Sneaking out of the walled garden

I was about to write a comment on this ReadWriteWeb article on distributed social networking, but it got too long, so instead I’m posting it here. These are some of the free and open source social networks which exist as replacements for Twitter, Facebook, Tr.im and the many other new walled gardens¹ that have taken over the role of AOL and Compuserve:

Sick of Twitter downtime?

• Laconica is a distributed Open Microblogging Platform, developed by status.net . There is a very popular install going at http://identi.ca if you want to try it out. It lets you update your Twitter account through your Laconica if you want to, and there are quite a few Laconica clients already. XMPP/Jabber support is very good too, so you can update through eg. Google Talk, and it already does hash tags, replies, groups, threads/context… highly recommended.
• OpenMicroblogger is another competitor which has gained a lot of press.
• Also, Jaiku seems like it will be released as open source although I don’t know if it supports the Open Microblogging protocol.

Denied too many friend requests? Don’t want to give away all your intellectual property to Facebook?

• Elgg lets you run your own social network, there is an install at gNewBook.org if you want to try it out.
• Noserub is a decentralised social networking platform and software, there is an install going at http://identoo.com if you want to try it out. It has a pretty cool lifestream feature, and makes it very easy to hook your profile up to your blogs, scrobbling, microblogs, photo stream, etc. There seem to be quite a few installs running at various places already, worth checking out.
• Daisychain is a distributed, free and open source social networking project by the people who made http://libre.fm, but is so far just in a planning phase.
• http://identi.ca/group/facebookfree has a lot of discussions around this…

Did Last.fm/CBS sell your scrobbles to the RIAA?

• http://libre.fm Libre.fm runs the software GNUkebox which lets you scrobble your music using a Last.fm-compatible API. The Nixtape web front end currently lets you listen to free music, played using the free OGG Vorbis format.

Are your Tr.im URLs gone forever?

EDIT: No they’re not! Tr.im is opening up their code and becoming community owned. Fabulous. If you still want alternatives, check out:

• http://lilurl.sourceforge.net/ lilURL is currently running at http://ur1.ca if you want to try it, or you could install your own, although it doesn’t have many fancy features. Simple URL shortener.
• http://www.tighturl.com/ TightURL (also http://2tu.us) is another simple Free and Open Source URL shortener, which seems to be the choice of Laconica now.
• http://www.youbundle.com/b/start-your-own-url-shortening-service has
  some more alternatives.

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¹Walled Gardens: Like “The Truman Show”, only everyone’s a Truman.