when i rewrite twitter

so i've been twittering for a year and some, most recently as @OhMeadhbh. and here are a few observations and ideas i wanted to write down before i forgot. as always, feel free to tell me i don't understand the media.

let me start by saying that while i never claimed to be a "social media genius," i'm also not an idiot at it. i started with social networking almost a decade ago with adrian scott's ryze.com. i ignored classmates.com, friendster, tribe and myspace. got hooked on early versions of linked-in and facebook. and i completely dissed twitter when i first saw it. i'm still trying to figure out if status.net and identi.ca are useful.

so here are some observations:

1. twitter.com is a single point of failure. don't get me wrong. i love twitter. i gabbed with some of the twitter guys on the plane riding down to an IETF meeting, and i love them too. biz stone came and talked to us at a corporate function and he was absolutely lovely. but using a single corporate entity to hold both your social connections and your status updates? tsk. tsk.
   
   and i didn't even mention the fail whale.
   
   ditto for facebook, tribe, friendster, linkedIn, etc.
   
   
2. the ecosystem surrounding a social networking site is probably more valuable than that site. or maybe a better way of saying this is, social networks with extensible ecosystems are more valuable than those without. facebook has a developer program; twitter has an API; LinkedIn uses OpenSocial. ryze.com has no API. tribe has no API. friendster added widgets, but maybe it was just too little too late.
   
   why is this a big deal? the simple answer is, if you're running a social networking site, if you provide 3rd parties with a way to share your information about your client's social network, they'll make applications and tools that use your site. someone else will assume the risk of marketing to niche segments. if you choose your core market carefully, you'll not compete with these third parties. assuming they're bringing in people to your network that you would not have targeted anyway, it's a win-win.
   
   
3. i don't care about your foursquare spam. i've tried to use foursquare. really. i did. i just don't get it. but that's okay, i know that other people do. i would LOVE to be able to turn off all foursquare updates in my tweet stream. ditto for echo bazaar.

and here are some ideas:

1. manage your own status updates and friends lists. there's no reason you couldn't manage your own friends list and status updates. maybe the thing to do is run a directory service that points people to FOAF records. FOAF or (Friend of a Friend) is a format for carrying information about your social network.
   
   if you were ambitious, you could define a DNS SRV Record to point to a server who would respond to queries about your social network. (actually, someone already has, look at webfinger.)
   
   all we need now is a couple of web applications; one to give out selected information to people who ask, and another to collate that info and present it to you. bonus points if you target it for LAMP systems.
   
   
2. what if the "social networking" site was run as a non-profit and people focused on selling products into the ecosystem? let's just say that you had a .org whose role in life was just to operate as a registrar of FOAF servers (and maybe a small hosting community of it's own.) if it operated as a non-profit, it's operations and behavior would likely be radically different from companies like facebook. if you weren't trying to grow your revenues by selling people's info to advertisers, you could have a network where marketers (working for sellers) could co-operate with concierge services (what doc searle calls "4th parties" or "vendor relationship management" and eve maler calls "user managed access.")
   
   
3. how 'bout "twitter with channels?" i would love it if foursquare spam could get shunted off to a "foursquare channel." then if you weren't interested in your friends foursquare spam, you could just tell your client: "do not show me updates on the foursquare channel."
   
   or better yet, people who were interested in foursquare could have the option of having foursquare updates consumed directly by their foursquare applications. we would never have to see it again.
   
   ditto for blip.fm and last.fm and london underground.

so these are just a few ideas. i'm hoping to get people talking. maybe it would be fun to try to spin a business plan around some of these ideas and pitch it to some angels. i would love to know what peeps would add to their own social networking site.