I’ve recently read couple of posts that left an impression on me. First one was Brad Neuberg’s about personal research agenda . I haven’t completed list of my problems yet, but I came far enough to know I’m not working on any of them.

The other one was about Blog 2.0 . I’m more interested in content manipulation than social interactions as Pownce and Marela are only two social networking applications I use. Still, ideas contained are intriguing and couple of days before Data Sharing Summit is the right time to shamelessly pimp my views.

Build a social application and you will likely, sooner or later, encounter a dilemma in what your members will be building. Are their creations mainly personal, an expression of their creativity, or are they more of a place where people meet and engage?

Most websites don’t fall squarely into one or the other. My blog feels personal not only because I picked the look and topics, but also because my voice is elevated above others. I doubt I would feel the same if comments could look like my posts. I like my place and freedom it offers me.

That’s why I don’t care all that much about most networks and degrees of their openness. Really open social network would be interwoven into the fabric of web. I already have my page, I don’t need yet another one. If buddy list is desired, I can use FOAF. Sharing of my stuff? Feeds. Same answer for getting other people’s stuff. Starting a new network would mean creating a widget or a few that can be easily integrated in our sites, maybe some sort of a pinging service if expediency is important and offering a space for personal page for those, who don’t have it yet.

It’s amazing how little would need to be changed to implement ideas in Blog 2.0. Basic technology is already here, it’s just not used widely enough yet. Sure there are a few issues that need to be thought through, mainly to do with handling privacy correctly, but they are neither big nor really technological. And price for all this?

Maybe a bit less expediency in content propagation and a bit more work for network operators, who might need to learn to live with the same limitations that search engine developers do already. And I’m not even sure that is really necessary.

Update: Thinking a bit more about this I would be happy enough if social network were just more inclusive. It’s fine that you can create an account and be busy on their platform, but it would be better if you could join and interact with a social network with your own node for as long as that met your needs.