Gigaom has a good introduction to a proposal from Chris Messina to turn Wordpress into an open social network he calls DiSo. He calls the project that he is working on with Steve Ivy and  Will Norris a network built “inside-out.”

“For starters, “citizen centric web services” will arguably be better
for people over the long term. We’re in the toddler days of that
situation now, but think about passports and credit cards:

• your passport provides proof of provenance and allows you
  to leave home without permanently give up your port of origin
  (equivalent: logging in to Facebook with your MySpace account to “poke”
  a friend — why do you need a full Facebook account for that if you’re
  only “visiting”?);

Not a bad analogy to living on the Web. This comes at the same time that Moveable Type (used by some of our Beat Bloggers) makes an announcement to go open source. This means more functionality and tools, but it also means the road is wide open about how Moveable Type and Wordpress can develop.

It’s all a bit tech-oriented right now. Just like Google’s Open-Social, if you aren’t a programmer then this won’t effect you for about a year. But it’s another mark on the wall of turning the infrastructure of the web into a social network itself. Which means learning the tricks of the trade now, while third-party sites like Facebook and MySpace or Multiply (Read/Write Web’s review of Multiply) run the show, will be a boon to journalists who are on their own in the future.

Well, what about good old-fashioned networking. You know, the kind
you do with feet and hand-shaking? I bring this up now because Chris
Messina, in my mind at least, is a champion of using the web to do
in-person networking, another lesson for any beat blogger – especially
if you have a geographic beat.

This is a topic we will come back to: But in the tech industry
programmers and technologists regularly have “Camps.” BarCamps are for
general technology, DrupalCamp for learning Drupal, PodCamp for
podcasting, etc. These are ad-hoc meetings, where the people who show
up decide the agenda on the spot (it sounds chaotic, but somehow it
always runs smooth). They are organized in cities around the world – so
a BarCamp in San Francisco will have the same model as a BarCamp in New
York, but it will have a different agenda which is determined by the
people who show up.

The important thing to note: Attendance, sponsorship and general
direction for the meeting is all organized online. Journalists,
especially journalists with geographic beats, should organize such
events. A day when they open up their office to the public. Think of it
as office hours. A chance for readers to give constructive criticism
and for reporters to meet new people in the community.

More about this later – but if you want a taste: CopyCamp.us