How to interconnect the mesh together
Rafe Needleman asked me the perfect question last night:
“How are all of these social media systems gonna connect to each other?”
Man oh man - was that the right question to ask me! Here I was sitting there - trying to grok Plum and other new entrants into the world of DLA, trying to keep AOL and other clients involved in helping open standards - and flogging the structuredblogging.org meme.
So asking me that question - had all the airs of “perfect question” wrapped all around it.
“Well (I started off with an air of bombastic eulogisms) - we’ve identified four ways that folks can inter-connect together via social networks. There’s also the issue of authenticated federated IDs - but Kim Cameron and Microsoft are taking care of that - as we speak. Sxip Networks is our solution of choice in this arena.”
“Yes - but will the social networks ALLOW this to happen?” Rafe chimed in.
“If they don’t they’ll be gone. AOL and Yahoo have to play along, cause they’re so late to the game. But clearly it’s MySpace, Friendster and Facebook that count.
Anyway - as reported here by your humble ex-famous blogger - here are the four aspects of social networking inter-connectivity which will be covered by our ‘upcoming PeopleAggregator APIs”
- establishing relationships across networks Facebook does this already) - but just WITHIN the Facebook universe. Imagine if you could do that BETWEEN Ryze, LinkedIn, Tribe and Y! 360!
- sending messages between networks. That should be too hard. Private email networks were born on social networks to maintain privacy and to get away from all the spam. But nowadays it’s the social networks that are generating half the spam.
- joining a group of creating a group - across networks and DEFINITELY from your cell phone. So you’re at a party, you wanna schedule a trip to the beach with a bunch of friends, some of who are on MySpace, others are Tribesters or Yahoosters. This feature and the ability to aggregate groups will prove to be key to getting this all accepted in the marketplace.
- posting between networks - this is kind of what OutputThis enables. Whether it be microcontent, blogs, media, people showcases, recipes - one shoudl be able to publish whatever they want - wherever they want.
So Rafe - I hope this answers your question.
My company Broadband Mechanics has been working on this problem - for years now - and we’re close to releasing a first version of it. The trick (of course) is to get others to cooperate and support it. Those who don’t will end up like Jonathan Abrams and Frendster.
Good question. We don’t need any business plans that benefit only proprietory domains getting in the way of our social networks.
Good question. We don’t need any business plans that benefit only proprietory domains getting in the way of our social networks.
Good question. We don’t need any business plans that benefit only proprietory domains getting in the way of our social networks.
Many of the so-called social networks have different purposes and raison d’etre so there’s no economic justification for their interconnection. Who is *really* being inconvenienced by the lack of interconnection of these networks? The reality is that the only folks really getting on all of these are fm the Valley’s insular community. Young people, the true target audience of these services, generally join one of these social networking services because their friends are there and they tend to stick to it once there. They’ll move off to something else under extreme conditions (ie. trust violation by the service provider, stalking incident, cool factor lacking or passe, friends moving to another service, etc.). Note that MySpace, despite having the least elegant platform out there has garnered the lions share of attention. TagWorld is also making some interesting inroads here w/a steady growth rate of 10K new users per day. People joining TagWorld are not clamoring about why they couldn’t take their MySpace personas and make them accessible on TagWorld. TagWorld offers a new cool factor that they prefer and want to get involved with.
Many of the so-called social networks have different purposes and raison d’etre so there’s no economic justification for their interconnection. Who is *really* being inconvenienced by the lack of interconnection of these networks? The reality is that the only folks really getting on all of these are fm the Valley’s insular community. Young people, the true target audience of these services, generally join one of these social networking services because their friends are there and they tend to stick to it once there. They’ll move off to something else under extreme conditions (ie. trust violation by the service provider, stalking incident, cool factor lacking or passe, friends moving to another service, etc.). Note that MySpace, despite having the least elegant platform out there has garnered the lions share of attention. TagWorld is also making some interesting inroads here w/a steady growth rate of 10K new users per day. People joining TagWorld are not clamoring about why they couldn’t take their MySpace personas and make them accessible on TagWorld. TagWorld offers a new cool factor that they prefer and want to get involved with.
Many of the so-called social networks have different purposes and raison d’etre so there’s no economic justification for their interconnection. Who is *really* being inconvenienced by the lack of interconnection of these networks? The reality is that the only folks really getting on all of these are fm the Valley’s insular community. Young people, the true target audience of these services, generally join one of these social networking services because their friends are there and they tend to stick to it once there. They’ll move off to something else under extreme conditions (ie. trust violation by the service provider, stalking incident, cool factor lacking or passe, friends moving to another service, etc.). Note that MySpace, despite having the least elegant platform out there has garnered the lions share of attention. TagWorld is also making some interesting inroads here w/a steady growth rate of 10K new users per day. People joining TagWorld are not clamoring about why they couldn’t take their MySpace personas and make them accessible on TagWorld. TagWorld offers a new cool factor that they prefer and want to get involved with.
