > > - -- > Henry L.
