dir/README

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    * Friendika *
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    Friendika Communications Server

    http://project.friendika.com


	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.

	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.

	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 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 Status.Net and other federated social web
services (e.g. identi.ca, GNU-Social, etc.).

	Outgoing communications can be directed at these networks and also
existing accounts on Facebook and Twitter - or even delivered to email 
contacts.

	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. 

	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.

	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.

	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.

	Friendika is also free - in every sense of the word. 

	Choose freedom - join us.

	Find out more about the project at http://project.friendika.com

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    Friendika Demo Site
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    http://demo.friendika.com

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    Friendika Downloads
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    http://github.com/friendika/friendika/tarball/master