POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS

Beyond the social atmosphere created by websites like MySpace, Friendster, or Facebook, Appleseed has great potential as a web-based groupware application. Most social networking focuses on individuals in their teens and early twenties whose interest in social networking mostly consists of maintaining contact with a group of friends.

Appleseed goes beyond that, as an application that will someday become as indispensable as email is today. The ability to maintain a list of contacts, to view the six degrees of seperation that occurs in your social network, to restrict or allow information based on how you have your contacts organized, and eventually the ability to share files and securely communicate, all within a web interface accessible from any modern browser.

As an example, take a grassroots political campaign. A small organization can set up an Appleseed "node" (any web domain, ie, "agrassrootscampaign.com", which runs the Appleseed software) for their cause, and each member can have a profile on that node. Those profiles can be linked to profiles on any other Appleseed site, creating a permanent relationship between the grassroots campaign and potentially thousands or even tens of thousands of people.

A company which has offices in multiple locations could easily create what amounts to a Groupware Virtual Private Network simply by setting up a seperate Appleseed node for each office location, and requiring the use of a secure web server for each node. Further security measures could be taken by only allowing trusted Appleseed sites to connect to their internal network. Messaging, discussions, broadcasts, and eventually even file sharing and realtime chat can all be set up without ever having to install special software on individual PC's. Everything would be accessible through any modern web browser.

Schools could also use Appleseed to allow their students to have a public profile that can be used to promote responsible internet use. Instead of banning social networking like so many schools have done, Appleseed allows schools to have some level of control over the activities that students use their account for. Much like many schools provide email addresses to new students ("studentname@school.k12.ny.us"), an Appleseed node can be set up so that each student has their own profile ("http://school.k12.ny.us/profile/studentname") which then allows the school administrators to set certain rules and restrictions. For instance, for junior high and elementary school students, only allowing friend requests and messages which originate from other junior high or elementary schools, thus greatly minimizing any threat of predators.

This is just touching the surface of the potential that Appleseed could unlock in a socially connected world. Social networks don't just answer the question of "who is this person", they also answer the question, "how do I know them." Which can have limitles possibilities for companies, schools, grassroots activists, and even individuals who just want to keep in touch.

And ultimately, Appleseed, through a distributed architecture and open source code, accomplishes this by putting power in the hands of the individual.