Why are Social Networks so obsessed with making their members’ data public?
As Facebook moves gradually from being a closed social network into something more akin to a blogging + twitter mash-up site then who is going to replace it?
multi-social-network platform nodes
There are quite a few open source social network platforms out there. Perhaps if one gains a significant lead, we may see the end of centrally administered social networks and, instead, see multiple social network hubs linked together via some ‘open source social network standard’ (perhaps similar to the Google Wave protocol). Each group of friends sitting on a platform that is installed and hosted by one of their own. If there are no techies in the gang, then commercial organisations might be able to offer set-up and hosting at a small cost. I suppose this is not going to happen unless the software is as easy to install and upgrade as, say, Wordpress.
the end of free
In the meantime, I think the next social network that exists purely to enable friends to keep in contact with each other will have to charge a small fee off each of its users. I don’t care if it has 30 million or 1 million members so long as it has a critical mass of my close friends on there.
I would be willing to pay around £20 per annum for a Facebook-like site that simply connects me to the people around me.
How much would you pay, personally, to off-set the running costs of a social network, make it reasonably profitable and negate the need for it to generate revenue through other less-private means?
