The 6d Manifesto

6d is an online identity building web app. You can socialize with it, or not.

Though we plan to monetize it, the important thing for us is to ensure freedom of use. We're building it so you can download and use it without ever seeing us again, if you should so choose (Hopefully if we do this right though you’ll want to).

Own Your Content

It doesn’t matter if it’s your post on the best ways to grow your social influence, or just a funny caption to a picture, what you write and post on the internet IS your online identity, just search for your name on Google and take a look at the results. Do the results reflect how you want other people searching your name see you? This is the most important reason we’re bulding 6d. And we don't want our Facebook and Twitter accounts to define our online identity. Why should anyone else get to use our work to promote themselves, their business or their network? Just remember - if you’re not paying for a product, you’re not the customer, you ARE the product and someone else is making money from your work.

Control Your Privacy

Sites like Facebook and MySpace provide a public meeting place on the web. They solve that problem really well. However, as their use increased and their privacy policies changed to accommodate their business plans, concern has grown about people giving their photos, thoughts and videos to these centralized sites, essentially giving up control and possibly ownership of them. We think that’s what makes us fundamentally different. The ability to control your privacy is one of the driving forces for us to build a new framework. A company thinks of themselves first.

Your Home on the Internet

We want 6d to be your home online, literally. Social networks come and go. For awhile MySpace was the king. If you start to build something, something that you own, today, then you determine what to do next, who to connect with, and how long it will last. Why subjugate yourself to someone else?

Credibility

With social interactions online there’s always been a problem with credibility. Anyone can sign up for a free email account or a free facebook account and then say what they want anywhere. If they pick fights or get banned from a site they just go sign up for a new one. If you’re paying to host your own domain name, and you’re spending time building that site to be your online identity, you’re using it as your reference because you’re proud of it.

Keep It Simple

Simplicity is key for us. Some web applications add more and more features, cluttering the User Interface (UI) with unused options making it harder to just write or share a photo. We're trying hard to stick to the basics. Meaning, you want to post something so we're reducing the obstacles that let you do that. A website should work FOR YOU, not against you.

Open Standards (a bit geeky we know)

We're utilizing open standards such as microformats and HTML5; and building it as a RESTful application on top of the HTTP protocol, the fabric of the web. We considered using the XMPP protocol, but our constraint to run the app on commodity hardware and cheap hosting led us in a different direction.

The Evolution of the Web

We want 6d to be representative of the web's evolution, letting you stream your life online while allowing you to control your content. We believe the world has enough social networks, we don't need to build another one. We want you to use 6d to build your online identity and own your content. The web is inherently distributed and we want to build a distributed web app that releases you from depending on a company's system to be up and running for you to share your life and build your online identity. In the future we can’t just depend on one or two sites to own and control all the online communications, even if things are fine now, what happens when a new CEO comes along and has a different idea of what your identity and privacy means? Take control of your online identify now. Own your content.