A decentralized social networking platform

Dave Winer makes an astute observation about social networks. (Also see the discussion on Techmeme)

Eventually, soon I think, we’ll see an explosive unbundling of the services that make up social networks. What was centralized in the form of Facebook, Linked-in, even YouTube, is going to blow up and reconstitute itself. How exactly it will happen is something the historians can argue about 25 years from now. It hasn’t happened yet, but it will, unless the rules of technology evolution have been repealed (and they haven’t, trust me). Permalink to this paragraph

I have been thinking about this for sometime now. I am not happy with the centralized form of social networking sites like facebook. I am fascinated by Marc Canter’s idea of Digital Lifestyle Aggregator which doesn’t lock you into a single system. Thatz why I liked his PeopleAggregator networking system. My hunch feeling tells me that the future of social networking is an open standards based decentralized networks in the People Agrregator mould, with something like OpenID being the single point of entry needed to connect with people. Facebook is an amazing platform. There is no doubt about it. I am excited about their platform, which can be seen by the number of facebook related posts I have made. Still, there is something in me, the open source part of me, which tells me that facebook could be the next Microsoft or the hundreds of other companies, that lock you into their product. We need a decentralized social networks based on open standards. After all, what we have in Facebook or Myspace, are our friends. They are fruits of our time. We should be able to take them anywhere we go at any time we want. Marc Canter may be too early in his idea of open standards based social networking or the “old age” can be attributed, by others, to Dave Winer for making a hypothesis like the one above. But the social networking platform, in its current form, cannot serve the needs of our society. We needed a Microsoft to understand the importance of open source and open standards. Probably, Myspace and Facebook (to some extent), will provide us the “Microsoft” of the social networking world. I can show a simple analogy from the real life to drive home the ideas of Marc Canter and Dave Winer. People go to various community events to socialize but they could also stay at home and socialize with their friends, from the convenience of their home. Similarly, I might be heading over to Facebook to socialize but I should also be able to socialize, in the same way, from my blog or my website. This is where decentralized services and OpenID kinda authentication mechanisms play a pivotal role. I agree with Marc Canter when he says that we need to take our friends with us wherever we go. I also agree with Dave Winer when he says that the centralized system like Facebook or Linked-In will blow up and result in explosive unbundling of (decentralized) services that make up social networks.