Marc's Voice

One week to go til the DataSharingSummit

 Sept. 7-8

Spent lunch today with Joseph Smarr of Plaxo.

I’ve been impressed with the ‘turn-around’ at Plaxo - coming from where they originally positioned themselves to where they are right now. They’ve expanded pretty nicely onto the web, from being just an address book backup utility - back in 2003.

They released a ‘identity consolidator’ this week which in conjunction with their new social network Pulse and their existing technology - now offers a pretty nice suite of functionality.

But that all is trumped by their attitude, openness and leadership in the space - which lets just call ’social network portability’. Joseph and I put our brains together and came up with some principles, strategy and atitude which we’re gonna call ‘a manifesto’.

We’ll circulate it around next week and publish it in time for the DataSharingSummit - Sept. 7-8.

Other good news - Dare Obasanjo will also be there - so we’re getting a critical mass of players - representing the big boys, the user identity crowd and quite a few independent developers - as well.

We’re still looking for some sponsors to pay for lunch and a party - so if anyone is interested in buying good favors - please contact me.

Meanwhile I’ve been assembling various topics - and I’m creating topic pages so folks can ‘prep’ for what promises to be - a couple of interesting days.

We’ve scheduled the summit out in the middle of no where - so no one can dash off to work - and it’s on both a Friday and Saturday - to hit the maximum potential of availability.

Policing developers

Surprise, surprise - when one’s fortunes are involved - all of a sudden good community practices and netiquette go out the door.

So it seems that certain Facebooks apps have not been good citizens or even anything remotely resembling nice friends - and the folks a Facebook have had to change things - because of this.

So from now on - all Facebook apps will be ranked by engagement, not # of members.

This is another reason why Facebook is not Google, Microsoft, Yahoo or MySpace.  They communicate what they’re doing and they react quickly.

Right on to Dave Morin et al!   Hopefully this will make Dare happy.

Lots of reactions, comments and new ideas

While trolling the ‘social network portability’ mail list - I found some interesting ideas:

- Julian Bond thinks Plaxo’s approach rocks

- Anthony Romano calls Brad’s idea SNAP (Social Networks Aggregation Protocol) and even goes so far to name the format OFF (open friend format)

- Tabber, NoseRub and the SocioPath wiki

- hashing the value of FOAF: OnLineChatAccount

- OpenID extensions

- Privacy

and then (of course) there’s Plaxo’s On-line Identity Consolidator - complete with source code. More thoughts here.

There have been mentions of all this social graph portability being implemented using XDI.

I’ve brought up Joel DeGan’s earlier work on Bloom filters - vis a vis - a PeoplesDNS.

And the saga and triumph of Facebook - continues. I also really like this Facebook app which displays MySpace profiles in Facebook!

Kurt brings up 8Hands.

Chris Saari points out that Microsoft’s PNRP (Peer Name Resolution Protocol) can do peer-to-peer routed DNS

And the Sun Babelfish talks about his blooming friends.

Dare also points out that Plaxo’s Pulse looks ALLOT like Google’s SocialStream.
Meanwhile here are some feedback comments which are also relevant to an on-going, open discussion on tagging:

- Matt Mowers posts on the state of tagging brought us back down memory lane on what COULD have been.

Matt summarizes and defends Technorati, but I still think that Technorati Tags we got only brought us 30% of the way.

Thomas Van der wal, Stephen Downes, Paul Walk, David Weinberger and Phil Pearson also throw their two cents in - but at the end of the day - it was Matt - who created something called ‘Live Topics‘ - who originally inspired me to the possibilities of tagging.

So WTF happened? Nada, niente, bubkiss.

Joshua Schachter scammed Yahoo out of some cash (thanks to Fred Wilson) but even Yahoo ignored their own acquisition and created MyWeb as a way of saying “we can fuck up and do stupid things - just like the rest of them. I have long term faith in tagging and we’ll utilize Technorati Tags APIs, but we ain’t done yet!

Meanwhile Paolo’s got something new called Nova 100. And something else - too!

More thoughts on Brad’s thoughts

My earlier post on Brad’s thoughts summarized the politics, technology and essence of Brad’s vision.

He hopes that a non-profit is created that would aggregate social graphs and make them available to all. Right on!

Now lets put Brad’s idea in context to other open standards ideas.

