Social Networking and OpenSource

I was reading about the Facebook vs. Google articles on Slashdot lately and thinking of a way to replace the Social Networking systems with OpenSource tools.

Social Networking systems provide tools like blogs or pictures albums. We already have very good tools to do this (Wordpress/Drupal/Gallery/etc.). What Social Networking systems have is also a way to link profiles together.

So I was thinking about a way to implement this using already existing OpenSouce technology. And I thought that Jabber could do that!

Let’s have a closer look at it:

• Jabber is a decentralized system; you can even run your own Jabber server and still connect with other users;
• Jabber has a concept of unique IDs that can interconnect easily;
• Jabber can be used with tons of clients on lots of platforms;
• Jabber has a concept of friends list;
• Jabber can provide information about user (homepage, location, etc);
• Lots of people already have a Jabber ID, even if they don’t know it (gmail accounts can be used as Jabber IDs through the GTalk servers).

So what if… we used Jabber to interconnect our websites? It could be a simple plugin for blogs/CMS that would connect to your Jabber server, log in, and retrieve your friends’ infos. The plugin could display a list of your friends using the avatars they provided. On hovering over the pictures, more info could be displayed, allowing you to go to their homepage, or even to contact them by IM!

I have searched a bit for such a plugin, but haven’t found much.

How would you like something like this?