December 27, 2007

To Push? or To Pull?

In a user-centric social network (aka distributed social network) two friends who would like to share data will nominally use different servers. So we have to decide how the data will be shared between the four entities – the two servers and the two clients. In effect we need to decide who will pull the data from whom.

You can read the full analysis at EnThinnai blog. The summary is that the data is always stored in the user’s server from which the buddies pull the data. In certain cases, a short notification is passed from the user’s server to the buddy’s server and the buddy’s server uses an external mechanism to notify the buddy. There are supplementary benefits to this approach. There is no requirement for a buddy to run a server or be part of a private social network; it is sufficient to have access to the Internet and have an OpenID. The user can monitor who and when the buddies accessed the data and can maintain a log.

Posted by aswath at December 27, 2007 12:34 PM
Related Posts Widget for Blogs by LinkWithin
If you do not have an OpenID, then please use www.enthinnai.com/unauopenid/anyblog.

 

Comments



Copyright © 2003-2014 Moca Educational Products.