Owning your data is the only way to keep "other people" from owning your data! A distributed F2F (friend to friend) graph of nodes (people) in which every node (person) has the "software" to connect with the other nodes and share information with their social graph.
The hard part there is securing it. But, with an underlying framework (like http://gnunet.org) that handles anonymized, F2F, and encrypted network topology you can build a "distributed facebook" that can share photos - events - stories - timelines - videos - &c... The cool part about software like that is the individual user is in 100% control (if it's open-source) of their data and what is done with it (want to share that sexy-time video with just your gf?).
GNUnet is a viable solution at this point because the project is building an open-source framework that handles the really hard features of a distributed, secure, and anonymous F2F (or P2P if you want, but that's less securable) stack on-top of the network stack. With GNUnet, all you need is to build the "features" on-top of it - the other cool thing about it too is that it would be a desktop application (not through the browser).
There are other issues to overcome with such an implementation, but, in short that is how you would do Facebook the "alternative" way. It's how Diaspora is "trying" to do it (without much success because the underlying network topology and security is a very difficult problem).
Yes. I know a bit (not much) around the principle of distributed soc nets. I have a diaspora account, but not much is happening there, partly because they are very few features (no chats, no photo app...).
This system is interesting, but maybe an alternative solution would be needed? Frenzy is the kind of idea I'm thinking about... It has flows, but it seems much more doable - builds on another network, but could possibly be platform agnostic (what about a Frenzy working on Ubuntu cloud or even directly on AWS?). Something with few features, but exciting like Twitter.
Maybe I am wrong... It seems to me that the biggest problem here isn't to have a minimalist app running, but rather getting the critical mass joining. Feel free to comment :)
That doesn't solve the "casino security" issue though - unless you prevent people from discovering who your friends are. Which is also possible on facebook. The point is to be able to share the information, that's what facebook is for.
This whole story to me seems like "chainsaws the most appalling mutilation machine ever created", whilst that might be true [I doubt it] they're just a tool and one is at liberty to choose to use the tool how one wishes (within the confines of its locus of potential operations obviously).
Good question. This is definitely a problem that requires a solid solution. My take on it would be to focus on the source. The web was meant to be a open platform. Given, the discrete requirement of social networks -- it would make sense to move to platforms like iPhone, Android or even the good old desktop. The design of the network needs to be much more smarter, as the entire logic of the app (finding & connecting to people, communicating with them, and exchanging files) would rest on the phone itself.
