[Freedombox-discuss] "What's a Distributed Social Network?" -- the comic

[Paul Gardner-Stephen]

Hi,

On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 11:09 PM, Robinson Tryon
<bishop.robinson at gmail.com> wrote:
... snip ...
> I realize that for the FreedomBox project to become wildly successful
> it will need to have a PR team that promotes a positive, powerful
> image of the product and that downplays any successes of "the other
> guys". The thing is that most of us are used to hacking on technology
> in a world in which things generally don't grow much larger than "Geek
> Famous," because we usually wouldn't bother to put in the time; we'd
> much rather work on another cool new project.
>
> As the FreedomBox project starts to pick up some speed and makes it
> possible for armchair geeks to actually run their own servers, I think
> one of the best things the project can do is to be very honest and
> open about the services that our project provides as compared to
> Facebook, Twitter, GMail, LinkedIn, AIM, and the rest. We need to
> provide positive talking points (and hopefully some very nice looking
> charts and other graphics) that show exactly how easy it will be for
> people to run these servers and how much more powerful the FreedomBox
> will be than the services they're using today.
>
> Maybe some services like Facebook have a multi-year track record,
> while many FOSS distributed social networks are rather young (to say
> the least). Let's focus our efforts on the powerful talking points --
> like privacy problems with Facebook -- and use those carrots to get
> people interested in the project and get them excited about purchasing
> and using the hardware. If we can create a powerful and simple-to-use
> product, all we need to do is get them to take that first "nibble" and
> they'll be hooked.

I think I agree.
Ultimately there will be multiple talking points that will appeal to
different people.
Privacy is certainly one of those.
Personal sovereignty is probably another.
Ability to work without depending on "big infrastructure" is probably
also one, especially for rural/remote/developing/disaster prone
settings.

Paul.

> --R
>
> _______________________________________________
> Freedombox-discuss mailing list
> Freedombox-discuss at lists.alioth.debian.org
> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
>