social networking

Redanyway, a distributed social network

Redanyway is one of a number of distributed social networks that is beginning to emerge. Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect. It was Techcrunch'd last week so more people are likely to have seen it now.
As TechCrunch says, it's a bit like "MyBlogLog on steroids". The concept of followers etc. is now more widely known from both MyBlogLog, Twitter, and so on. The "asymmetric follow" concept -- where people can be fans / followers / etc. is a good one, as it actually allows scale ... as opposed to Facebook, where both sides have to confirm a connection (and why they have groups and pages which are asymmetric).
Like the other systems, it's currently widget / plugin based. Here is the widget embbeded in this post -- I may end up adding it to a sidebar on the site here as I experiment with Google and Facebook's offerings. MyBlogLog? Yeah, that widget is gone (another Yahoo early lead squandered...). Does anyone actively use MyBlogLog these days?

var ra_no_of_membrs = 12;
var ra_aboutme = 0;
var ra_following = 1;
var ra_style = "adapt";

Ultimately, my issue with these systems is that they don't semi-permeably integrate into any existing community. I define community pretty narrowly: sites that actually support full account logins with some level of customization that you can do once you have an account. That leaves out most blogging only platforms (e.g. WordPress), but includes larger Drupal sites that allow and encourage . I'm especially interested to see how BuddyPress (a beta release today, I believe) might play into this space.
We do have the component tech pieces to build this distributed system -- OAuth, OpenID, and so on. But, we don't have great UIs nor great uses cases that make people want to use this functionality today. It's going to be interesting to see how this space evolves. Scobleizer calls it the "war over your blog's friends".

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Distributed Social Networking

I didn't get nearly as much time (hardly any!) to talk to Ton Zylstra at BarCamp Amsterdam as I would have liked to. He's continuing the conversation on his blog, with this post about P2P social networking:

I would like to have a true peer to peer social networking platform. Also I'd like to have my own spiders and agents.

FOAF isn't ready for this kind of thing I think, but we might look to an existing p2p infrastructure like Skype to be a carrier. Boris Mann pretty much repeatedly said Jabber can do anything during BarCamp, and seemed to be only half joking. Ton's Interdependent Thoughts: How to Get P2P Social Networking

You're right, Ton, I was only half joking. I think real time is very important. If the "IM Wars" have shown us anything, it's that we need to have common standards and formats. For XML message passing, including IM, Jabber is the answer to this (and might be the answer for voice and video as well, but I've got more to write about this later).