PeopleAggregator - An Open Source Social Network 263
prostoalex writes "When Orkut, LinkedIn, Friendster, Zaibatsu and Tribe.net just don't cut it, meet PeopleAggregator, an open-source, PHP-written, FOAF-based social network. There's the site and there's the source in case you decide to launch your own. I found out about PeopleAggregator reading this interview with Mark Canter on Read/Write Web today." I wish such sites would provide profile-conversion tools to encourage jumping ship from one to another.
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wow (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Please tell me where I can get off whatever train you're riding on, because I don't think your world is or will be a very nice place to live in.
75% of the communications I have with people are still good old fashioned face-to-face conversations, and I would venture a guess that for most people the number is not much different. For most people the internet is replacing the ways we would communicate over long distances (phone call, snail mail), but it's not, nor do I think it ever will be, a suitable replacement for real physical interactions. And if I am somehow proven wrong, please shoot me before it happens.
I agree with everything else you said. Developers have already decimated our town squares, traditional shopping districts, and other public spaces and replaced them with malls and other quasi-public areas, where the only speech and the only activities allowed are the ones they deem to be "appropriate". Why should we let them fully enclose our virtual commons as well?
Re:Wow (Score:2, Interesting)
The most meaningful communication generally happens face-to-face, and this is unlikely to change without some seriously dystopic biotech. However, in terms of the time I spend communicating, much of it isn't face to face, given that I sit in front of a PC all day. Rather, MSN and weblogs commenting forms a large chunk of my daily "chit chat".
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes making funny comments on /. (Score:5, Funny)
Thank god I am not one of those.
Re:Yes making funny comments on /. (Score:5, Funny)
I was only kidding... Stupid mods. I have no life! Come on guys!
Re:Yes making funny comments on /. (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Social networks are only as useful as your own perceptions. While not a proponent myself, I've seen valid declarations for and against them (in general), open or closed (to the public), etc. It seems that those that look to them for substitutions for an actual social life are typically disappointed since male to female ratios are nominal at best. On the other hand those that look to these networks as opportunities to meet people (or keep in contact with people) from varied backgrounds and locations who share interests or needs (programming help, contractors, games, etc.) generally have much better luck than say randomly talking to someone in a bar.
If these networks were to try and cater to the lonely hearts out there, they would be no better than dating services, except they would likely prove to be disappointing in that regard, little better than just jumping into any of the myriad chat rooms out there. Perhaps this is validating invitation only networks (ala Orkut), who's to say?
A drawback to social networks is end user propagation and activity. Maintaining, checking, browsing and so on seems, to me at least, like a time consuming activity. One which I lack the desire and the time to follow. I tend to be a bit of a hermit, often times putting my IMs as away just to concentrate on the task at hand while I sit at my computer. I suppose when the "killer" social network comes along, I'll sign up and stay, until then they remain little more than academic interests in a field that is reaching oversaturation and little innovation.
Looks like (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Looks like (Score:5, Funny)
I need Charlenes here people. Claires. Colettes. Tortured twentysomething souls who lean forward in sleazy web cam shots just to show a little cleavage.
Work with me here!
-fren
Re:Looks like (Score:2, Interesting)
I think you're looking for Orkut [orkut.com].
Re:MOD PARENT INSIGHTFUL (Score:3, Funny)
apt-get remove mutt
Ehrm...
Future ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
So true. And whereas this was an obvious Slashdot Effect joke, there is some insight hidden behind the idea.
Obviously the concept of a social network site where the entire network has to register with one site is going to be doomed to failure in the end.
The first problem is that in order to build a social network big enough to fit everyone interested in being registered on the network, you need a cluster big enough to store every user on the Internet. By my guess, Orkut is the only one with access to this kind of cluster size, because it is hosted by Google.
The second problem is that as soon as you have two social network sites, you have a problem where someone wants to be on both sites. Then you add a third site and you have a problem where that person wants to be on three sites. How many social network sites are there now?
This is the same problem we already see with instant messaging, and is why the newer, more sophisticated IM systems such as Jabber allow the servers to intercommunicate. You can be on whatever server you want, and have contacts on your list who are on whatever server they want.
So here is my idea: distribute the social networks. A user joins the server they want, is allocated a user id which is user@domain.com, analogous to a Jabber ID, and they can add people to their network who exist on other servers.
