I really can't see decentralized social networks being successful. If all hosts are going to be synced the traffic would be huge. If they aren't synced search for both messages and users would be painful. Patching together a stream when the people you follow are scattered across a hundred different servers painful. Account creation for average tech illiterate users painful. If they have to rely on some third party to provide a host, how is that any better than relying on Twitter or Facebook, as soon as the hoster decides it isn't worth the expense or to boot you for some random reason what happens?

Wouldn't it be better to build a centralized message bus and identity system under some kind of foundation like Wikipedia. You would have to get benefactors to fund it is the big problem. Twitter has proved itself to be a priceless service for communication and news streams, its like the real-time Wikipedia.

Its just major regrettable the people who are running it are completely trashing it in the predictable pursuit of the beloved buck and a fat IPO.

I'd love nothing more than foundation based centralized message bus and identity service offering API services to any and all responsible developers and apps, short text only messages and links to avoid all the issues with attachments little or no censorship, private communications between users encrypted so even the foundation can't read them or offer them up to prying governments, some mechanism to control and kill spam.