Brad isn’t the only person who realizes that aggregating graphs across disparate social networks is one way of connecting people together. The particular problem Brad (and David) use to describe their solution - hones in on “what friends of mine AREN’T here” - when I go into a new system. Brad himself has access to so MANY friends (and edges - which are the graph relationships) - that he was able to build a prototype showing off a solution utilizing his technique.

But this notion of a social graph ‘layer’ has also come up as a new kind of identity operating system ’strata’ that could be utilized to connect (for instance) all the disparate components of a large company’s offerings - for instance - blogging, dating, groups, finance, sports, news and calendaring. An ‘identity strata’ could extend the notion of a personal profile, and add friends and groups and become a new construct that could be utilized by ALL components of a large vendor’s systems.

So Brad (and David’s) vision could be utilized (by US!) as a similar construct - to unite all sorts of applications and services together - in a distributed, meshed, loosely coupled environment - rather than just within one vendor’s empire.

I’ve been using a ’stack’ chart to show all of the pieces of our open standards puzzle and how each interacts and relates to the other. Brad’s idea fits nicely into this metaphor and just happens to coincide with other efforts from large players like Yahoo and Google.

Who knows - if Dare Obasanjo is reading this - we might even find out if Microsoft is also planning on some sort of ’social graph’ layer.

The ‘ID Stack’ chart below now includes the notion of a ’shared database of aggregated social graphs’ - as spelled out in Brad Fiztpatrick and David Recordon’s recent white paper.

Based upon rumors and innuendo’s we can assume that at least Yahoo and Google, if not Microsoft are also working on similar constructed underlying constructs - which would serve as a social network ’strata’ that would be shared across a wide range of applications and services.

Lord knows, we can now connect up these closed stratas with our open stratas and rock the house!

In earlier drafts of this chart - focused in on describing the difference between single sign-on (OpenID) and moving your data, profile info, etc. between systems (attribute exchange.) Then I extrapolated a third layer - where all sorts of verbs and actions (like auto-invite folks into your new network) or ‘create a group’ (between networks.)

Now with Brad (and David’s vision) we can add an additional layer - aggregate social graphs.

A distributed centralized social graph - for us all

It’s been 12 days since Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordon published a white paper “Thoughts on the Social Graph”. In it they talk about a notion of a non-profit that would keep a ‘master graph’ of all relationships between on-line friends which any vendor or developer could use in their social web application or service.

I’m not sure if a single database will suffice or if it has to be a series of DNS-like servers - distributed around the world - but aggregating all these graphs makes total sense to me!

This sort of shared database of resources could be applied to micro-content (events, reviews, etc.), media or even bookmarks/links - but it makes sense for it FIRST to be deployed for people.

Its a great idea and I wanted to spend some time noodling over the idea and do some research before I blogged my reaction. Initially this idea reminded me of the PeoplesDNS that Joel DeGan and I proposed back in 2004. But then when I read deeper and caught up on the mail list - it looks like this initiative could be a real catalyst towards making something happen - now.

And that’s what leadership is all about.

It seems like NOW is the time for this kind of idea.

As the portable social network meme spreads from Wired magazine to teachers to Swiss bloggers to the Toronto Star - it’s great to see new solutions appear for the same problem.

Dare Obasanjo is so into it - he’s posted a bunch of posts in the past week or so on more or less the same subject (and Facebook), corresponding to Microsoft’s announcement of a deal with Bebo and the new Windows Live contacts APIs. He’s even created a post as his contribution to our DataSharingSummit - since he’s getting married and can’t be there.

It shouldn’t be surprising that people are confused between OpenID and Windows Live authentication, or micro-formats and APIs or Bebo using MSN Messenger to connect to Windows Live contacts or Brad’s idea for SNIP and the attribute exchange. This is a complex puzzle and quilt that we’re trying to weave here.

Brad Fitzpatrick’s leadership, with help from David Recordon has started a flurry of great ideas and collection of other great ideas - on a Google Groups list called ‘Social Network Portability‘.

Dave McClure is collecting links on Brad’s post and peopletagging on Facebook. I hope that this post makes it into his ‘meme-o-sphere’.

Well about time - is what I say! Welcome to my world. Where were you when we tried out this sort of interoperability with the FOAFnet - 3 years ago?

Clearly what Brad Fitzpatrick groks the most (probably learned from his two years at SixApart) is that no one technology, platform or vendor can win the so-called ‘portable social graph’ sweepstakes. The solution - BY DEFINITION - has to include many different vendors solutions, protocols and formats - all coalescing into some sort of ‘distributed’ mesh.

And the only way to prove any of these theories - is for the marketplace to decide.

