> Federation is cool. I have the feeling it needs its "Ubuntu Moment".
When federation is done 'right' you don't even notice it. Email for instance.
In my opinion social networks being in silos is as silly as something like email being in a silo. Really what we need is user buy in and that probably means figuring out how to interoperate with the various social networks like facebook and twitter.
It would be cool if the big social networks started thinking about breaking out of their silos and instead trying to be the gmail of federated social networks.
In the IndieWeb community we had that for a long time, we communicated with Facebook via their API so we could cross post posts, pictures and comments which would live on our websites but would also be posted to Facebook.
The big ones have no reason to break out of their silos. FB is worth $500B. They want to build walls around that. Walls as high as possible.
It's a chance for small players. If there is a future where federated social takes over the silos, then betting on it now would be a once in a lifetime opportunity.
And receive email relayed via smtp servers - others don't have to connect directly to gmail/Google to send you mail. (modulus aggressive spam filters).
When federation is done 'right' you don't even notice it. Email for instance.
In my opinion social networks being in silos is as silly as something like email being in a silo. Really what we need is user buy in and that probably means figuring out how to interoperate with the various social networks like facebook and twitter.
It would be cool if the big social networks started thinking about breaking out of their silos and instead trying to be the gmail of federated social networks.