[coliveira]

It is very interesting that, with the exception of people like Berners-Lee, computer scientists around the world have decided that the problems of social networks should be addressed only within the realm of private companies. I see little to no coordinated activity targeted at open social networks for commenting, liking, and sharing. Similar pattern on open and distributed protocols for searching and sharing data. It seems to me as a failure of academia in this important area of computing.

It is important to remember that distributed protocols for social interaction is not something new that researchers had not considered before. Email is the prime example of open, distributed protocol that still is very successful. But many researchers have stoped to consider such open protocols and jumped in the walled garden bandwagon.