Communities would work similarly with community@communities.domain.com, people join a community by registering their user ID on the server which hosts the community. For instance, the Slashdot community might be slashdot@communities.slashdot.org.
Now, if all these communities can export FOAF and RDF and agree on how to do any other kind of data manipulation, any program can easily merge cross-site data together to form larger networks if they need, and the work won't have to be done by a single server, it can be done on the client at the user's leisure.
And more importantly, the solution will actually scale.
Who's with me?
Re:Future ideas (Score:4, Insightful)
their critical mass of millions of members is their biggest asset (and the thing that is hard to acquire -- the tech part is relatively easy; witness all the knockoffs); opening it up to all other comers (i.e. their competitors) would be foolish, just as it would be foolish for AOL/AIM to open up their user base to MSN, their biggest competitor (unless both user bases were equally sized, in which case they would both benefit equally, or the smaller network paid the larger one for access.)
-fren
Re:Future ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
Did anybody say Orkut and Friendster had to do it?
Look at the situation with instant messaging. You say AOL vs. MSN are in competition and will never cooperate, but who cares? Everyone who cares about interoperation can use Jabber, and it works. We have a fully distributed IM system, which works, which AOL and MSN are just not a part of but hey, who cares?
In the same way, every non-Orkut, non-Friendster social networking site in the world could implement this distributive feature, and the distributiv
Re:Future ideas (Score:4, Insightful)
The backend code for Slashter and PeopleAggregator are both GPL'd. That's great and very much in the flavor of "information wants to be free." The challenge is that the relationships here are the real information, and until this is all opened up there's really no freedom.
I met with a few MSFT reps to talk about the possibilities of Passport, and one of the diagrams they showed us had these relationships between user id and every connection you would want to make (web sites, email, chat, credit cards, online shopping, bill pay...pretty much all of it). Don't bother with the anti-MSFT stuff...I'm already a convert. But consider the big idea behind it: have one public id and one private id and free us to exchange with whomever we want. That's true freedom from the Yahoo!'s, AOLs and MSN's of the world.
We spend a huge amount of time thinking about platforms and software that we can give away for free but maybe that doesn't really matter. I don't care so much that all of these different open source word processors work...I care that they allow me to fulfill the task at hand and share my work with others. I don't care if I use Photoshop or Gimp, but I DO care if I can share high-quality images with my clients. And I don't care if I use a Yahoo! account or a Friendster account...what I want most is to just connect with services and people and let the rest of this all be transparent. And from my perspective, this sounds like the next big opportunity for true open source work. Replicate Passport, make it bulletproof and use it to power all of these services. Then you finally take away the power from the big corporations.
Of course, funding this indefinitely could be a problem. But you could argue the same thing about Linux...so there's a solution in there somewhere.
Re:Future ideas (Score:2)
Microsoft shouldn't care how much they lose making passport work because if someone else does it, they will have to pay bank to buy them anyway.
That said, does anyone know of CRM systems that integrate with a web logger that tracks IP and Mac address along with cookie values of some sort (like a user name).
also, anyone know of utlity that can preload content. I mean, as long as
It's a damn good thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can only hope that we, the net citizens, will eventually push back on these mega sites to get some standards produced.
Imagine if each ISP ran a standards-compliant IM server for its users. No more "Do you use Yahoo or MSN? No, oh well, we can't chat." Instead, each IM server vendor would compete to have ISPs install their server but work with all other vendors' products instead of segregating users into disparate networks.
Re:Future ideas (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Future ideas (Score:2)
It uses DNS to publish friend relaions between identities in mailbox format ('user@domain'). The is even a hosting service for those without good DNS servers.
Just join the mailing list and start impementing!
Re:ARRRRGGH, (Score:2)
The most important facet of both instant messaging and social networking systems is the ability to maintain a list of users, which neither email nor usenet were ever able to do.
The next most important facet is being able to tell if someone is online. Neither email nor usenet could do that either...
Re:Future ideas (Score:2)
Re:Looks like (Score:3, Interesting)
Friendster's got 'em beat. Their technology is so good, they don't need a slashdotting to go under.
A few weeks back they implemented an emergency "how many degrees of separation do I want people to see" feature, and the default was pretty low. They had to do it because their MySQL database was choking for weeks to the point that you could log in, but any further activity would hang until the applet returned a connection-timed-out error.
