The biggest problems I see with all of the popular social media products are
- that users have very little to no control over changes in the software that runs the product,
- the users are themselves the product, specifically for advertisers,
- if a service is turned off, all of the energy in building conversations and networks users have done is lost.
I’d like to see a decentralized and open-source product introduced to change this.
- The software would operate very much like a blog,
- You would be able to connect your site to other peoples’ sites, provided permission is granted in both directions,
- Traditional RSS and other REST services would be provided from any of the sites, allowing for separate client applications to be written,
- Instead of a centralized service, each peer in a network would run their own hosted version of the software,
- When someone mentioned you within your network, or linked to your posts, you would get a notification on your site,
- The cost to maintain the service would be spread over everyone who hosts a site,
- You would be in charge of handling your own upgrades and customizing your site,
- It could be either installed as a standalone service or as an extension/plugin for existing services like Drupal or WordPress,
- Your site could include a ‘what other people are saying’ section, generated from related traffic to your existing network (which would allow you to discover new people),
- Most importantly: If someone decided to drop out of the service, everyone else would remain connected as before. The time you spent building an active network could no longer be wasted by someone else deciding to shut down the service.
Update: This exists, see Diaspora.