Taking Friendster and MySpace Down - Building a Noncommercial Alternative

MySpace was recently purchased as part of a $550 million deal. I think part of its value lies in trying to build profiles of people so that corporations can sell them products and target online advertizing.

We need a noncommercial/free/open social network that won't sell out to corporations and that will end the need of having to maintain a profile on seperate commercial networks so as to stay in touch with friends.

I believe I have a good idea to make it work. The technical aspects of creating a friendster or myspace is relatively easy. A good programmer or team could crank it out in a year or so. The trick is publicizing it.

Profile Cloner
We need a program that clones profiles. You give it your username and password for one network, and it duplicates the profile on other networks to the extent that the fields overlap. This allows people to only maintain one profile, and when they change it, it will change on all the networks.

The key part about this is to include an option to also include the profile on a new noncommercial network. Thus the user simply needs to check a box, and BANG they are on the new network.

Beyond Cloning - Recruitment
You could have another function that would log them in to their regular service and post a message or bulletin to invite all their friends to join the new noncommercial service. This might be in violation of some stupid law, which would be unfortunate (but maybe some hackers could create this profile cloner anonymously and do so seperately from th e team that would create the alternative social network website) You could also use their nicknames list from Outlook.

Funding
Possibly one or more internet entrepreneur who are interested in open source would fund the project because if it was done effectively it could become one of the most used open source applications. It'd be a gateway of recruitment for open source. Alternatively you could fund it with a minimal amount of advertizing, and as the costs of running the network would constantly fall (due to lower prices for bandwidth and computer power), you'd be able to reduce the advertizing over time until it was neglible.

A Network of Social Networks

I bet there are a hundred social network websites trying to be the next MySpace.

What we need is an open-data standard for social networking and a system of trust. The only way 99% of the small guys stand a significant chance of building large social networks is if they pool their data.

I could see this happening with corporations, as they'd create a proprietary standard to be used by a consortium of them. But I'd prefer to see an open-data standard with an API so that developers could use the data to create their own networks, and so long as the data is open, there could be a mixture of both commercial and non-commercial sites (this would limit the level of advertizing to the bare minimum).

Now that Facebook is opening up itself to developers, but still retaining a large degree of control over its data, the next step it to open up the data. Facebook is unlikely to do it - we need open source developers to lead the way.

I realize that there are massive technical issues, and perhaps more importantly trust and privacy issues, that make opening up the data difficult - but I'm hopeful that they'll be solvable. I know people have figured out theoretical trust systems that would work, so it's mostly a question of organizing this (getting enough people to buy into it and implement it).

Basically people need to control their own data, and decide who gets to see it. You have a degree of this already in existing social networks where you can choose what everyone sees versus what your friends see. I think you should be able to limit access based on qualifications like
-geography
-demographics - age, gender, etc
-degrees of seperation (friend, friend of friend, etc)
-trust (you could trust someone 80% and then trust their recommendations at 80% and if the final person at the end of the trust-chain ended up with a specific ranking, say 50%, then they'd have access to your information)
-degrees of seperation by group affiliation (treat groups different than people, whether these are real organizations like a workplace, or online groups of people with common interests)
-user-ratings (people should get ratings as "spammers", "creeps", "nice conversationalists" and other categories)

And then you should be able to have a seperate privacy setting for each field.

Running the entire thing on web-services is probably the way to go.

Avoiding people/developers trying to scrape the database would be one of the hurdles.

social networks

We’ve been trying the same with Profileheaven as a myspace alternative. The suggestions for client "ripping" are a bit dubious due to the "the social network owns the content once posted" kind of rules. Funding’s mad if you’re established, it just doesn't happen. I think theirs room for niche networks but the big boys seem to have tied up the market now.

Well...Check Out This Noncommercial Social Network

It's called Flingr, and it's run by a computer science student. It focuses on security, site speed, and customizability. Anyway, check it out. Seems like a good myspace alternative.

Myspace Alternative

I had alot of the same thoughts that you have had..... and so I went off and started hahpi.com as an alternative to myspace...... no banners, no advertisements, and not all about selling the data. When you get some spare time, you should checkout http://www.hahpi.com

possible alternative

I have been interested in this idea for some time, which is how I came across your interesting submittion. A friend of mine recently started a social networking website, www.disarray.com, which is very similar to Myspace, however it uses minimal advertising (to cover bandwith and incidental charges). They actually were looking into something like the "profile cloner" that you suggested, however there are many legal issues involved so they opted not to at this time.

