[Imc-alternatives] transition towns social network

[Jonathan Lehman]

Hey Dave, thanks for your thoughts on closed-source corporate
controlled projects.

I totally agree that we need to be building and promoting our own
open, free, transparent platforms.

I am mostly just impressed with what Ning has done from a features
standpoint, and I'm sure we can do similar things given time and
energy.  Crabgrass, for example, will serve its purpose very well
given more development time and community input.  In the meantime,
I'll checkout Elgg.

Your case in point: there are currently major stability problems with
tribe.net ... it's always going down because the company is suffering
from some internal issues.  As a result of the instability and
centralization of control, people are looking to flee the network for
other alternatives.  Problem is, most folks are jumping to other
corporate social network providers.  Ugh.

jonathan!


On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 6:35 PM, Dave Fregon <dave at netaxxs.com.au> wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-10-21 at 17:27 -0400, Jonathan Lehman wrote:
>> So, I just joined the US transition towns social network, it's got
>> tons of awesome features!  Like the ability to upload and tag media,
>> creation of local events, blogs, creation of social clusters / groups,
>> chat, discussion threads, messaging, rss feeds, addition of
>> specialized third-party developed apps (I don't know if their platform
>> is open or not), etc.
>>
>> Check it out here:
>> http://transitionus.ning.com/
>>
>> Friend me if you join!
>> http://transitionus.ning.com/profile/bikesnotbombs
>>
>> It's all based on the ning.com technology ... where anyone can create
>> a social network.  I'm not sure what software they're using, but I'm
>> imagining the alternatives site to function in a very similar way, yet
>> with more diversity (maybe more like a network of networks).  I think
>> that without a high level of social functionality we're not gonna see
>> a lot of relevant content creation or information sharing going on.
>>
>> Ning seems very similar to Crabgrass in some ways, but it's much more
>> developed and user friendly at this point.
>>
>> I really like transitionus.ning.com because it has the capability to
>> deliver localized, relevant content to user's through a dashboard or
>> main page.  However, the issue with this design is that it is
>> targeting folks with only *one* type of content, whereas with the
>> alternatives IMC we are talking about having numerous topical issues.
>> So it would be cool if on the altIMC a user's main page could be
>> custom tailored based on what types of information that want to
>> receive, e.g. information on *one* specific topic, or an info mashup
>> like videos, discussion threads, and blog posts about law & security
>> *and* permaculture.  Or whatever.
>>
>> Anyway, not wanting to shift our conversation to more theoretical
>> design blah blah blah.  I'm just excited about the capabilities of
>> Ning and wanted to share.
>
> Yes Ning is great in features .. your right about looking at the
> processes, as with any social networking service.
>
> But I have to mention ..the problem with Ning is it's a corporation,
> just like facebook, where the commons have no ability to participate,
> other than in producing profit. You can't control advertising for
> instance, nor decisions on how things are run, nor where the monies
> generated go.
>
> There are a number of efforts underway for similar services, but still
> early days yet, check out http://elgg.org which I have mentioned
> previously.
>
> I personally think we look for solutions where information that is
> personal, and identifiable, is able to be hosted and protected on
> services that have transparency in the collective approach to hosting,
> and where the users data can be protected and IP's etc scrubbed (for
> example on a secure encrypted partition on the server that can be
> destroyed if needed, as we have on borg.axxs.org (thanks to 'boud'))
>
> from the Ning terms of service, which are basically like Youtubes :
>
> "You hereby grant Ning, during the course of your usage of the Ning
> Platform, a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual,
> irrevocable, sublicenseable and transferable right and license to (i)
> use, reproduce, create derivative works of, distribute, publicly perform
> and publicly display Your Content (a) for the sole purpose of operating
> and making Your Content available on the Ning Platform and in all
> current and future media in which the Ning Platform may now or hereafter
> be distributed or transmitted"
>
> The license allows it to use your content pretty much for
> whatever purpose it wants to in perpetuity. It is based on a 'closed
> source' or proprietary software platform, and it's advertising revenue
> goes only to its shareholders, not to the people who created the
> content.
>
> For an 'alternatives' site, we should really be looking at alternatives
> to corporate centralisation of the 'commons' for profit, and backing and
> using solutions that are open source, even if they are not up to the
> standard the closed source solutions are. Time and support fixes that
> problem.
>
> Saying that, your talking about the features, and yes I agree with the
> process of social networks to date, I think most can be found in Elgg,
> tho it is young, and have a test site up of it atm (tho not open to
> public as concerns over security with the 'young' platform)
>
> --
> Dave Fregon
>
> NetAxxs Workers Collective
> Ph:  +613 5721 7777
> Mob: 0434 000 234
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