Application Platforms Are Unnecessary
From The Socknet
The Socknet specification is written under the assumption that a "platform" is an unnecessary complication. The Socknet is intended to connect the rest of the web together with the user and his friends. The only content it hosts is messages.
Traditional social network "apps" live in walled gardens and they keep people inside those gardens with them.
Platform creators usually claim that a platform enhances the capabilities of an web application at the minor expense of forcing the application to be dependent on the platform. While this is true, a platform's real job is to keep user activity in the garden, where it can be controlled, secured, censored and monetized. Those aren't necessarily bad things, but very often the user isn't given a choice.
Platforms bring things to live inside a system. The Socknet lets websites push and pull information from the system and still live outside it.
The Socknet provides three features:
- It connects friends to each other
- It lets websites and friends send messages to the user
- It gives websites the power to find friends and other websites that the user uses and interact with them
The Socknet is designed to be slim, and therefore easy for developers to implement. Despite its light weight, the last item allows web services to support dramatically enhanced features. For example, although the Socknet doesn't offer an instant messaging feature, existing instant messaging systems can register with users and then automatically discover their friends.
The Socknet is built on the assumption that if we create a place for users to track their activity and quickly reach any part of the web, they will keep coming back to the Socknet. Anyone can monetize in any way their users approve. In the mean time, having so many innovative minds running the Socknet will continuously increase its value.
- Note: It is unclear what the word "platform" means specifically, so some critics will claim that the Socknet is a platform. This article serves to make a distinction between the Socknet and other platforms.