One concern with an alternative is that they do not have the "critical mass" that Myspace currently has. No one wants to sign up on a new social networking site, because their friends are already all on Myspace. It would be great if there could be some sort of "mass exodus", however the mear size of such a task seams very unlikely.

In the meantime, I would suggest that everyone visit www.disarray.com and sign up for a free account. It is not perfect, but if you can get some of your friends to join with you it could be a much more tollerable alternative.

Myspace is the root of all evil

Alas. Someone I can agree with, though you failed to go into the technical evils of myspace. The client side aspect of things clearly sucks.

Much of myspace.com is so far from being standards compliant that it actually crashes many good web browsers (i.e. Firefox).

People edit their profiles, and completely change the looks. It is not their fault, but the edits they make to customize their profiles are very far from being standards compliant. The myspace profile system was not designed for this kind of customization.(I have the same complaint regarding livejournal). An interface like the blogger template interface is needed. The profile editor must allow for complete customization of the page. That way, certain CSS rules can go in the header where the belong.

The programming involved in making a myspace alternative is quite simple, especially for a smart programmer who won't waste time reinventing the wheel. (i.e. WordpressMU could be used for the blogging portion.)

Note: I found this post while searching for a group of people dedicated to making a myspace alternative. I just can't stand myspace, and although I could code an alternative, I lack the time and resources, and I don't know any other programmers...

No.

I think we don't need another friendster or myspace. We should make something better because I'm not totally concerned if foxnews buys more market research and knows who likes blink 182 or not.
I imagine a system we would build would be a combination of friendster and smart mobs. You would sign up, there would be a community aspect (e.g. messaging your friends, pictures and profiles), but the understanding would be is that you would sign up for what issues concerned you. Imagine that Cindy Sheehan's bus was coming to town with a day's notice and was looking for a supportive audience. The system could have people registered both by location and how far they were willing to travel for something and how many days notice they would need. Activester would then send out location specific announcements telling people when and where to show up.
On top of this, there could be an option for people to show up for Smartmob-style stuff. Say Kissinger is sighted at a hotel in new york or philly. Not everybody could post the warning up, but perhaps "Akreider" would have permission. People would then get a notice both on their Activester account, but we could also set up an automated text messaging on their cell phones. Kissinger goes into the hotel with no fanfare, but has been sighted by a trustworthy activist. His exit is met with a large and growing mob. Obviously this wouldn't be the start date, but several months in, it could be a possiblity.
We could identify target campaigns, CIA agents recruiters on campus, nationally disperse board members of a company that has forced their workers on strike, whatever example people can think of. If someone has signed up for "anti war team" or "labor team," they'd get the call.
We don't need another friendster listing our favorite products. We need the next step.

History Is A Weapon

international networks which combine activism and non-activism

Dear friends,

I am very glad that this idea of Building a Noncommercial Alternative has come up. Much of the progressive Internet networks are lagging far behind. However, every time they work so hard to create an alternative, by the time it is created it is extremely outdated. So I am very supportive of the idea, yet in the spirit of constructive criticism I strongly must agree that we need the next step.

I also am not concerned if foxnews buys more market research and I also am not concerned who likes blink 182 or not.

I also imagine a system in which we would build would be a combination of... livejournal, craigslist, riseup and indymedia.

Livejournal-Livejournal has the feature that enables a person to list their interests and it will automatically place everyone who likes that interest on the same page. This is much like the campus activism "issues" feature. The only difference is that people only come to campus activism for activism, so when they need their entertainment they must go elsewhere. Thus by default, any network created that does link non-activist interests will actually STRONGLY force people to go to a group like friendster or myspace for their entertainment... and many of them won't come back, since they can integrate their activism there as well. A good example is that I read the tent state university organizing model on the campus activism site and it actually recommends myspace as an activist tool! Thus, the "next step" must unquestionably integrate our social networks and our activist networks. Imagine if campus activism didn't just have one "issues" area, but instead had an area for "activist issues" and "variety issues" where people could link together through a variety of non-activist issues. It is well known fact that true, lasting alliances are not created in the field, they are created during our social time.

It was said:

"You would sign up, there would be a community aspect (e.g. messaging your friends, pictures and profiles), but the understanding would be that you would sign up for what issues concerned you."

