Will Distributed Social Media Become a Solution?

One of the presenters at Ignite Boston 3 this week was Joe Cascio. He has been discussing his ideas for new and improved social media applications using distributed systems instead of dedicated ones. He theorizes about taking the concept of data portability and data ownership by the users of social networks and applying it to real scalability and ownership problems.

He calls his main brainchild for this idea Distributed Twitter. Basically it takes the idea of distributed data shared over many servers and routers using a protocol and applies it to microblogging with thousands of users. A simplistic way to thinking of the concept is to think of Twitter as if it were distributed like email, with no single server required.

The main benefits to a distributed microblogging model would be an open network. Currently, each time Twitter and applications like it go down for the count, there is no way to continue your conversations. When the closed network is down, you are completely shut out. With a more open network using a distributed model has problems, there is no closed network or single server/server group to knock out. That means the network just reroutes itself to the next available resourceusing the distributed protocol.

I was a bit turned off when thinking of it in terms of email, but I think that may be a misleading comparison. It is really the back end functions of mail that the distributed system is like, the user interface would remain very much the microblogging, social platform. The more I read about Distributed Twitter as an idea, and distributed social networks, the more I think it could work - like cloud computing made reality for the hard core social media junkies.

Joe Cascio also talked about distributed database system Prophet as a way to give users back control over their data through a distributed database system. I admit the theories behind Prophet werea bit over my head in application, not being a programmer, but the idea was solid and believable: users could use distributed data systems to hold control of their own data and use it how they saw fit in their own self created social networks.

Distributed data is a powerful idea, and one whose time has come. Even so, in order for any of these solutions to come to fruition you need more than just a pipe dream and a great idea. You need to handle the looming issue of cable companies controlling and throttling internet users (which would prevent free flow of data), the looming issue of network neutrality and the problems of cable companies and governments spying on users behind the scenes.  If the hurdles are surmounted, Joe Cascio's ideas coupled with those of Chris Saad and the Data Portability movement might fuel the leap we've been waiting for into Web 3.0. 

Update: correction made on speaker's name