I’ve been thinking about web community a lot lately. Sometimes it feels like the NWW instead of WWW (neighborhood-wide-web). But I think that feeling is coming mainly from blogs… and now Friendster. I think there’s a new killer application on the horizon and I want to be a part of it. Want to hear about it? Like everything, it was invented a long time ago. I never actually have an original interactive thought. Well, at least this time, I have identified some of those who came before me…

OK, here’s the thing. People LOVE communities. They want to feel a part of something. They want to chat and IM and share files and date. It seems that files sharing will go this way too. The way of the closed, invitation-only community. The reason why it will work now, is that blogs and IM and chat have gone mainstream. Friendster is the perfect example. Every piece of functionality has been done (and better) before. The only new aspect is the community, the friends of friends of friends part of it. Match.com doesn’t have it. Blogs don’t have it (well, blogs have it, but only because of creative use of existing solo-blog technologies). And, although I still hate the idea of writing little comments about how great the person is in their public autograph book, I understand its power.

The guy who works for AOL, who originally invented WinAMP and helped popularize MP3 designed an application specifically for this. It was called WASTE, and it was friend-file sharing, with encryption. The thing was, AOL pulled the plug before it got a chance to take hold. But it will come around again soon.

Imagine your AOL buddy list, friendster network, and Blog-regular-readership, into a password protected, members-only network where they could all share files, safely, and legally, with each other. I don’t need to find files from the whole world, but I want an easy way to give you some porn, or some music, or some application (but don’t tell anyone that part)…

All this might sound familiar. That’s because HotLine did it before Napster even was a sparkle in the young Shawn Fanning’s eye. Hotline combined chat and IM, private networks, multiple file types, and password protection. I don’t know the status of it right now, but it was on the right track. The problem is that you only go onto one server at a time. That’s week. I want the groups computers to be available to the group at all times. See the difference?

So that’s what I want. It’s very simple. I want to put a link to my group on my website. I want people to have to ask me a for a password. I want people to have to share. I want the files to be encrypted. I want the IP addresses to be hidden. I want a small community of friends to be able to put all their shit online and chat about it. In essence, I think the best parts of the web can be combined to for the killer sharing application on the web. Wait though, that’s too ME-focused.

It should work like this. It would have a blog / homesite that you point people at (www). They could request membership to a group from any author, Friendster-style. They could post, forum style, to the groups website. They could see if you are online and IM you if you are (members-only). Then they could search through all your public files (all of the groups public files actually) and then they could download. See, a nice, real community, with public viewing (non-member could see all the posts and comment, blog-style), but oonly members share the one-on-one. It could incorporate some friendster-like friend-of-friend groupings too. The thing is, I don’t want to be connected to 120,000 people after I have only selected 15 friends.

Hmmm. Interesting. There are two ways to go with this. The me-centric has some appeal. The mob-centric has additional appeal. It almost sounds like a gathering of blogs. A gathering of me’s. How to do it? Maybe your blog joins the group, so you can retain your individuality. Maybe group membership allows you access to post on all the blogs in the group. Maybe all the files of all the owners of the member blogs are then made available to the group. Maybe IM and chatting / online notification is more tightly integrated. Maybe there is way easier than my original idea. Maybe it’s just a matter of advertising your hotline or whatever server on your blog. Maybe you can index a list of files that is made public (only the list) on your blog (I have these files for members only). Maybe you have to

Somewhere in here is where the world domination lies… mark my words. How do we make it happen? Help.