@cycomachead What are the right incentives and tools?

– not locking users data in a central company’s silo

– publish freely

– publish under your own domain

– keep publishing separate from the social network

– multiple social networks should exist

– the feed should be open to all sorts of software that any social network should allow as third party plugins:

– filters (regex, baisian, machine learning, etc)

– timeline prioritizers. (time based ordering, algorithmic ordering, post type ordering)

– Third party apps can interoperate with each social network.

– Where’s the money? An app ecosystem for the items above. The social networks attract people based on price and quality. Some ban Nazis, some manually moderate, some are subculture based. Some limit data by blocking follower counts/reshares, likes. some append ads to posts, and others charge a price, maybe including reputation system. The reputation system isn’t imposed on the networks‘ members when reading their feed, but instead the results are available to the filters & prioritizers that each user can buy from third parties.

The guiding principle is to give the users control and to keep the ecosystem open enough that innovative new tools are available. Something like the CMS world of WordPress.

In a world where none of these would ever be big enough to rival the network effect of the large social networks, they still could build sustainable businesses on an largely open ecosystem that incentivize experimentation and interoperability.

Micro.blog checks the first four lines above. It’s a nice start.

That’s the idea I toy with.