Right now we have proposals for micro-formats, rdf, Liberty Alliance, Higgins (a Harvard/IBM effort) and universal widgets to help solve this problem. I myself have been ranting about this very topic. Others think that interoperability between systems, a unique namespace , new kinds of portals or aggregating message boards are the killer app or feature. And there’s no end to ‘proprietary attempts’ at solving a public problem.

As Brad theorizes:

the goal is to build the guts that allow a thousand new social applications to bloom

Well I gotta say how much his warms my old software nerd soul. Clearly nobody wants to see Facebook, MySpace or Google domineer. But there’s no way that we’re all gonna wake up one day and say “OK - this is the exact and only way we’re going to inter-connect our data, content, social graphs and presence together”.

It ain’t gonna happen.

And Brad adds:

People are getting sick of registering and re-declaring their friends on every site, but also: Developing “Social Applications” is too much work.

Well right on to Brad I say.

His dream of a non-profit seems a bit idealistic to me - and it’ll be fun to see what his new employer - Google - does about this vision. We’ll have to wait and see.

I may call it ‘digital lifestyle aggregation’ and Tantek Celik may call it portable social networks. And Brad calls it a “social networking interop protocol” (SNIP) - even though he doesn’t think one protocol will win.

Doesn’t matter what we call it - just so they all connect to each other. Lets all get together and talk about this - at the DataSharingSummit - Sept. 7-8 in Richmond, CA. Kaliya will be there

Whatever happened to tagging?

Paolo Valdemarin and Matt Mower moan over the state of tagging.

Maybe now that Technorai has been freed from the tyranny of it’s former masters - a new owner will come in and solve this issue.  Ego got in the way at Technorati.  Its too bad how they handled tagging.

But tagging is much BIGGER than Tantek or Dave Sifry.

Tagging is about as big as it gets.  Right up there with people.

The end of the summer - blog links

Dare Obasanjo is on a roll. Not only does he have a few key posts on Windows Live Contacts and OpenID and how this all fits into our meshed web of distributed social networks, but he’s also perfectly analyzed and critiqued Robert Scoble’s post on social graph search and Google. Right on to Dare! I’ll be using many of his posts in my upcoming analysis of Brad Fitzpatrick’s vision. Dare is now my favorite blogger to read.

Robert Scoble in FastCompany on the next email.

Yes Michael - there really is a web outside the U.S. and not everyone is on Facebook.

James Seng points to a YouTube video of some old AT&T campaigns - called ‘You Will’. I hope this puts to rest any notion that Web 2.0 is new or that the web was really the web - before video. Video, kiosks, open standards and human oriented solutions - are the cornerstone of our future. Not geeky, sci-fi, geewhiz, flip it quick mentality.

Congrats to Orb on breaking 1M users.

Home Networking is evolving

Congrats to Scott Heiferman, Adam Seifer and John Borthwick - on selling Fotolog. Fotolog was the original original social photo sharing site - before Flickr, delicious, Facebook, anything - there was Fotolog. It’s over five years old. They were wildly accepted in Brazil, Japan and elsewhere - but typical of the Arrington 50,000 - no one else had a clue what was going on. I was interviewed by 3i when they invested. Adam was the heart behind Fotolog while Scott ran MeetUp. They brought in Borthwick (apparently to ‘flip it.) And he did!

dapper is continuing to make strides - this time with a Facebook AppMaker. Congrats to Jon Aizen et al. Mazel Tov!

Friendster has trouble keeping up - no! REALLY!
Women in Art - via Rory Sutherland - yup, YouTube is still there. Then there’s also Women in Film.

Masala, Jooce, HeyNeilsen, MyNYTimes (kind of sad - really), Yelp events,

Valleywag is guessing that just because an AOL job listing is looking for someone to head up a large company’s efforts in social networking - that it must be AOL. Dude - believe it or not - almost EVERY large company is looking for create a social network!

Back in Walnut Creek and blogging again

My old buddy Stewart Alsop has a fund. Not sure how much money they have, but they apparently like black leather jackets. His partner - Gilman Louie was a VC for the NSA.  Now THAT’s a credential to be proud of!

Ning does white labeling - kind of.  The New Playboy social network is really Ning.

Don’t worry - I won’t miss the social network portability meme.  I’ve been researching, thinking and prepping for a big post on it.  Coming soon.

OpenID: Great idea, bewildering consumer experience - hopefully we can work on that at our DataSharingSummit.

