An Exploration of Distributed Social Networking

Based on current trends, this paper predicts that a monopoly will emerge that owns our personal data in the cloud, and discusses ramifications of loss of privacy and fair-market competition in the software industry. We argue that a technically superior alternative would give ownership of the data back to the individuals based on a distributed, egalitarian design with open interfaces that allow a choice of storage vendors and software vendors. We present an architecture and a prototype that sports some of these features. We urge systems researchers to rise to the challenge to create an economically viable, user-friendly, egalitarian data system. Topping the research agenda is the monetization of privacy, and how companies can make money out of personal data without compromising privacy. Other research topics include creating self-managed personal servers, high-level programming systems to enable easy development of distributed social-networking applications, and techniques to safeguard data confidentiality.