[timmorgan]

This is great. Good work!

My entire family is currently using Path as a small social network and share a lot there. I'd love to move us to something we can control and where the data (esp. photos) aren't locked away in a proprietary system. Does this (or Gnu Social) support protected accounts, where permission must be given for people to see and follow accounts?

[mxuribe]

That is exactly my same use-case: a private/self-hosted social network only for my family; and I happen to use Gnu Social. To be clear, Gnu Social is NOT the only open source platform that accommodates this use-case. Specific to your question, here's a screenshot of some of the settings for restricting access on gnu social: http://imgur.com/a/gXy7y

As far as mobile clients, my family and I use AndStatus [http://andstatus.org] which works awesomely with gnu social, is an extremely lightweight mobile application, gets updated constantly by the dev. team, and also allows you to post to your twitter account.

Good luck!

[kstrauser]

GNU Social supports that and even entirely locked down servers. Want one for your own family and no one else? That's one of the configurable options.

[droopybuns]

+1, for everything written here! Exact same usecase