Friendica

Okay, so you've seen a lot of mention from me about friendica these past few days.

So, Tony, what is Friendica of which you speak?

friendica is a new social network, but different from your facebook, G+, and others. Friendica is decentralized and federated, meaning, that it is not centralized in one site and owned by some corporation. It is user owned/operated, and on many sites. Anyone with a server and the know-how can install the software and run a friendica site (like anyone can install wordpress, or livejournal, or joomla, etc., and like those platforms, friendica is free/open source software, to which I have contributed some tidbits of code!), but the sites are all connected, in that, persons on one friendica site can add contacts from another friendica site, and interact, just as if they were on the same site. Friendica members can also add people from non-friendica sites, such as diaspora, status.net, identi.ca. Friendica members can follow their twitter contacts and facebook contacts. From friendica, you and crosspost your posts to facebook, twitter, statusnet, identi.ca, posterous, dreamwidth, livejournal, tumblr, and other sites (as you've seen me do these past couple of days). You can follow rss feeds from anywhere...Friendica can be sort of a social networking aggregator.
Also, there are no advertisements on friendica. There is no tracking. YOU own your own content, there being no abusive ToS that forces you to grant the site rights to your stuff (photos, posts, etc.). Friendica respects the user, doesn't collect your information and sell it to anyone. And friendica gives you complete control over who can view your content, allowing you to determine your own privacy.

Friendica is, IMHO, the future of social networking on the internet.

It is truly a FREE social network, both as in "no cost" and as in "freedom".

If you'd like to try it out, I invite my friends to join on my friendica site: Free-Haven.org.