Orkut Now Comatose, And an Old New Thing
Posted by matijs 30/09/2004 at 21h19
Speaking from a pathetically low sample size, I can conclude that all ASNs go through a comatose period, where the number of users is clearly larger than the system's implementation can handle. Friendster had it, but is now fast again, and Orkut, which was fast, now has it.
The thing is, I'm not really that interested in ASNs, because after logging on, I'm not sure what I should do there, and talking to complete strangers seems just as awkward as in real life. Given that, I still would like them to be fast, for when I do get into the spirit of artificially networking on-line.
At this point, I wrote the following:
The trouble is of course the fact that all these ASNs are server-based, which makes them vulnerable to comatosity. What we need is a peer-to-peer ASN. A kind of FOAF on steroids. With a client that spiders your friends' friend lists (down to a certain level), and constructs your network on your machine. Your profile is your web page of course. Maybe some new home-page providers would spring up to provide the home-page-less with their much needed profile space.
There should be a way to send messages to other people in your network. Perhaps each member could publish a public key, and you would encrypt your message with all the public keys along the route to the person you're trying to contact, and then send it on its way. Each link in your route would only accept e-mail for this purpose from their direct friends, so a real chain linking the sender and the receiver would have to exist.
A similar public key system could help with the accessing of profiles (yes this contradicts the web page idea). Possibly at most friends of friends would get to see something not completely public.
I think this sounds great. With some more thinking, it should be possible to create something that actually works, has al the features of current ASNs that are actually nice, and avoids all current annoyances.
So, what's wrong with this idea? How can it be abused?
And then, of course, I started looking around on the FOAF site, and found out that this is, in fact, not a new idea (except maybe for the public key bits).