I don't think software people understand just how disinclined a non-software person is to do anything requiring configuring serverside stuff.
Even torrents, where clients have essentially become good enough that all you have to do is install them, most people get a friend that has some understanding of computers to set them up for them.
The cloud is really a better model if you want to achieve widespread adoption, and what is the point of a social network without people.
That's why they build it such that people can simply pay a 3rd party that offers the service and just use them to hold their identity. Not as much control as hosting it yourself, but still not as bad as facebook where you can't leave and they hold EVERYONE's data.
I'm just not convinced that enough people actually care about that.
The largest cell phone market is the one for generic simple phones that just make calls, regardless of the smartphone hype. The reason that IE is so ubiquitous is that a huge number of people don't really care, as long as they can get on the internet, and go on facebook and youtube and maybe a few other sites, thats enough for them.
Hell, even look at dropbox, people only started using that sort of service when it went into the cloud and became dead easy. They didn't care that they were locking all their data into a hard to leave service.
Don't get me wrong, I think it would be great if there was a way to recreate facebook in an open software setting, I just don't think any social network where the average user would have to either install a complicated app or pay a fee will ever get off the ground...
If most people don't care, that's because they don't know. See, most people barely make the difference between their browser and a search engine. They don't think about the long term accessibility of their digital data, or about the preservation of their online privacy because they just don't know what it means. On the other hand, they do care about preserving (physical) family photos and important documents. They do care about their home not being spied.
I see people not caring as a lack of education. Computers are ubiquitous in the western world since less than a generation. The Internet is even younger. This is just too short for people to understand them (and their hazards). Just wait 20 years, and they will understand. At this point, they will care. Now, the question is whether we can accelerate the process or not.
it'll probably be like openid. a few big names will host a data for a large number of people that don't care to setup their own, but for those that want more control, they can host their own data.
even if those non-technical people don't host their own data, they'll be able to switch to something else that may have different privacy policies.
What about "plug and share" machines? I bet a plug computer[1] with everything installed on it could do the job. It doesn't need to be more complicated than Gmail.
I don't think software people understand just how disinclined a non-software person is to do anything requiring configuring serverside stuff.
Even torrents, where clients have essentially become good enough that all you have to do is install them, most people get a friend that has some understanding of computers to set them up for them.
The cloud is really a better model if you want to achieve widespread adoption, and what is the point of a social network without people.