Suqashing Facebook (WAS: Conducting GNHLUG business on Facebook (was Stop! Unix Time))

[Bill McGonigle]

On 02/02/2009 12:35 AM, VirginSnow at vfemail.net wrote:
>  Instead of
> hosting a Web site in order to host a Web site, people are putting
> "pages" on third-party services like Facebook.

Most people don't want websites, actually.  They want to share photos 
and prose with their friends.  Fewer still want to talk to everybody, 
and there are hosted blogging sites for that.  Way down the list is 
people who need their own websites anymore, and most of those people 
want a CMS.

> In addition, most of these "services" are mutually incompatible.  For
> example, Myspace and Meetup can't talk to each other.

I don't know which ones are participating today, but OpenSocial was 
designed to fix this.  I thought it was everybody-but-Facebook now, but 
I'm not paying close attention.  Tom, this and a Facebook app might help 
your scenario.

> If there was some kind of ready-made, drop-in, easy-to-use FOSS
> replacement for these services that could be plopped on any old
> hosting service

The Facebook software isn't where their value is.  The value comes from 
the Network Effect they generate and their centralized authentication 
and authorization systems.  Yeah, a self-hosted XMPP solution with an 
x.509 certificate chain could confederate something like this.  But, 
ouch.  And the system you propose confers obligatory cost on the user, 
while Facebook doesn't.  'No-obligatory-cost' is a major ingredient for 
success with web services.

-Bill

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