instead of centralized friend network apps like orkut, friendster, 6-degrees.<br>

it may be a better idea to standarize the personal profile thing ( using something like http://infomesh.net/2001/swintro/ )<br>

and have a client app manage this.<br>

there may also be google-style profile-search/matching engines.<br>

services provided:<br>
<ul>
   <li>chat<br>
	<ul>
		<li>provided by various apps: irc, icq, msn
		<li>not in orkut
	</ul>
	<li>mail
	<ul>
		<li>orkut has very limited mail functionality
		<li>normal mail is much easier
	</ul>
	<li>profile matching
	<ul>
		<li>provided by dating services
		<li>problem with distributed profile, is that it is quite hard to hide
		stuff that you want matches on, but not be explicitly readable.
		there maybe cryptographics tricks to fix this.
	</ul>
	<li>weblog
	<ul>
		<li>many providers exist that provide this.
	</ul>
	<li>friends list / rating system
	<ul>
		<li>not really a standard way exists to do this
		<li>orkut only provides a limited number measures to rate friends in
		<li>orkut allows only positive ratings.
	</ul>
	<li>communities / forums
	<ul>
		<li>mailing lists, yahoogroups, ...
	</ul>
</ul>

<li>
<li>for each class of non-public information, a key is generated, and the information is stored encrypted with that key in your profile.
<li>these keys are stored in key-files, which in turn are encrypted with keys given out to those who get access.
<li>when you accept a friend, your client sends a 'friend-cookie' to your friend, with this cookie your
friend can decrypt 'friend-only' information from your profile.
<li>the cookie decrypts a file, specific to this friend, which contains keys to decrypt various bits
of profile information. this way you can control what part of your profile each friend can see.
for instance, you may not want your parents to know about your appreciation of certain drugs.
and maybe you want to have an attribute for friends 'had-sex-with' which you don't want anyone to be able to see, just for your own reference.
<li>the cookie also contains a friend-of-friend cookie, which your friend may publish to his friends.
<li>If you revoke a friendship relation, you may want to generate new keys for all your protected
information bits. and regenerate all friend-key-lists.
<li>if you want your profile to be indexed and matchable by a dating engine, your subscribing to this engine involves generating a cookie for that engine. - allowing you to specify exactly what you want or don't want it to match on.
and maybe you want the <a href="http://www.attrition.org/hosted/sexchart/">sexchart</a> to automatically index you.
</ul>
something like this: <a href="http://gmpg.org/xfn/">http://gmpg.org/xfn/</a><br>
or <a href="http://discordia.org.uk/nepot/">nepot</a>

<p>
interesting orkut communities:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=1289">orkut design</a>
<li><a href="http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=12979">distributed orkut</a>
<li><a href="http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=3982">orkut</a>
<li><a href="http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=6048">orkut beta</a>
<li><a href="http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=781">orkut tips</a>
</ul>