Why Newebe
Robin Bate Boerop
social networks? Why was Newebe created when other similar systems
exist?
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Distributed_social_network
Frank
Each user must have at least one node to interact with other.
About Diaspora and equivalents, it is a nice approach to solve
centralization problems but it is too soft. It looks more than a step to
real decentralization than a solution itself : there are still a few
people who host Diaspora nodes for a lot of users. Of course, there is
an improvement : code is open and you can take back your data. But it
does not mean that you really own it. As I said above, Newebe node is
owned by the user and only by him : one node = one account.
Here you will find some reasons of why we think that Newebe approach is
better :
* Data are reusable inside Newebe. ex : use some micro posts you
wrote and some
pictures your friends shared to build a memory note.
* Data are reusable outside Newebe. Ex : connecting with a
LockerProject node or using the memory note you wrote to
generate a blog post on your Wordpress.
* It is possible to easily build other applications on top of your
data :
a clean DB is set up and every thing is available through REST
services via Newebe server.
* It simplifies a lot developments : only one account to deal with is
a breeze. The counterpart is that a lot of data are sent to your
contacts, but it is not so painful.
* Replication is easy : on your phone, at your
office... (Newebe is based on Couchdb),
* And the most important of all, sharing through social networks is a
kind of life-logging. So imagine yourself after 20 years of sharing,
wouldn't you feel better to know that only you and your trusted
contacts stored your memories from the last 20 years ?
For real distributed network, I did not find good ones actually or one
having a clear website that help you to start fast. But maybe I didn't
explore enough this list.
I hope it will make things clearer for you.
Frank
Robin Bate Boerop
would like to explore and understand the ideas which motivate its
creation and development.
On 27 December 2011 07:03, Frank <gel...@free.fr> wrote:
> Good question :). The main difference is that Newebe is user centered. Each
> user must have at least one node to interact with other.
When you say 'node', do you mean 'host' or 'unique DNS entry' or some
such? What do you mean? Are you saying that, while in some other
distributed social networks (DSNs), one can have many users in an
installation at the same URL, Newebe permits only one user per
hostname?
Newebe permits more than one user per hostname, provided different
ports are used.
Newebe permits more than one user per host, even if the same ports are
used, if the hostnames are different.
Maybe you are saying that the *intention* is the Newebe be used in a
way that has only 1 Newebe instance per host. If that is so, then
Diaspora can be used in that same manner, as could other DSNs.
> About Diaspora and equivalents, it is a nice approach to solve
> centralization problems but it is too soft. It looks more than a step to
> real decentralization than a solution itself : there are still a few people
> who host Diaspora nodes for a lot of users. Of course, there is an
> improvement : code is open and you can take back your data. But it does not
> mean that you really own it. As I said above, Newebe node is owned by the
> user and only by him : one node = one account.
Well, one could configure a Diaspora instance for oneself, on one's
own host. Then it would be one node = one account.
> Here you will find some reasons of why we think that Newebe approach is
> better :
> * Data are reusable inside Newebe. ex : use some micro posts you wrote and
> some
> pictures your friends shared to build a memory note.
Do you mean that one can hack the Newebe code to do this, or is there
a way to access this functionality now, as a user?
> * Data are reusable outside Newebe. Ex : connecting with a
> LockerProject node or using the memory note you wrote to
> generate a blog post on your Wordpress.
You mean via REST, if the "outside Newebe" thing can fetch data sent that way?
> * It is possible to easily build other applications on top of your data :
> a clean DB is set up and every thing is available through REST
> services via Newebe server.
This is a useful thing. Do other DSNs not provide this also? (Not a
rhetorical question, I'm really not sure if they do or not.)
> * Replication is easy : on your phone, at your
> office... (Newebe is based on Couchdb),
Replication? You mean that the same Newebe instance can be accessed
from more than one device?
> * And the most important of all, sharing through social networks is a
> kind of life-logging. So imagine yourself after 20 years of sharing,
> wouldn't you feel better to know that only you and your trusted
> contacts stored your memories from the last 20 years ?
Isn't this what is provided by any DSN which permits one to operate
one's own instance (which, I think, is all of them)?
> For real distributed network, I did not find good ones actually or one
> having a clear website that help you to start fast. But maybe I didn't
> explore enough this list.
Yes, I think that all of them are very new. Whichever one becomes
popular first might take over the space.
--
Robin
Gelnior
user" of if you prefer "one URI = one user". Even if it is possible
with Diaspora or other DSN, it is not designed for that. As opposite,
Newebe is designed in this way and only in this way. This means that
feature are designed only for owner and not for a lot of accounts.
Moreover, Newebe pushes you to self-hosting while Diaspora pushes you
to suscribe to one existing node.
The main advantage is that Newebe is hackable, so you could imagine
adding plugins that allows you to push your notes and pictures to a
Wordpress blog (outside Newebe) or a feature mixing microposts to
build a note from them (inside Newebe).
About replication, with CouchDB I think you can configure replication
and set up a couch node on your android phone. Then we could imagine
that you post via a android version of Newebe while you are in suburbs
where no network is available. When you go outside, replication
starts, then your Newebe could detect that new documents arrived and
send them to contact or at least telling you that your last post
sendings fail.
I hope this will convince you :).
Frank
On 27 déc, 20:09, Robin Bate Boerop <m...@robinbb.com> wrote:
> In what follows, I'm not trying to dissuade Newebe development. I
> would like to explore and understand the ideas which motivate its
> creation and development.
>
David Baelde
On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Gelnior <gel...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Moreover, Newebe pushes you to self-hosting while Diaspora pushes you
> to suscribe to one existing node.
My 2 cents to say that I agree with Frank. Even if it's not a "hard"
technical difference, "one node = one user" changes the way people use
newebe, and has a high impact. It will lower adoption (it's harder to
host a node than to create an account on joindiaspora.com) but if it
works it'll be a true decentralized success, while I have doubts that
diaspora can become something significantly different from facebook.
In the end, open-source doesn't make a big difference, decentralized
data does.
Cheers,
--
David