Some thoughts on social networking services
The problem: Closed-source platform, one maintainer
Ever since the idea of social networking as a service came about, their have been many approaches to address one simple idea: connecting people together. Many of the more prominent social networking services that have come into existence have utilized a closed-source platform with the direction being driven by the maintainer of the service. As a direct consequence, the decisions made by the maintainer must be accepted by the users of the service. This can be quite frustrating for users that don't like the decisions that are made, which might result in departure.
A solution: Open source, contributor driven
What if the platform was open source, and the direction of the social networking service was defined by the users? Improvements on the service could be done through contributions from users of the service itself. Users could also be in control of the service, and therefore they would get to choose what they want and what they don't want. They would also get to see how the service is run because they would have direct access to the source and contributors to particular features.
Modularizing the service
If the direction of the social networking service were defined by the users, they should be able to choose what core services they consume. For example, a user could choose to consume a sub-service involved with connecting to friends and another sub-service to message their friends, but reject a sub-service that involves browsing through a stream of updates from their friends. This would give the user more control and flexibility over what they want and don't want when using a social networking service.
Customizing the service
A hypothetical social networking service could provide a basic core sub-service and allow the user to customize it to their desire. For example, a standard stream of updates from a users' friends could be provided, but the way that the updates are organized could be customized by the users. Users wouldn't have to adhere to an ordering decided upon by the maintainer of the service, but instead would see the exact ordering that they decide on.
Governance
A hypothetical social networking service could be governed by the people of the network. With features being added based on vote, governance becomes something that is driven by consensus among the user base. The feature set adopted by the majority of a group defines the feature set of a particular network.