So I've been thinking about how to make the internet at large more like LJ. You know, control your own content, while keeping the good bits- friend and FOAF capabilities. Break out of the walled garden and all that.
Anyone can blog on their own site with wordpress or the like, or on a hosted service, but what LJ has is friends lists. It's a good selling point, which would be worth prying out of their control.

This is an attempt at a protocol, with no implementation imposed. My recent experience with web programming has informed it, but any successful protocol will have multiple implementations in multiple languages. Also I'll keep it very simple – no web services or soap, just XML over http.

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...is a worthy goal. Given that LJ's unique selling point is the friends lists, friends-locked posts and all that stuff, The Xhtml Friends Network looks like an interesting stab at the problem.

But how would I go about, given someone's name/url, find out who their FOAFs are? How would I retrieve posts that are locked to friends only, given that I am on a friends list? This would need authentication, yes? Would it be centralised?

Wait, it doesn't do any of that at all? Rats. And I have to go back and edit all old posts when I change friend status? The information isn't stored in one place? Oh well, is anyone else taking another stab at it?