*cough* (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashster is an Open Source PHP / Mysql based FOAF.
Congrats to PeopleAggregator for making Slashdot though. Dunno why my site didn't make front page... Heh.
Re:*cough* (Score:2)
Unfortunately, I do not have that many geek friends (or friends at all, really *sigh*), just a few. If I did, I might check it out.
Re:*cough* (Score:2)
Re:*cough* (Score:2, Flamebait)
Since this is Open Source, very little money goes into the site, so you're stuck with my ugly mug.
If I ever make decent money from this, I'll get a model to pose on the front page... Just for you!
What's the point ? (Score:2, Informative)
the wonders of PHP: (Score:3, Funny)
Warning: mysql_pconnect(): Too many connections in
Session: connection failed
Warning: session_start(): Cannot send session cookie - headers already sent by (output started at
Warning: session_start(): Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent (output started at
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at
Re:the wonders of PHP: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:the wonders of PHP: (Score:4, Insightful)
That comes from an incompetent server admin.
Rule #1 for production PHP:
php.ini -> display_errors = Off
Re:the wonders of PHP: (Score:5, Informative)
Is it a common php 'admin' mindset to just hide errors rather than make sure they don't happen in the first place?
Re:the wonders of PHP: (Score:2)
It's depressing how much crap gets spewed to the browser when you run a lot of PHP code at E_ALL and display errors.
In development:
error_reporting = E_ALL;
display_errors = On;
Inproduction:
error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE;
display_errors = Off;
log_errors = On;
The admin should be watching the logs and making sure that any errors are dealt with.
But to answer your question, no, they should not happen, but if one does and it happens to le
Re:the wonders of PHP: (Score:2)
Nerdy friend connection? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to admit it, but I imagine most of these social-network people are the nerdy type. Not that I'm saying that's bad, but most of us probably already have some nerdy friends. Why not get out and meet people in real life to havae a well-balanced friend social network?
Although the open-source project is cool.
--
These are the deals you can't pass up. Real-time updates on all the best stuff. You won't be sorry! Check out the hot deal search page too! [dealsites.net]
Re:Nerdy friend connection? (Score:5, Funny)
You don't belong here.
Compare to plane fare (Score:4, Interesting)
What ever happened to people meeting at the mall, bars, concerts, school, etc
Not everybody knows how to drive an automobile. Not everybody drinks alcohol. Not everybody can afford tickets to those few live performances offered at venues friendly to those who either by choice or by statute do not drink alcohol. Some students ride a bus to and from school and thus do not have time to meet beforehand or afterwards.
In addition, electronic FOAF systems are much cheaper than inter-city bus fare or airplane fare for meeting friends who have interests that aren't all that common in smaller cities of 50,000 or so.
Learn to Dance (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll second this.
I'm a nerdy, basically shy person myself.
Learning to dance saved my social life -- talking ballroom dance here, swing and waltz and foxtrot.
Women go for that stuff, trust me on this one. The fellow who knows how to waltz has got it made. You get to approach strangers, make conversation with them, lead them onto the dance floor, put your hands on them, your arms around them
Paradise!
-kgj
Re:Learn to Dance (Score:3, Insightful)
Joy of Dance (Score:4, Insightful)
Good points.
You make friends, you have fun.
Sure, it can be part of a courtship ritual -- yes, you might get laid -- hell, you might even get married: I did! -- but all that stuff can seem very secondary, when the dance is swinging just right
-kgj
PS - Note to newbie dancers: stop worrying about it, nobody is staring and judging. It's not that you're invisible
PPS - THE BIG SECRET: learn to lead. (Talking ballroom dance here -- it's different in some other forms of dance.) It's not really about steps! It's about leading
Re:Learn to Dance (Score:5, Interesting)
But if you really want to earn points:
1. Know something about wine. All men. ALL MEN should know about wine. At least understand the types of wine and how to evaluate a wine's flavor/
2. Ditch the false bravado. Machismo is attractive initially, but it quickly wears.
3. Take an interest in your date. Don't let her walk all over you, but show her you appreciate the time you're spending with her.
4. Be clean. Shave. Use cologne sparingly. Make sure you shoes and your belt match.
5. Be passionate about something. Have a social cause. Love poetry or literature.
6. Open doors for ladies, but don't order our dinners without our permission.
7. It's okay to be a geek. Geeks are sexy. They think about things, but don't brag or act superior because you know more about a subject than your date. Let her know that your geekness includes aspirations.
