I think people on HN tend to forget that most people dont care about the technical requirements etc. The reason people use facebook because its usage is clear and defined for what its build.<p>You go on Facebook to check in with your friends, see photos, chat/message. You just dont do it with a blog.<p>It's like saying you could use paper towels as toilet paper. There is probably some overlap in functionality, but people clearly associate types of products with their specific use case
I don't see how this is different from saying "The World Wide Web is the open source rival to Facebook".<p>It's true. There isn't anything about Facebook you can't do with your own website. Facebook just centralizes it and makes it easier on the digitally challenged. It's the Geocities of the 21st century. And it too shall eventually crumble, while the Web continues on.<p>Make it easy to host, set up, administer and link websites and you will have defeated Facebook. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. People have been trying for 20 years.
The author seems to conflate WordPress <i>the software</i> and WordPress.com <i>the service</i>.<p>> You control the source code. You can easily export your site from WordPress.com and take your site with you.<p>Only if you download WordPress from wordpress.org and install it on your own server (or shared hosting account). The dot-com version contains a lot of proprietary code.<p>> WordPress.com has already become a login option on many different websites.<p>Only if you opt to host your blog with them. WordPress.com is a great service, but hosting your blog there is mutually incompatible with having complete control over the source code. Besides, half the WordPress sites out there are self-hosted, and WordPress.com logins don't work there.<p>Some of the features the article mentions, like JetPack, may be available for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs. But that's just comments. There is no meaningful aggregation between WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs when it comes to posts and pictures. Until there's an easy way to follow a lot of WordPress blogs no matter where they're hosted (hello, RSS), it will be difficult to make the argument that <i>WordPress the software</i> makes a promising social networking platform.<p>What we really need if we want a <i>distributed</i> and <i>open-source</i> social networking platform is improved interaction between independent sites. Not with newfangled stacks like Diaspora, but something that can be slapped onto any existing blog, microblog, or photo sharing service as a plugin (again, think RSS but much more powerful). Why limit your network to WordPress.com users, or even all WordPress users? Give me a common API that lets me follow folks on WordPress.com, DeviantArt, and Pinterest at the same time, a gem that I can add to my Rails-based blog to support this API, and a nice open-source client that ordinary people can use to access all that data. If a few companies like Mozilla and WordPress.com started collaborating on this, it would be a thousand times more viable than Diaspora can ever be.
The main open source alternative to Facebook is Friendica. It has more features than Diaspora, encrypted communications, emphasis upon decentralization and you can install it easily on a LAMP stack. You don't have to settle for being data mined and sold by Mr Zuckerberg, or owned by the Communications Data Act.
Sites aren't people. It's linking wp sites. Don't even see how this stands even in general concept of 'facebook rival'.<p>Technically, it sounds plausible (?), but that's irrelevant.
The issue isn't publishing, or even selective publishing, it's <i>smart aggregation</i>.<p>You'd still need a solution like a feed reader or a site like FriendFeed. And even then, you don't have the interactivity of FB with the ability to "like" content, comment, and tag. It's the content that brings people to FB, the opportunity to see who's up to what, look at funny photos and chat and gossip with friends.
This is a very interesting analysis. It's one that I would've never thought of, but seems accurate. The fact that wordpress powers a great majority of sites would be a huge factor in their success at playing the "social" game. Funny, though, that most of those sites also incorporate FB "like" buttons. Good read.
Sorry but this just seems to miss the point of how Facevook bested competitors that, in theory, covered the same ground as FB did (Friendster, MySpace, xanga, etc). Execution is as important as e idea...and FB, by focusing on a narrow band of features and customization, created a service that was easy to use and addictive. Nothing about Wordpress or the plugins required to get it to FB functionality will match this.<p>This is like saying that WP is the open-source alternative to Titter, except that you can write more than 140 characters and even add photos/tables/anything...Twitter is more than just a text and newsfeed platform
When you look at open and portable software for personal sites, as people in the Indie Web community do, WordPress is an obvious frontrunner. Facebook and WordPress started in very different places, but because they've expanded to provide a lot of tools for establishing an online presence, there is certainly some overlap. For instance, some businesses use their Facebook page as a blog.<p>By the way if you like running your own site and can make it to Portland at the end of the month, consider going to <a href="http://indiewebcamp.com/" rel="nofollow">http://indiewebcamp.com/</a>
The pendulum does always swing away from a walled garden. The author makes a compelling case for Wordpress as a distributed and open potential social platform.<p>Love to hear what Matt thinks about it.
<$0.02> Android not WordPress</0.02>
Its not about Open 'source' but simply 'open'.
Weak proof of this is the Facebook Phone rumors a while ago.
What if FB could at this stage own Android? FB wants/needs hardware presence for longer term.
Too bad Google is too focussed on "Social" as defined by FB.