Actions speak louder than words.  I could go on endlessly about the reasons for and design of Plexus, but better by far to show you what I mean.  For that reason I’ve spent the last four days deeply immersed in coding a very simple demonstration of Plexus.  That demonstration is now up and running on my Plexus server, way out there in the hinterlands of the Internet (Atlanta, if you want to be precise).

To participate in the demo, click here.  This will open a page with the Plexus Sharing Demo, which is nothing more than a web form with a text box.  Type a URL into the box – please make sure that it is a URL, not just a random string of text – and click on the button marked ‘Share It!’  When you press the button, that URL is sent along to Plexus, which then shares it out to Twitter, Posterous, Tumblr, and it sends an email as well.  (To me, so you won’t see that part.)

Sharing is only half of what Plexus does.  The other half of Plexus is a listener.  If you want to see what Plexus has been listening to, click here.  This web page is a list of everything that the Plexus listener has listened to since it was started up.  I’ve wired Plexus up so that it listens to itself (very narcissistic, but there it is), so when you share something, it will show up (within five minutes) in the listener.

And that’s it.  It’s a very simple demo, but it demonstrates the key feature of Plexus – that it is possible to translate a social graph into a series of connection (sharers and listeners) – all the while under the user’s full control.  Plexus is your own portable and secure Facebook.

Yes, it’s ugly.  This demo is meant for a room full of geeks who will be able to look beyond that to see what’s going on underneath – that Plexus is a proposal for an open architecture of social network connectivity.  They’ll get that.  And they’ll be happier to see that there’s some code behind that idea.

Please be gentle with the demo.  It has not been extensively tested.  That said, I would be happy if you gave it a try.