By Users, for Users, about Users who are used to being used
As I susepcted Stewart Butterfield has a perfectly sound and logical stream of reason why they’re “not making it easy” for their direct competitor Zoomr to have access - via Flickr authentication - into ANY end-users record.
Whew - now we can get down to brass tacks.
It turns out the Flickr authentication API is one of the ID systems we’re supporting first off - with our PeopleAggregator (along with OpenID and Sxip.) So yes Stewart, to answer your question - we have looked at the Flickr authentication APIs and we’re using them to do exactly what you’re talking about. :-) Stewart says (in comments to my last post):
I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at our authentication API. Basically the way it works is that third parties send users back to Flickr to check if they want to give the third party the credentials necessary to authenticate via Flickr on the users’ behalf. If they say yes, the third party gets an auth token for that user, tied to their API key and auth secret. Then they can call authenticated methods via Flickr’s API — essentially, they have the ability to login on the users behalf and do all kinds of stuff.
For partners or independent developers doing something complementary or any number of other, we eat the risk of them doing something bad with the API. For competitors, it’s harder to scrape together that trust. For competitors with no background or track record, it’s even harder. Imagine an app that deletes all your stuff off Flickr after importing since “you’re done with it”. That kind of sucks for Flickr, but it REALLY sucks for the user, and we’ll take the blame for it.
But more importantly, who gets API keys is kind of a red herring because custom implementations of vendor-specific APIs are not the path to true interoperability.
Stewart then goes on to explain that he feels that standards are great for import/export but that direct access to data - via APIs should be limited, as they’re different for each vendor. I really think you need both aspects of interfacing.
Import/Export is crucial, of course (and I can see why Stewarts complaints, and Roger Benningfield’s supporting comment) seem absurd to empower a competitor to do, but I have this vision - and our products are desigend to - go beyond just simple batch processing of import/export.
I really see a future where the data stays put where it is, and sophisticated ‘persona editors’ will cut, copy, paste, manage, clone, manipulate, create playlists and albums of, index, tag, rate, comment on - all sorts of stuff - with data that is dispersed across multiple accounts, social networks, blogging tools, etc.
Call me crazy, but I can feel and taste this tool - just like I tasted VideoWorks in 1984. It will take many years for these sorts of tools to evolve, but we can look back on this issue of Flickr allowing Zoomr access - as the beginning.
We (the vendors of the PeopleAggregator) will fit into the ‘friendly’ universe of Flickr today, as we don’t fall into the category of direct competitors - so I should probably just keep my mouth shut right now. Stewart promises intelligent discourse at Bloggercon about this - and baby - I’ll be ready.
But I hope Kristopher Tate will be there - as well - and other players (like Marc Brown) in this arena.
Stewart brings up clean, logical technical reasons why they have to be careful of giving ‘anybody’ access and why an open world helps us all. So I will continue to say that Stewart is a leader in this area - and clearly worth the $30M Yahoo paid for Flickr.
So lets continue this discussion at BoggerCon IV.
Niall Kennedy will be heading a session called Standards for Users and Chris Pirillo will lead a session called Users in Charge. Stewart and Kristopher - I hope you’re at both. I will be.
Dave and I thought that a conference controlled by end-users, about end-user issues was apropos, so Dave has organized a kick ass event - which starts on Friday. Yes - it is about the users, dummy and I can’t wait to participate in this on-going conversation (though I don;t know how we’re gonna fit 200 people in that tiny space.)
This is EXACTLY the forum to continue this conversation. Maybe even the Doc miester will be there. And Mary Hodder, Steve Gillmor and Dan Farber. I guess we won’t be seeing Joi Ito, Tim O’Reilly or Kevin Werbach.