To put it another way: Dan's talking about creating a very robust 'enterprise level' 'server solution'. Which is nothing like what Pete's talking about, which is a decentralised, distributed (possibly p2p but that's pretty much beside the point) ad-hoc network.

Or to put it yet another way: Dan's suggesting a hardware solution to Pete's software problem.

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I'll be honest and say I don't 'get' or understand it all. I'm not trying to be overly cynical, I just don't see a way it could be reliably implemented on the same scale as Facebook.

I don't see how grandpa Jones is going to get his photos to his grandkids using his swanky new iPhone.

I'm very much sticking with the Facebook analogy as it's frigging huge and surely the point of any social service is to get the masses involved.

Yeah, I get all that. And it's a really good idea.

But, if you're going to be directing millions of people through Flickr's website (as an example), they've got to pay for the hardware and bandwidth it uses, and they're most likely to pass the costs on to the company responsible for all that extra traffic.

Mind you, don't ask me how to handle the authentication and user database across a distributed platform. That kind of encryption makes my head hurt.

Wasn't part of the point of this to not have adverts?

Edit: Yes, my replies are getting shorter. Can you tell I'm starting to wonder what point I'm arguing?

So do I. Except on certain sites, cos I'm nice like that. But you did mention getting an API from Flickr that gives us the photos and adverts. But that's just an example, and hypothetical, so I'm not sure how much further this can go.

If it doesn't use existing services, then we're back to people storing their stuff in "our" cloud, which would be other people's PC and servers. At which point most of the world will object because they don't understand/don't care what encryption does, and they don't understand that it's almost the same as using iCloud but the data isn't stored by Apple.

So I just got an advert "How To Lose Belly Fat" from an Australian company.

So on one hand that's good - it shows FB doesn't know everything about me (or at least doesn't tell advertisers).

But on the other hand, it does have me rather offended - that they would insult me by showing such an advert.

How dare they imply I'm fucking Australian! :@