Appleseed Project shows future of online networking

I'm starting to think social networking sites might go too far someday.

These Web sites make communication between people easier - in theory. Instead of picking up a phone to tell someone a nugget of information, users can simply write a message on their friends' walls.

Social networking sites are not the pristine social tools they are often portrayed to be, though.

While they do offer the opportunity to network with hundreds of people, many of them lack the ability to communicate with each other - users' online networks only extend as far as their sites will allow them to.

A new site called Appleseedproject.org looks to sidestep some of the hurdles present in the current generation of sites and offer a new and more open system of communication.

The Appleseed Project began three years ago when programmer Michael Chisari decided our current crop of sites just weren't cutting it. Internet sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com offered social connections, but only through their proprietary systems.

Users were free to network all they want as long as they only wanted to network through site-specific systems. Chisari describes these Web sites as "walled gardens" - and he's got a point.

Without funding and forced to program completely on his own time, Chisari began the process of constructing an infrastructure that would allow different networking sites to communicate with each other openly.

While this sounds like a wonderful idea, there are some hurdles to its application - money being the biggest.

No, I'm not talking about the cost of programming the new site - I'm referring to the amount of money companies make from social networking sites.

Chisari's term "walled garden" is an excellent description, but I think "barbed wire-encased sandbox" is far more accurate.

The social networking sites we know and love today are businesses - and often lucrative ones. Sites make tons of money off the ads that stream by in rapid succession in the side and top bars of a user's Internet browser.

So it's in the best interest of these companies to keep their gardens walled - otherwise, the cash-flow might escape.

Within the constraints of these walled gardens, users become a captive audience for whatever messages the sites wish to broadcast or whichever sponsors have given them the most money this week.

Under the existing model, MySpace will never communicate with Facebook unless Rupert Murdoch buys Facebook and merges them together into some hideous mass of malfunctioning computer code and annoying applications.

Chisari's project looks to sidestep this nasty ownership issue and organize a standard for social networking, similar to the way the Internet operates today.

During its early days, the Internet also worked under this walled garden concept. Corporations like CompuServe, Prodigy and America Online acted as gatekeepers to the Internet and attempted to keep users walled within their own systems.

As time passed, the Internet's own walled gardens came down through a universal system of communication between users. Users still have to pay for access to the Internet, but once online, they are free to communicate with whomever they choose in whatever way they want to.

Chisari looks to implement a universal communication system for social networking sites - thus making MySpace and Facebook seem as obsolete and broken as CompuServe and Prodigy seem today.

The idea of universal social networking seems wonderful, but with new forms of freedom, there are also new forms of risk.

While the walled-garden model does keep users confined beneath the umbrella of each specific networking site, it also functions to protect them from many of the so-called dangers of the Internet.

Until recently, Facebook and MySpace were mostly free of pornographic spam, and users had built-in privacy options to keep them from being seen by random users. With a unified system, that could all change fairly dramatically.

Without the walls provided by existing networking sites, users will be forced to police their own information and protect their privacy themselves. Chisari himself suggests a trust-based system in which users and their friends would police the massive social network.

I think a trust system is possible for future social networking sites, but I cannot imagine the transition from the modern walled-garden setup would go very smoothly.

Users are accustomed to the current system of privacy controls and limitations. It stands to reason the transition to a self-policed, trust-based system would have a number of unfortunate privacy casualties, given the well-publicized cases of identity theft under the current, more restrictive model.

As it currently stands, Chisari's project is around 75 percent complete and has been released in beta. Interested programmers can download the source code for the project from appleseed.sourceforge.net and offer suggestions for streamlining the process.

Chisari is forging ahead with his project. If successful, Chisari will usher in a new era of limitless online social networking.

Here's hoping the world is ready for it.


Originally published in The Daily Reveille...