Social networks are becoming more open, more interconnected, and more distributed. Many of us in the web creation world are embracing and promoting web standards - both client-side and server-side. Microformats, standard apis, and open-source software are key building blocks of these technologies. This model can be described as having three sides/legs/arms/spokes - pick your connection: Information, Identity, and Interaction.

DiSo (dee • zoh) is an umbrella project for a group of open source implementations of these distributed social networking concepts. or as Chris puts it: "to build a social network with its skin inside out".

We believe in bootstrapping on existing work and building out from there - our first targets include Wordpress and Movable Type, and we have folks involved who are working in Drupal, TikiWiki, and various other platforms. If you're interested in the future of open standards in social software, join the Google group and follow along.