8. Pay attention to our non-verbal signals. Women average about 150 non-verbal signals every minute.
9. Don't be late, but be forgiving if we are.
10. Above all else, do not end the date with a heart-felt, "Gawd, I'd like to finger you" while escorting your date to her door.
And as a bonus for you college guys: don't do her homework for her, do offer to help tutor her if you'd like to help. And when you take her out on a date, don't take her to see a movie. 2 hours of silence in a theater isn't going to help her get to know you. Take her to dinner - it doesn't have to be a fancy restaurant, but it should be better than a fast food restaurant. If all you can afford is a corner dive, well, tell her. And tell her that you would (and will someday) take her to someplace much better. At least she'll know you're not just cheap, but that you are hoping for future dates. If she is worth her weight in RAM, she'll appreciate the honesty and be understanding without being judgemental. Go for a walk around town. Sit at an outside cafe and have coffee or ice cream. Go browsing through a department store 45 minutes before it closes. Buy her flowers. These are all good things.
Re:Learn to Dance (Score:2)
Whoah....
How exactly do you match a belt and a pair of shoes? What if I don't wear a belt? ;)
You forgot... (Score:2)
wine? (Score:2)
for that matter, we men don't demand that women be able to differentiate between a hefe weizen and a lager, so maybe you should relax on that one
the only member of my family who knows anything about wine is my gay
You clearly have no idea as to who is on these (Score:5, Interesting)
Just go on friendster or myspace sometime and you'll notice the fact that most people there are not geeky at all, and that there's probably an even mix of boys and girls.
Re:Nerdy friend connection? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nerdy friend connection? (Score:2, Interesting)
Here are a few reasons:
Note that meeting people through the internet doesn't
Re:Nerdy friend connection? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, with a name like PeopleAggregator it sounds *so* cool. I bet they spent a whole 5 minutes on that one.
-a
Reminds me of a joke... (Score:5, Funny)
How do you tell if an engineer is an extrovert?
He looks at YOUR shoes when he's talking.
Re:Reminds me of a joke... (Score:2)
Sorry, couldn't resist, whore that I am
XFN (Score:5, Informative)
Re:XFN (Score:3, Informative)
Note to everyone: (Score:5, Funny)
You just open the door, go outside and...OH MY GOD, the SUN, it BURNS&..&}=20 ]} } } }&..}=3Dr}'}"}[NO CARRIER]
Friendster and open source (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.friendster.com/jobs/
They even use an acronymn, LAMP, to refer to Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/PERL/Python
Re:Friendster and open source (Score:5, Funny)
looks like this site just took it in the backend.
-fren
I get too many emails already. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I get too many emails already. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I get too many emails already. (Score:2)
--
Steal this book? No, steal this business! (Score:3, Interesting)
Steal This Book [amazon.com]? No, steal this business!
And programmers wonder why they're unemployed.
Listen, this is great. I mean, I like receiving a gift as much as the next guy, but...
I always wonder what people are thinking when they start a business like this and then immediately open source the code and make it publicly available so that anyone and everyone can immediately compete.
Oh, wait. They're going to make their money on support. Or is it custom applications?
And just how do you explain this to the VC? How do you word this on the prospectus?
Re:Steal this book? No, steal this business! (Score:3, Insightful)
You can have the slickest and fastest social networking site (or IM client, or p2p client, or "portal"...) in the world but without users (no, being open source is not a "feature", end users don't care), a killer feature/gimmick, or an insane market
Re:Steal this book? No, steal this business! (Score:2)
There's a store near my house. Well, there are several, but one in particular is interesting. Half of the stuff they sell is self-replicating! Some of it even comes with everything you need to begin the replication process in the package. The rest has been deactivated, but they're only kidding themselves; you can buy the basics needed to begin replication in a lot of places. Can you imagine; they're trying to sell tomatoes when any fool can get some seeds and sti
Think FOAF is fluff? It is -- but... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're a cubicle rat, then yeah, I guess the whole FOAF thing seems a little too much like high school dating logistics. But if you translate introductions into opportunities and know how to write a compelling message, then some of these social networks are godsends.
