[eridius]

I only read the start of this, but already there's 2 big problems with the idea of a collectively-owned social graph:

1. I may want to have different social graphs on different networks. Facebook for friends and family, LinkedIn for work, Google Plus for hell if I know, etc. Not only would I probably want different graphs for the different networks, I'd also explicitly want to avoid having those networks know about the social connections I have outside of it (e.g. I don't want to just tell LinkedIn to ignore my family, I specifically don't want it to have access to that info in the first place).

2. The social graph isn't the only component of the network effect. Even if we had a collectively-owned social graph, all of the content that you produce or consume is limited to a single social network. So even if Google Plus could see my entire Facebook social graph, anything I post on Facebook would not be on Google Plus (and vice versa). So the network effect is still strong, because everybody would still have to gravitate to the same social network in order to see each others' posts.

The only way this really works is if we have a federated social network, where all federated networks share the same social graph and have access to all the content. But while federation works for a messaging platform, it doesn't really work all that well for a social network because it also means all networks have to have the same feature set, and that's hugely restrictive. If Facebook was federated with Google Plus, Facebook couldn't introduce any new features since Google Plus doesn't have them. Or Google Plus couldn't introduce its Circles concept because Facebook doesn't (didn't?) have that.

[mjevans]

The circles aspect of Google+ is intended to function as an end user controlled version of segregating your data to only the contacts you want to see.

The problem, for end users, seems to have largely been the classic: Security is Difficult issue.

[ChoHag]

> all networks have to have the same feature set, and that's hugely restrictive.

The ideas of microkernels and, well, TCP, suggest otherwise.

[eridius]

I don't follow. What do microkernels and TCP have anything at all to do with federated social networks?

[ChoHag]

They both manage to produce great things and new features not hinted at in their spec (ie. An OS and The Internet (kinda; TCP != IP), respectively) despite having a limited, shared feature set.

[eridius]

This is complete nonsense. You may as well say that apples and oranges are a counterargument, because both can be made into different delicious desserts even though both are fruits with a lot of similarities.

[mjevans]

I agree, I too only read the first part to get a 'flavor' for the discussion and the viewpoints of those in it.

The speakers are trying to convey too much nuanced information at once for each point, and the text is presented in a small annoyingly dense format.

More editorial structure to make it easy to scan for the main points, and read through their related details as necessary would be required for me to have an interest in ingesting the content.

That isn't to say 'make it bite sized', that's saying "Give it structure, organization, and consolidate like things together".