Project Brief

We propose two things: an open-source, decentralised store for image tags which can be used by any site or social network; and a commercial interface to this which allows site or blog owners to easily add tagging functionality to their website.

Both systems will allow authentication using any of the major social networks – and will allow for a new social network to include itself easily as long as it follows the prescribed protocol (and supports OAuth authentication).

Long term goals would include support of the decentralised store by large social networks which lessens network effect when people wish to move to another social network without being disconnected from their peers. There is an incentive for networks to do this as those that do would have access to images of their users stored on other networks which would be a feature non-participating networks do not have.

The motivation for this is the monopolisation of data by a few large social networks and the requirement that you be a member of the same social networks as your friends (and accept the terms of membership) in order to share information with them. We have chosen to target image tags rather than a complete decentralise social network (such as Diaspora) because we feel it may be too soon for such an ambitious project to succeed and something such as this provides for a easier migration path for users of the current social networks to a fully distributed social network in the future.

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