Good For You, Fluff For Me, I Think (Score:2)
I'm graduating in a few months and planning on moving to a city where no one I know lives. I'm sure I know some people who know some people who know some people there, but I can't navigate the network casually enough. And without the network, it'll be much harder for me to be so lucky as to have
Social Networking Experiment (Score:4, Funny)
...
Experiment failed.
Re:Social Networking Experiment (Score:2)
Re:Social Networking Experiment (Score:4, Funny)
I can't do that, sorry. It just wouldn't work out between us.
I've seen your past comments, and I'm just looking for someone with a little more karma. Also, your UID is a little too high for my taste. You're just not my type.
It's not you, it's me.
Six more degrees (Score:3, Interesting)
On a related note, a book called "Nexus" by M. Buchanan discusses social and other networks. Decent treatment, but unfortunately no equations or numbers.
Re:Six Degrees of Richard Feynman (Score:2)
Feynman spoke on the Challenger inquiry. He knew the NASA director at the time. The director is one step away from Kalpana Chawla, an astronaut on Columbia. Chawla is of Indian descent, and knew Dr. Piyush Agrawal, former head of mathematics in Miami-Dade Schools (IIRC) in Florida. My parents have a picture of Dr. Agrawal and Chawla in Washington. My father is good friends with Dr. Agrawal.
On the same thread, the best man at my wedding works at a NASA subcontractor. There are likely a
In case it gets slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)
Update (Score:3, Informative)
20:21 Central
While we scramble behind the scenes to put things back together, we'll share the slashdot love and link to other sites where you can get more information about FOAF.
FOAF Info:
FOAF Tools:
Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue. [imdb.com]
19:14 Central
Oh hell. We got slashdotted. And the main site wasn't even running the cur
The most interesting people .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The most interesting people .... (Score:2, Interesting)
Full text of the website. (Score:2)
hmmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
What about an open source search engine instead? (Score:3, Interesting)
---------
Create your wireless web site [chiralsoftware.net]
Speaking about Marc Canter (Score:3)
Don't know what to think.
me also (Score:3, Funny)
I wish people would go for the common good against their own best interest, too.
Bad joke... (Score:3, Funny)
Good Lord, I'll bet it even uses that PlySkool database, MySQL... It certainly can't be "enterprise" quality... Bahhhh!
What is FOAF (Score:2)
Re:What is FOAF (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What is FOAF (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What is FOAF (Score:2, Funny)
Zzzz, call me anti-social, but (Score:2)
Livejournal (Score:2)
I am like an adict to it.
But... (Score:3, Insightful)
--
I didn't read the article so sue me!
Re:But... (Score:3, Funny)
No, it's an Open Source Dork Network.
Get it right. Sheesh.
Nathan
too many social networks! (Score:5, Insightful)
But once you have so many networks (and the craze is only starting) then even in theory you can't have all your friends on the same network.
At least I know can't possibly be active on all of them.
I think what networks are aspiring to do is unachievable because their scope is so small. We already have our social network, it's called Internet and it is successful because there is only one Internet.
Re:too many social networks! (Score:2)
Missing the point... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Missing the point... (Score:2)
But if this were to say, integrate into a larger organization like a college or university, it would be possible for something like this to be beneficial.
There are also many separate possible implmentations for this... Pretty much any subset of people who are on the net will benefit from an Open Source Friendster style network.
FOAF? (Score:2)
OT I know, but couldn't resist.
My sugessted possible use for this (Score:2)
Imagine you need someone to implement a special algorithm. Normaly either you or a project member could learn it, you ask random colleagues, or you post a message on a company/university board waiting for
Or, you can do it in perl (Score:2)
If only they would publish the data using MRN (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This passes for news? (Score:5, Funny)
Because, since the source is open, we geeks can modify it work in ways the original author never dreamed. Like implementing a social network of one, or creating a network of AI friends. It would also be perfect for modeling the intricate relationships of the cast of ST:TNG. The possibilities are endless!
Could you do any of that with your proprietary invitation only network? I didn't think so.
Re:Turn off the computer!!!!! (Score:2)
I don't understand the fascination with face-to-face either. The graphics are better, but the AI still sucks. When the face-to-face ones can pass a Turing test, I'll play the Blue Room and Daystar Expansion Set. Not until then.
Re:Slashdot, the ultimate social network (Score:2)