Apparently NetFlix’s push into social features is paying off.  Congrats to Michael Rubin and team!

MySpace for spies,  Groupsites from CollectiveX, GlobalGrind, KiwiBox, MetaCafe, SelectMinds, CafeMom, MyFootballClub, Zyb, Multiply for iPhone, High School Playbook, Peek You, Ziki, veZoom,

Interview with Rafat Ali - one of my favorite bloggers and a partner of ours.

Fotolog - sold or not? This is evidence that social media is alive and well outside the US and UK and that folks put VALUE on these sites.  I bet Orkut could be sold for $1B in Brazil.  Friendster is probably worth a $1B to some sheik from Brunei.  Where’s Dubai in all these deals?

SocialNetworkingConference - Oct 1-2 = Barcelona  Jan. 31-Feb. 1 = Miami

United Layer (our data hosting center) is expanding in LaLa.  These folks are the ones you want.

Classmates going public

Today is Steve Case’s birthday

Since it’s public knowledge that today is Steve Case’s birthday, I don’t feel too badly ‘outting’ him on this juicy bit of personal info. Steve has chosen to let his Facebook friends know this fact and since he’s been bopping around Facebook lately - I bet a lot of people know that it’s Steve’s birthday today.

Obviously not all of you are Steve’s Facebook friend - so the issue arises- “am I betraying Steve’s confidence, privacy and other ‘identity rights’ by stating that today is his birthday?”

Well this issue of privacy via info gathered on social networks is exactly what Denise Howell is talking about in her post Facebook’s data feeds a data leak?

Denise talks about an on-going debate about Facebook’s News Feeds and the many ways that URIs can get out and become public knowledge. This whole situation leads to many levels of corruption, misuse and at best - misunderstanding of what the technology can do. Clearly you’d better be careful in what you’re doing - cause everyone’s gonna find out.

I myself have found my InBox on EVERY social network I’ve ever been on - flooded with requests for so-called ‘friendships’.

Way back in the day - me and Joi Ito gamed Orkut to show that this whole game of ‘collecting’ friends - was a joke.

Clearly these names on a list aren’t my friends - and you can take THAT to the social capital bank! So why would you trust anything important or info that matters to you - to some random crowd of folks standing in a public square?

So this brings up trust and a whole ‘nother Pandora’s Box to close!

My solution to all this was to add granular levels of relationships in PeopleAggregator - and I certainly hope other vendors support his notion - as well.

One can be a Best Friend, Good Friend, Friend, Acquaitance and Stranger in PeopleAggregator. But relationships can be established - none the less. You just have to define what KIND of relationship you have with this person.

But this debate on identity rights, privacy and social networking doesn’t stop here.

I myself have been fascinated with the opt-in rights of end-users when they get ‘moved’ (along with the rest of their social graph) to new networks or systems. When I joined StumbleUpon today - I was given the option of deciding who I was going to ‘invite’ into the system. This is the dream scenario in social graph portability - that moment when I can import all my social capital - in full swoop.

But does everyone on that ‘friends list’ WISH to get imported?

I say we need an industry norm which allows folks to ‘opt-in’ to being moved to new networks. This ‘opt-in’ checkbox would come - ‘default off’ - and have to be explicitly checked on - before one could be exported from one system and ‘auto-invited’ into a new one. All systems/networks would/should support this ‘opt-in’ control and we’ll have handed the end-users another key link in the chain of open standards for social networking.

Final note: the screen shot below was SUPPOSED to be of the screen StumbleUpon shows me - when it came time to decide who to ‘auto-invite’ in - from my list of Facebook friends. But SumbleUpon’s Facebook app is down now. So instead I’m showing a partial list of Stumblers from Walnut Creek, CA.

Pretty coolio they got so many folks into their system! Props to StumbleUpon. Didn’t they get bought already?

Here’s that missing screen - it finally came up. This is what SumbleUpon offers you when ‘auto-invite’ in your Facebook friends - into StumbleUpon.  No face should appear on this list - if they didn’t explicitly opt-in (is what I’m saying.)

Brad’s thoughts on the social graph

Brad Fitzpatrick - the creator of OpenID - who has recently left SixApart has posted a key document and is hard at work on some new stuff. David Recordan is helping - and he’s going to work at SixApart.

There’s a Google Group.

Lots to think about and comment on. I like his attitude.

But for now - it’s football and relaxation.

UPDATE: fixed misspelling - but still haven’t had time to dive deep into Brad’s ideas.  Stay tuned.