I’m not buying what P-Air is selling - current social networks are islands, and you can’t rationalize that fact away. They are not currently connected - to say that there’s no economic justification is false - personally, I’m a member of several communities, and the time it takes for me to maintain a presence on several islands places a limit on how many I would join. So, economically, I’m not participating where I could be and there economic value proposition goes down from me not being in their network.
Metcalfe’s Rule says that network economics benefit when more nodes join the network. The Internet - hello - resulted when they began to interconnect local area networks - why doesn’t this apply to the “Social Internet”? Many more would join and they would benefit from a much larger membership, and ease of profile maintenance. A key reason that eBay and MySpace are more attractive networks than their competitors is that they have more members.
Profiles are just another form of information, and we all know what the Internet did to information. Imagine searching once all the profiles posted in the world…”Social Google.” MySpace, TagWorld - these are all just preludes of what is to come, when someone finally connects these communities, the economic benefits will come out of the woodwork, in emergent fashion. We know it because that’s what’s happening with the Internet.
I’m not buying what P-Air is selling - current social networks are islands, and you can’t rationalize that fact away. They are not currently connected - to say that there’s no economic justification is false - personally, I’m a member of several communities, and the time it takes for me to maintain a presence on several islands places a limit on how many I would join. So, economically, I’m not participating where I could be and there economic value proposition goes down from me not being in their network.
Metcalfe’s Rule says that network economics benefit when more nodes join the network. The Internet - hello - resulted when they began to interconnect local area networks - why doesn’t this apply to the “Social Internet”? Many more would join and they would benefit from a much larger membership, and ease of profile maintenance. A key reason that eBay and MySpace are more attractive networks than their competitors is that they have more members.
Profiles are just another form of information, and we all know what the Internet did to information. Imagine searching once all the profiles posted in the world…”Social Google.” MySpace, TagWorld - these are all just preludes of what is to come, when someone finally connects these communities, the economic benefits will come out of the woodwork, in emergent fashion. We know it because that’s what’s happening with the Internet.
I’m not buying what P-Air is selling - current social networks are islands, and you can’t rationalize that fact away. They are not currently connected - to say that there’s no economic justification is false - personally, I’m a member of several communities, and the time it takes for me to maintain a presence on several islands places a limit on how many I would join. So, economically, I’m not participating where I could be and there economic value proposition goes down from me not being in their network.
Metcalfe’s Rule says that network economics benefit when more nodes join the network. The Internet - hello - resulted when they began to interconnect local area networks - why doesn’t this apply to the “Social Internet”? Many more would join and they would benefit from a much larger membership, and ease of profile maintenance. A key reason that eBay and MySpace are more attractive networks than their competitors is that they have more members.
Profiles are just another form of information, and we all know what the Internet did to information. Imagine searching once all the profiles posted in the world…”Social Google.” MySpace, TagWorld - these are all just preludes of what is to come, when someone finally connects these communities, the economic benefits will come out of the woodwork, in emergent fashion. We know it because that’s what’s happening with the Internet.
Connecting all the pure social communities together — fine. I’m sure it will be great for both marketers and relationship seekers.
But do a favor for groups which exist for less popular puposes (education, research, etc.) — leave us out of the mix.
Its bad enough that most search engines don’t differentiate personal blogs about “why i hate my math teacher
” from those about math education.
To actually call personal profiles information just adds insult to injury. Those who see them as such are clearly more interested in the Internet communities’ profit potential than their content or purpose.
Connecting all the pure social communities together — fine. I’m sure it will be great for both marketers and relationship seekers.
But do a favor for groups which exist for less popular puposes (education, research, etc.) — leave us out of the mix.
Its bad enough that most search engines don’t differentiate personal blogs about “why i hate my math teacher
” from those about math education.
To actually call personal profiles information just adds insult to injury. Those who see them as such are clearly more interested in the Internet communities’ profit potential than their content or purpose.
Connecting all the pure social communities together — fine. I’m sure it will be great for both marketers and relationship seekers.
But do a favor for groups which exist for less popular puposes (education, research, etc.) — leave us out of the mix.
Its bad enough that most search engines don’t differentiate personal blogs about “why i hate my math teacher
” from those about math education.
To actually call personal profiles information just adds insult to injury. Those who see them as such are clearly more interested in the Internet communities’ profit potential than their content or purpose.
hi,
hi,
hi,
Hi Marc. I’m interested in researching further into the social network interconnectivity on blogging. Do you have any updates to this topic? How is the 4 ways coming up? What are the success rates?
Thanks.
Hi Marc. I’m interested in researching further into the social network interconnectivity on blogging. Do you have any updates to this topic? How is the 4 ways coming up? What are the success rates?
Thanks.
Hi Marc. I’m interested in researching further into the social network interconnectivity on blogging. Do you have any updates to this topic? How is the 4 ways coming up? What are the success rates?
Thanks.