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social media

Good Luck With That

May 12, 2010 14:31:04.000

I linked to this story about an attempt to create a "distributed Facebook" earlier, but I was making a different point about privacy. When I really got into the article, I noticed this:

As they describe it, the Diaspora* software will let users set up their own personal servers, called seeds, create their own hubs and fully control the information they share. Mr. Sofaer says that centralized networks like Facebook are not necessary.

Umm, sure. First, your ISP probably forbids you from running a server of that nature (nevermind whether it should be that way; it is). Second, setting up your own VPS, while easier than it once was, is not for the faint of heart. I documented my efforts here; unless they plan to ship a preconfigured VM for deployment (complete with Apache configuration), then this will catch fire with a handful of tinkerers, and no one else.

What makes Facebook work is that it's simple. This effort might be some things, but simple won't be one of them.

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posted by James Robertson

Comments

Re: Good Luck With That

[anonymous] May 13, 2010 8:56:19.797

Perhaps you've heard of Opera Unite - a simple Server provided by that browser in terms of services. While I am not sure whether this approach would work for something like Facebook, I see several other applications which do work.

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