- *********
- Friendika
- *********
+ *************
+ * Friendika *
+ *************
- Distributed Social Network
+ Friendika Communications Server
- http://friendika.com
+ http://project.friendika.com
-Did you ever wonder what might happen if you ever left Facebook?
-What if there was a social network which provided some of the same interaction
-you've grown to love, *and* was free to use, open source - and where your
-privacy is always under your control?
+ Friendika is a web application for managing social communications. Some
+would call it a "social network" or "distributed social network". We think
+both terms have been over-used, and don't adequately describe Friendika's
+capabilities - though Friendika can also fill those roles.
-And what if this social network could scale to encompass the entire internet,
-and *not* require a central organisation to provide servers (in exchange for
-selling your private information to advertisers)?
+ At its essence, Friendika is a web application which can monitor various
+information and social activity streams, and which also lets you participate
+in online conversations with friends and associates, using a variety of network
+protocols. These are combined into an overview of your various communications
+and activities - regardless of network origin.
-Look no further.
+ Friendika also manages your personal profiles and photo albums and lets
+you securely present each of these to specific audiences. Your communications
+can be either open and public, or closed and private. You can easily create
+"groups" of contacts with which you can partition your conversations into
+private social circles, and which cannot be seen outside the circle.
-Friendika is a social network without boundaries. Friendika installations can
-link together into a global social network which is free from central
-control. Besides the Friendika network [which is privacy enhanced]; you can
-connect with and communicate with friends on identi.ca, Status.Net and many
-other sites and social networks *today*.
+ Friendika is decentralised. Any account on any Friendika server can connect
+with any account on any other Friendika server. You can also connect to and
+interact directly with friends on Facebook, Status.Net, and other federated
+social web services (e.g. identi.ca, GNU-Social, etc.).
-We are currently developing connectors to seamlessly communicate with many
-other open social networks and providers - like Diaspora, GNU-Social,
-OneSocialWeb, and even some of the larger closed services such as Facebook and
-Twitter.
+ Outgoing communications can be directed to Friendika, existing accounts on
+Facebook and Twitter, federated social web providers - or even delivered to
+email contacts.
-Over the coming months, the boundaries between these networks will start to
-become indistinguishable as they all become part of your social circle.
+ Incoming data streams aren't limited to traditional social networks.
+They may include most any service which provides a syndication feed (both RSS
+and Atom). This allows you to view communications from friends in other
+diverse social networks - such as Diaspora, Google Buzz, and millions of
+blogs, news services, and other websites. You can also import
+contacts from (and write to) anybody that is accessible from your email
+INBOX and view them in your social stream. Over time we will try to
+build two-way bridges to other services so that you can freely
+interact in both directions with anybody on an accessible network that
+allows it.
-Our core belief is that your personal thoughts and conversations belong to
-you - and are only meant to be shared with those you wish to share them with.
+ Communications between Friendika servers are private and encrypted,
+using military grade encryption - and require mutual identity provenance
+before any data is exchanged. These same crypto mechanisms provide remote
+password-less authentication; allowing you to post to profiles and view private
+photo collections on other servers - without encountering any login and/or
+authorisation dialogues when visiting these sites.
-Period.
+ Friendika has no boundaries and no central ownership of the data generated
+within the network. Anybody with a commodity PHP/MySQL web server or hosting
+account can provide a server, and each individual server can then support
+up to several thousand participating members - each with their own unique
+communication and privacy needs. This allows Friendika to scale to global
+levels and mimics the decentralised architecture of the web itself.
-Friendika is secure, and as private as you wish it to be. Our privacy settings
-are straight-forward and simple, because we know that relationships rarely are
-(straight-forward and simple). Whether you're communicating with drinking
-buddies or potential employers, you can rest assured that each is only able to
-see the side of you that you wish to present. If you send a private message to
-your aunt Mary, we encrypt it with military grade encryption.
+ If you are creating a website which requires social interaction, Friendika
+can also take the place of blog software, forum software and feed readers, and
+also provide individualised communications and content management - or
+simply be used as an alternative to traditional "monolithic" social networks.
-Other social network projects talk about privacy and offering a feature-rich
-social networking alternative, but all they can deliver is vapour and vague
-promises. Friendika delivers the goods. Time and time again.
+ Friendika is also free - in every sense of the word.
-A single instance of Friendika can easily support hundreds of (and up to
-several thousand) people using commodity hosting hardware. Each of these
-people are able to connect with potentially hundreds or thousands of friends
-and associates on any other supported network anywhere in the world and share
-photos, links, status updates, etc.
+ Choose freedom - join us.
-But maybe you don't want to be connected to the world... That's OK too.
-Friendika may also be closed off from the global community and used to support
-social networking amongst corporate, educational, religious, and other private
-communities. This makes it an excellent choice for the social networking needs
-of young teenagers and especially k-12 organisations.
+ Find out more about the project at http://project.friendika.com
-Every person on Friendika has unlimited profiles available to them. There is a
-"public profile" which can be seen by anybody. Additional profiles may be
-tailored to specific groups or individuals.
+ *******************
+ Friendika Demo Site
+ *******************
-Groups may be created and used for closed conversations. In this way your
-conversations with one group of friends is completely isolated from other
-friends or groups of friends.
+ http://demo.friendika.com
-You may also create interactive band/celebrity pages, special interest groups,
-and even organisational 'soapboxes' - for social communications that require
-the ability to scale to global levels. Friendika provides for automatic
-relationship management in these extreme cases so that you can concentrate on
-your message and public persona - and not worry about being swamped by friend
-requests. You can even maintain private social contact with your closest
-friends and public updates to your hordes of fans - using the same interface.
+ *******************
+ Friendika Downloads
+ *******************
-No other social network offers this ability.
+ http://github.com/friendika/friendika/tarball/master
-IMPORTANT: Please see the file INSTALL for system requirements.
projects / friendica.git / blobdiff