If you don't care about the web browser, there is absolutely no need for WebRTC and everything is much simpler. Justin Frankel's WASTE (http://waste.sourceforge.net/) did everything you could want in a P2P social network (messaging, chat, file sharing) in 2003 (it obviously lacked a Facebook-like front end). The only thing it didn't have that my proposal does is broadcast encryption for "unfriending" people.

WebRTC is cool because it will be in web browsers everywhere, and you'll have the "log in from the library computer" ability even for P2P networks, as long as there is a status web server you can bootstrap off of.

I did try out WASTE in 2003.

It seemed more like a chat client than something I could run any application over. It was more an application for doing certain defined things accessible in menus (the ones you mentioned) instead of being a generic means to create peer-to-peer networks.

If you want to do a different application, you can always take the WASTE code and do something else with it. Freenet is about as generic as P2P gets because it only handles storage. WebRTC should actually be a pretty good way to make P2P networks because you get a channel for sending data, doing realtime chat, audio/video codecs, all the HTML5 stuff for the UI, and JavaScript as a scripting language. As far as protocols and data standards go, I think the only reasonable thing is a protocol for status info, public key exchange, authentication, and listing the application protocols a peer supports. Everything else is too application-dependent.

As far as data standards go, I like Ethernet. I guess we all have our own preferences on how to do peer-to-peer. That's just the one I like the most. As for protocols and exchanging public keys, how about face-to-face or by postal letter? It's just a blob of text. Again, if the social networks involve only friends and family, why do we need to do everything over the public web? Does everything have to be complicated?

For networks with strangers, it's an entirely different ballgame. I have little interest in that can of worms. Way too complicated. That's for the geniuses who can create stuff like Freenet.

I guess I could look at the WASTE code, but I doubt I would find it simpler than the approach I've settled on. As I say, we all have our preferences. I like things very simple.