Last week Wired reported about an initiative to build a federated social network for the Occupy movement that uses Drupal as its underlying technology. The network will provide a forum for different protest movements around the United States and the world where each can have its own individual social networks that can be linked together in a federated network.

What's interesting about the approach is that it uses many open source tools, chiefly Drupal, but it also takes advantage of open standards like RDF, Oauth and OpenID. Using these pieces developers hope to build a distributed social network, that according to the Wired article, could extend beyond a protest network and have business use.

A couple of web developers who have participated in the Occupy movement are the brains behind the initiative. A 36-year-old engineer from Milwaukee named Ed Knutson and a 27-year-old web developer named Sam Boyer came together to build an online social network with semantic underpinnings because they simply don't trust Facebook and Twitter and want a more private way of communicating.

Although their goals may be someone what idealistic, the reasoning is solid. They want a network where Occupy members can communicate without fear of being watched. In fact, they say people will only be able to join with an invitation from somebody who is already a member (not that, that alone would stop prying parties from joining).

This is even different from social networks like Diaspora which hope to provide a more controlled social experience, yet as the article points out are not geared specifically for protest movements as the site that Knutson and Boyer are developing would be.

For more information:
- see the Wired article

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