It's 2013

Let's make a new social network!

Ideas for a lightweight, scalable and modern decentralized social networking server

Florian Hülsmann / cbix.de

No, wait..! A whole new social network!?

Use existing ones, speak their language (protocol) and keep all your virtual friends!

The problem with current implementations:

• slow
• not using full potential of current web standards
• most of them are just Twitter clones
• too static (chronological stream, full of uninteresting things)
• poor cross-host full text search support

Choose a protocol:

• OStatus
• FOAF
• tent
• friendica
• OpenSocial

• Kune / Wave
• DSNP
• OSMP
• Socknet
• Ampify

• libertree
• Kopal
• Zot
• SMTP
• XMPP

Client side (web browser)

• Cache posts/contacts/comments/... using localstorage
• Live updates through websockets
• Offline mode
• Client side plugins (custom post types, games)
• Mobile friendly (responsive)

Server side

• Lightweight
• Scalable (e.g. allow running multiple instances for faster search requests)
• Portable, few dependencies
• Websocket support

Go

A compiled programming language for scalable, fast server applications.

Supports concurrency:

func (p *Post) Distribute() {
    for _, h := range p.ReceiveHosts {
        go h.QueuePostNotification(p)
    }
}

goroutines

communicate through channels.

func PostsListener(c chan *Post) {
    for p := range <-c {
        go db.StorePost(p)
        go hub.PostNotify(p)
    }
}

func main() {
    postChan := make(chan *Post)
    protoHandler := proto.NewHandler()
    protoHandler.SetPostChan(postChan)
    go PostsListener(postChan)
    // ...
}

Websockets

func (hub *WebsocketHub) PostNotify(p *Post) {
    for _, client := range hub.ConnectedClients {
        client.MsgQueue <- p
    }
}

Performance optimized full text / #hashtag search

• Client starts separate websocket connection for getting realtime search results
• sub/unsub for hashtags
• Optional open or authorized search API for other servers to use
• Order by relevance, search by subscribed hashtags first etc.
• Recursively run goroutines for searching messages/posts/profiles and spawning search on other servers

Go packages to be used

crypto for encrypted server to server communication

net/http as protocol base

encoding/json for client API

html/template for frontend templates

image for creating thumbnails etc.

Further ideas

• ownCloud lite with integrated collaboration and social networking functionality
• separate backend and frontend servers (the tent approach)
• even more advanced search engines and compromises between search result quality and efficiency (memory/cpu time)
• ...your ideas?