squiso
Squiso
This text is a mirror from the official page.[1]
What is Squiso?
Squiso wants to create a decentralized open social web, by allowing users to host their own social data or trust a service provider of their choice.
Table of contents
- Squiso basics
- Why is this a good thing?
- Basic components in Squiso
- Data files
- Browsers
- Hosters
- Getting started as a user
- Getting started as a developer
Squiso basics
All your public social data (such as your activities, notes, photo-albums, blog posts, etc) are stored in well structured JSON files on the web.
You can host and maintain your own data files (such as on your Dropbox, or via your own web server), yourself or find a Squiso service provider you trust if you don't want to avoid all the technical hassle.
Each user has a "main data file". This file basically acts as an entry point for your data (for any Squiso tools). In this file you have your basic social data, such as a name, description, any personal links, other users your might be following, etc.
This file can however link to other files (with a similar structure) that contains additional data, such as all your blog posts or photos. Using this principle we are slowly building an open web of social data.
Given everything is on the world wide web, your "main data file" will get its own URL. The address to this is totally based on how and where you want to host your data. Some examples could be though:
- http://social.mydomain.com/
- http://mydomain.com/natalya.json
- https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/101010/mydata.json
However since the solution is decentralized, if you want to give away the location of your data to someone who wants to follow you, or if you want to follow someone else, you use the address to social data (compared to your username at a centralized solution).
That's about it!
Why is this a good thing?
For multiple reasons:
- This allows anyone to control, maintain and host their own social data if they want.
- Since this is open, any developer can create any tool for any platform, using any business model (free, open source, commercial, etc), which ultimately will lead to a huge range of excellent tools competing for the most users.
Basic components in Squiso
Data files
Basically a user's data files that contains their social data
Browsers
Tools that can interpret data files and show them in a fancy way for other users. Here is a demo:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8183146/temp/squiso_viewer/index.html
Hosters
Services that allow users to host and maintain their social data using their solution.