I would like to point out the SocialVPN project http://socialvpn.org It is basically a P2P VPN which creates direct encrypted tunnels to friends. It currently uses the XMPP protocol for friend discovery and public key exchange. This VPN thus creates a social graph where edges are IP links. This infrastructure can be used as an enabler for many other social services. Here are a few examples 1 - Instead of using Skype, you can use Ekiga with Avahi, Avahi extension for Ekiga will discover online friends through multicast over the social virtual private network, you can then place SIP call directly over IP link. 2. For instant messaging, you can use Empathy or Pidgin with Bonjour/Avahi support, as concept as above. 3. For video stream, you can stream a video over HTTP or RTP using VLC and your friends can connect directly. 4. For social networking, you can run a wordpress blog locally and have your friends connect to that, or you can write an social networking application that communicates with friends over SocialVPN using Berkeley sockets API instead of having to deal with building P2P library that deals with NAT traversal, peer search and so on. 5. All data sent between peers is encrypted and authenticated, basically the same idea behind IPSec if you support PKI certificate exchanges. One of the hardest thing about building social P2P systems is having with a user-friendly way to bootstrap these social links (or Darknets). SocialVPN makes that step trivial so that developers can focus more on making cool apps versus figuring out how to traverse NATs. I hope this helps. On Mon, 2011-01-17 at 18:57 -0800, David Barrett wrote:

I'd suggest first figuring out why someone would pick a P2P social network over Facebook, from a perspective of legitimate functionality rather than just privacy (which as Facebook has demonstrated, isn't a killer feature). I'd suggest really emphasizing the fact that with P2P-Book, there is no "uploading" photos or videos: you can share entire folders of files, videos, documents, or whatever and their instantly available to your friends -- without first uploading them somewhere else.

Furthermore, emphasize that you're not sharing *copies* of the videos, songs, and photos -- you're sharing the originals: change the original (crop, reorient, touch up, tag with metadata, etc) and its automatically updated.

-david

On 01/17/2011 12:51 PM, Jan DomaEski wrote:

...

Hey Michael,

Thanks for the comments, they're helpful.

A lot of this boils down to having two (or more) 'sides' of self. One for general public, others for the rest; this is doable.

Grudge-friendly and jackboot resistant, in ideal world, comes with the 'distributed' and 'secure+encrypted'. But sure, seems to have been lost in the implementation of at least one social network i can think of.

As to the grandmother compatibility, at least to me, this is not absolutely essential at first.

Cherio, Jan

2011/1/16 Michael Rogers <m--@gmx.com <mailto:m--@gmx.com>>

Hi Jan,

Here's a quick list of features I'd like to see in any social network (not just P2P ones):

* Grandmother-compatible. It should be possible to be friends with my grandmother without her seeing the photo of the time I did that thing with the grapes.

* Alcohol-compatible. There should be something as easy to remember as an email address that I can give to random people I befriend while drunk. And if they look me up the next day, there should be a polite way of not responding.

* Schoolproof. People should not be able to find my profile just because we went to school together 20 years ago. Similarly, people should not be able to find my profile just because I applied for a job at their company (or at least, they shouldn't be able to see the photo of the thing with the grapes).

* Grudge-friendly. It should be possible to move my data from one provider to another when the current provider accuses me of lacking integrity because I don't want my grandmother to see the photo etc etc.

* Jackboot-resistant. The Tunisian government should not be able to steal my password by setting up a fake login page.

Cheers, Michael

On 15/01/11 20:35, Jan DomaEski wrote: > Hello everybody out there interested in p2p social networking, > > I'm doing a (free) p2p social network (just a hobby, wonbt be big and > professional like diaspora). It has been in the works since summer, and > begins to get some shape. I'd like any feedback on things people > like/dislike in the idea of a p2p social network and how this is solved > by the little toy. > > I've currently written it in java, netty handles the networking, Qt is > used for GUI. Some yml for configs and db4o for storage. Non-blocking > xml (XMPP) parser is a missing puzzle. The app has been run only on a > single machine, but it's already practical and I'd like to know what > features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I > wonbt promise Ibll implement them :] > > Two demos (the top one is new) below, gitorious and blog links inside > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rAwCsYt16w > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1dujrhGvBQ > > Jan (jan.domanski@new.ox.ac.uk <mailto:jan.domanski@new.ox.ac.uk> <mailto:jan.domanski@new.ox.ac.uk <mailto:jan.domanski@new.ox.ac.uk>>) > > PS. Yes - it's all my own work and done as a scientist not a programmer, > which has terrible implications for code ;) > > > > _______________________________________________ > p2p-hackers mailing list > p2p-hackers@lists.zooko.com <mailto:p2p-hackers@lists.zooko.com> > http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers

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