check out diaspora. its an open social or anti-social network that you can host your self or wherever you want.

I remember seeing that -- is the underlying protocol for it defined online somewhere? To me, that definition needs to be as simple and powerful as possible (i.e. like HTTP); you shouldn't have to run their server, it should be easy for someone to spend a weekend and build their own (at least to implement the subset that is meaningful to them)...

That would be cool if something like that was accessible and easy to use. I never used FB etc because I wanted control of my data 24/7.

If I'm having a good time and I post something stupid. I want to be able to take things down and get rid of it.

Twitter is different for me. I can be whoever I want, they don't take your account away because you use an Alias etc. The roots come from IRC, in someways anyway.

Isn't this system the web? Which URL shorteners and facebook and twitter are trying to kill? Where you own your domain and can move it anywhere, and you host your content by yourself or pay for a host and you're free to move it to other provider and the whole world can still hit it through the same domain.
The system doesn't need to be created, it exists.. it's just begging to be saved

The web doesn't have aggregation, push, or a standardized way of managing permissions and identity.

> The web doesn't have aggregation, push, or a standardized way of managing permissions and identity.

So we need the web plus pub sub hubub, an easy use site plus an easy setup self hosted server option.

You're right.. but who (how many people) cares about this? I see less and less people willing to customize their experience, and more and more people who dive into any kind of interface/functionality (no matter how limited/stupid it is), just because everybody else is doing it.

On the other hand, the politics behind the largest social networks are as described in the onion video and they invest huge amounts of money in marketing to spread their influence. Also I don't know what are the facts behind the suicide of the diaspora founder but it gave me some big chills when i found about it.

So i think one of the problem is that there isn't a real competition out there. Having a bunch of wallstreet investors on their side, they can make any stupid idea into a "success" these days. Let's not forget the stealing of ideas (speaking of which > hackerrank.com), the bringing down startups techniques, and so on. Also, i think is something fishy with all those "incubators". Keeping users stupid is another aspect i've noticed in the mainstream products.

The internet is not what it used to be.. partly because it's users are not who they used to be. Most of the kids nowadays just don't go beyond google's 1st page, their twitter feed or their facebook wall. To them, this is (almost) all the internet.

I might be a bit paranoid, but as a guy who wants to start a social website i have to pay attention and take into account all the aspects that i can see. If i'm wrong please tell me, because it's very demotivating and kinda depressing to see things this way.

Not a software but a subplatform. Deep Web. Maybe you know it, but if you don't, you have to.

Have you heard about friendica.com?