Could Open Source Render Facebook the Next AOL? 293
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the can't-happen-fast-enough dept.
from the can't-happen-fast-enough dept.
joabj writes "Now that Facebook has amassed more than 500 million users, a growing number of open source social networking developers are wondering if Facebook's photo sharing, status updates and other features wouldn't work better as Internet-wide standardized services. At the OSCON conference last week, the head of Identi.ca, an open source Twitter-like microblogging service, likened today's social networking services to the enormously proprietary online services of the early 1990s, like AOL or Prodigy. He suggested that just like SMTP and Sendmail standardized what were previously propriety e-mail services, so too could open source social networking stacks, like OStatus, render walled garden services like Facebook obsolete."
Great, open standards (Score:4, Informative)
Throwing insults at open source gets you +5 on Slashdot - I'd never thought I'd see the day.
If you want an example of an open source social networking site, take a look at Livejournal [livejournal.com]. Are you seriously telling me that the closed source Facebook is a better website than Livejournal? The UI is far better than Facebook, it's easy to use and doesn't have bugs, plenty of documentation, and was doing all this long before Facebook.
Aside from your comments being false (I use Windows personally, but I tried Ubuntu recently and found it worked and looked just fine; I didn't even need documenation), you're missing the point. This is more about open standards than open source as such. If you bother to RTFA:
Just like open standards for e-mail and the Web broke users free from proprietary closed networks of the early 1990s, so too could a new set of standards allow people to share their thoughts, photos and comments across the Internet, regardless of what social networking services they use
It's clear that it's more about open standards, than necessarily open source alternatives. If there were open standards, yes there'd be a load more "Facebooks", but closed source sites would still be free to make use of them - just as we have closed source email clients. So even if you believed that giving away source somehow made an application terrible, you'd still be okay.
I take it you must absolutely hate email then, because that's based on open standards like SMTP? Obviously all email clients must have terrible UIs, no documentation, and be a pain to install, by your logic...
Re:Too late (Score:4, Informative)
Try trillian. They have a facebook plugin.
Re:Too late (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately part of the Terms of Service of the Facebook API prevents storage of data received through the API on a remote source.
Re:Too late (Score:4, Informative)
As does pidgin - because Facebook now supports open standards:
http://www.facebook.com/sitetour/chat.php [facebook.com]
Re:Something will topple Facebook... (Score:1, Informative)
The technical term for a bound volume is a codex. Both codices and scrolls are books.
Re:Too late (Score:5, Informative)
Neither Trillian nor Pidgin allow one to communicate with Facebook users without becoming a Facebook user oneself.
Re:Too late (Score:2, Informative)
Yep. I don't have a Facebook account, primarily because I don't care for the way it seems to swallow up the lives of its users. However, I and most of my friends use Skype, which works elegantly as a combination of IM and VOIP. Skype makes it clear when one is or is not available to be contacted, so no-one has to get huffy about whether or not you've seen such-and-such a Facebook message or email.
I'm not about to apologise for such an old-school approach - but it does help me define clearly how much I'm ready to let the internet intrude in my life..