Look at all of countless networks on the email list that riseup has. The strongest bind that ties them is not advanced technology, (because anybody can see yahoo email groups has far better features..the standard free yahoo email groups comes with "Chat, the ability to add your links, Database, and even a Calendar. But the corporate ads and yahoo spam is the worst.] The strongest bind that ties them is their ability to speak out against capitalism. Their social contract clearly states "Riseup.net believes in direct democracy, anti-sexism, anti-racism, anti-capitalism, self determination, local autonomy, ecology, and communal economics."

Thus, if "the next step" is to be taken it must enable a way for activists who speak out against capitalism to easily network. Craiglist doesn't do that, campus activism mentions "nader 2004" as an issue, but not post-capitalism as an issue, and no serious activist working for alternatives to capitalism would ever feel entirely comfortable using a myspace page with their overwhelming corporate ads. So riseup.net and the many other post-capitalism sites which they network with continues to grow exponentially... which is very good...yet it also means that the creation of "the next step" of international network continues to be delayed. If you have any doubt at how fast riseup.net is growing print out the page which lists how many email groups they have, save it for a month and take another look at it. Riseup and resist have even just created their own activist search engine.

Personally, I feel the idea of smartmobs is quickly burning out. More and more people are seeing that the amount of energy to use something like smartmobs to organize street protests, in addition to the comparatively low amount of people who use smartmobs does not allow them to contact massive amounts of people and effect the root of the issue which is capitalism and militarism especially in a heavily networked multinational globalized era. I think the indymedia network, particularly the method in which they use one another's news feeds,is far more effective than smartmobs in order to alert people to protests.

If you place a protest item in smartmobs, is it able to be discovered by the world's most popular search engine or any search engines? No, not that I've ever seen. But if you place the same issue in indymedia to organize people, even after the issues passes, when someone types in a search using google it will still come up. Try it. Type in the name of any protest worldwide and I bet an indymedia website will come up somewhere on the search results.

Why is that so important? Three reasons: #1. Positive Publicity. You said "The trick is publicizing it." Everytime a search engine brings up an issue on an indymedia page that is more publicity for indymedia #2. Archive. It enables the protest organizing effort to be archived for research purposes. #3. News feed networks. Indymedia newsfeeds with one another. Even Livejournal has news feed ability now. Place the letters rss at the end of any livejournal blog and it instantly becomes a newsfeed. Any new project without rss feed, atom or other syndication ability is a huge step backwards.

Thats an international network. I personally spoke to admin at Portland Indymedia and they syndicate from other indymedia sites very often. We must create international networks which combine our activist and non-activist interests, as well as allow people to become the news, not simply networks for one sub-group such as a (no offense) "campus" (campus activism), friends (friendster) or simply post-capitalist activists (riseup.net).

I fully realized when I began organizing activist events and using craigslist. I alwasy ask new members "where did you hear about us from?" Even though I had announcements published in widely circulated print publications, more people responded "I saw it on craigslist." That is because craigslist has everything: activism, personals, discussion, calendar and more so thats all they use.

And most importantly, in my opinion, the creation of another strictly English network would be nothing more than a large step backwards. Anyone who reads the statistics know that monolingual (non-English speaking, Spanish-language only) Latino population will continue to exponentially grow and needs to be included at every level. If 'the next step' project is called "onetwowater dot org" for example, make another domain that also points to the same website called "unodosaqua dot org." If any further proof is needed how important multilingual access is, take a look at how many indymedia branches are in all Spanish, or how many riseup email lists are in spanish under the "globalization" category. Riseup even sends out all their newsletters in 4 languages. If you leave Spanish speaking people out, you hurt the movement for a better world. The 2000 census just proved that for the first time there are more Latinos than African-Americans in the USA. At the very least have a prominently displayed translation tool near the top on every page.

Again, I agree, that we don't need another friendster listing our favorite products. We need the next step. We must create international networks which combine our activist and non-activist interests, while still allowing us to become the media, through a multilingual platform.

Thanks for discussing this and I apologize if anything I said was rude.

Love for the people,

-Peace Guru

international networks

We have been trying to do the same thing at www.civicprogress.org, but without funding, we cannot achieve our goal of making a searchable database of users by interest and location. We were given a program called FantasyDater (a mambo cms component), which could be fixed to work, but we don't know how to do it. Mambo has multilingual capabilities, but they are not easy to use.

There are other candidates around. http://www.barnraiser.org/demos/aroundme/

Dragonfly CMS has a all multilingual all the the time interface, but needs a community component.