I've been working on an open source social networking software called Appleseed for some time now, and its starting to get to be usable beta software. The important thing about Appleseed, which differentiates it from MySpace or Friendster, is that it is open source and distributed. Which means that instead of having one social networking site that everybody joins, you have multiple social networking sites that all work together.

http://appleseed.sourceforge.net

Appleseed allows you to have friends "circles" so you can categorize friends, but then also lets you restrict and allow content based on your friends circles. So people in your Close Friends circle can see journal entries that people in your Family circle can't.

One thing that I've thought about a lot is the idea of integrating file sharing with social networking. Especially the idea of being able to restrict the files you share according to which friends circle the viewing user is in.

Since Appleseed is 100% web based, I figured in order to do this properly, it would require some kind of integration with locally run software. At first I thought I could simply write my own client, but there's an issue of time and trust with that. I thought the best way to approach it is to work out integrating Appleseed and Gnutella.

I figured I'd start this thread to hear ideas and thoughts and concerns.

Feel free to email me or respond here. I'm really excited about this, and I think it could be the "killer app" that can help wrestle social networking away from single-site megacorporations like MySpace.

Also, if anybody would like an invite to the main Appleseed test site, let me know:

http://www.appleseedproject.org

Michael Chisari
michael.chisari@gmail.com