Social networks have become the phenomenon that brought the Internet to a new stage of development. It is difficult to imagine a modern Internet user who would not be part of one of them. But, of course, this is not the last stage. And in this article I will talk about how the world-famous gurus see the further development of the social part of the Internet and how we, the developers of the MetaID project, are trying to put these ideas into practice.

Disadvantages of current social networks

In the modern structure of social networks there is clearly a contradiction between the interests of their users and owners. Owners need to have as many users as possible and they don’t go anywhere, and users need effective communication and the absence of all its limitations. Unfortunately, for the time being, this contradiction is being resolved in favor of network owners. As a result, almost all modern social networks have certain disadvantages:

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Link only to the accounts of this network.

This flaw is so commonplace that almost no one has any questions - why so? Why am I, having an account in the same social network, can only interact with other accounts of the same network? It is difficult to explain this only by technical reasons - modern technologies (even widespread) allow much more. But an explanation for this is easy to find if you stand in the place of the network owner and think about his interests.

The need to have multiple accounts.

This is a direct consequence of the previous paragraph.

To contact a person registered in a certain social network, you will have to create an account on this network.

Have you noticed how the VP network has expanded in the picture? This is exactly what its owners need - more users in statistics, happier investors. Uncomfortable to the users themselves? I do not care, because it is everywhere.

Another account is a different person.

Perhaps someone will say: “I want to be different at different people. In one - a business man, in the other - a happy gouging. " This is normal. And for this there are all conditions.

But if someone wants not to split up into dozens of accounts, but to be a single whole, problems begin with this. Someone creates on the personal page lists "I am on the Internet" with a postscript that everyone else who mows under me is not me. Someone indicates in all his profiles links to all his other profiles (even this, unfortunately, is possible not everywhere). But most simply accept the situation as given. And this state of things sometimes makes it difficult for people to interact.

Those who have not created an account are powerless guests.

Even if we discard completely degenerate examples where unregistered users are not allowed to go beyond the index page, the situation is unfavorable. Even in Livejournal, the founder of which is also the author of the OpenID idea, guests who came through with this very OpenID are equated with anonymous users, although they have a few more features (like their own avatar). On the other sites, until you go through the tedious registration procedure (and sometimes fill out a profile), you do not even have the right to indicate your name, let alone commit any actions on the site. Why is that? This question is already easy to answer and the answer is the same as in the previous paragraphs - it is beneficial for owners of social. networks.

Abandoning the transition to better opportunities.

How many times have you heard such a dialogue:

- go to site X - there is more convenient interface, more space for pictures and it falls much less often than site Y, on which you are sitting now

- yes, cool, but there are already a bunch of friends, they will not go there ... :(

In the absence of the limitations described above, such a dialogue simply could not exist and it would be primarily beneficial for users - the sites would know that as soon as the competitors have better opportunities than they do, the users will move on to the competitors. And it’s not worth talking about the benefits of fair competition - it’s obvious to everyone.

Duplication of data

Any programmer knows for sure, and a non-programmer has a vague feeling that data duplication is bad. When you fill out a profile on the next site for the N-th time, it turns from a “minute case” into a boring and nasty process, which is often simply ignored, which, again, spoils communication and spends extra time searching for the right information.

And if your e-mail changes and you need to change it in all profiles, where is it listed? It is clear why people try not to register anywhere else, and even if they register, they rarely fill out their data.

What MetaID offers

About five months ago, I wrote about the concept of a personal information server (LIS), which would allow a person to become part of a global social graph and no longer depend in matters of communication on any one site and its artificial limitations. And here the initial implementation of this concept is nearing its end. And this is what LIS will provide to users at the first stage of its development:

User connections do not depend on where the account of a friend.

There are no restrictions on connections with other people. To read what another person writes and receive information about a wide variety of events related to him, you do not need to register on those sites where this person is registered.

Organizing all your network contacts into a connected system.

You can finally collect your network contacts from different sites and organize them into a logical system. In a normal contact book, as a rule, one record corresponds to one person and this record contains phone numbers, e-mail addresses and other data of this person. This is logical. Therefore, there is no reason why the network contacts should be treated differently. The current linking of contacts to accounts, and not to people, is a relic of the past and we must get rid of it. Chat with people, not with their accounts.

Contact with a person, regardless of what other services he is registered.

No need to look for yourself, where else your friend is registered. LIS will do it for you. He will find the accounts of your friends on sites where they are registered and you will be able to treat them as with a single entity. Of course, as long as the system is not all-knowing and it sometimes requires user prompts. If you do not want to receive information from some accounts of a person (for example, you are only interested in his articles on a particular topic) - you can easily turn off the extra.

One profile that can be used anywhere

LIS provides the ability to create your own network profile, which will include the information that you want to share with other network users. This may include personal and contact information, as well as information about your education, work experience, your projects, knowledge and skills, interests, etc.

At the request of the user, this profile can be exported in semantic formats that are becoming common in the modern Internet. It can be transferred to another site as with login using OpenID or in the form of RDF-data. All that is required from another site on which you want to register is to support several formats of transferred data. And he can get not only your name and nickname, but also, say, a list of your friends, your interests or preferences.

Confidentiality.

Few people dare to open information about themselves to everyone. Therefore, LIS allows you to customize access rights to information for both people and other sites.

Setting permissions is based on people’s network identifiers — i.e. You set permissions for some network address. Regardless of which site the other person is registered on, you can allow or forbid them to view some of the information about you. All that a person needs to do in order to prove his rights is to confirm in one of the many ways that a certain page (most often, a profile on a certain site) belongs to him. The easiest way to do this is using OpenID, but there are other ways.

Using the power of the semantic web.

The power of the semantic web, which has been talked about a lot lately, is that it allows programs to automatically process information at a level that was previously only available to people. Those. it allows programs to understand the meaning of information more fully. Its weakness is that for its work it must be supported by the majority of sources and receivers of information, which is not yet.

Now quite a bit of information on the web is presented in semantic formats, but even these crumbs can already be used and get impossible earlier results. MetaID allows you to try out these opportunities in practice and, perhaps, speed up the development of the network somewhat, because the more people use these technologies, the more often they will be used.

Another social network?

This is not a social network. It is a tool necessary for normal existence in a global social graph. Just because it is not a social network in its current sense, we do not need to artificially create restrictions for users. And our users will be able to take full advantage of the communication technologies provided by the worldwide network.

If you are interested in what is described here and you want to be one of the first users of the new generation network, you can apply for a beta test of the service. It will begin soon.