We’re starting to see a pattern here.

Profiles, social graphs and user’s content is starting to get encapsulated and plopped into external web sites, blogs and other social networks. The user’s data stays locked up in the originating site, but varying levels of integration, access and ‘inviting’ IS being enabled.

This plopping is happening in different ways. Some via widgets, some via full gadget and app integration and everything in-between. APIs are now being offered to access social graphs, permissions and privacy is being maintained and the definition of lock-in and openness is being re-invented as we speak.

In most cases user’s will be empowered to access their list of friends from the originating site and “invite’ their friends into the destination sites or services. That’s a good thing. Most probably that ‘invitation’ will get sent via the private messages system of the originating site, not via SMTP and free, open email.

In all cases the user’s data stays locked-up on the originating site and what we’re seeing is every ingenious mechanism, technique and route around these four platforms can figure out - to KEEP that user’s data locked-in. That’s my summary of what’s going on. We still have a fight to fight.

So that’s why openness is being re-invented here. Our version of open is no good to them, so they have to reinvent it to ascribe to their own purposes.

The underlying assumptions and demands we make that a user should be able to move their data - the so-called ‘dataportability‘ mantra, the root behind our Bill of Rights for User of Social Media - is still being ignored.

All four of these platform are saying “we have our own definition of what open is”.

The one thing all four of them IS saying is that we’re going to be living in a distributed open mesh world, and that widgets and other forms of ‘inter-connecting originating and destination sites‘ - will be a predominant technique for facilitating the distributed open mesh world of the future.

If there ever was any doubt to our future of “bringing social to software” - hopefully that’s been squashed. Services, applications, desktop apps, mobile solutions - all will use this ‘distributed technique’ to connect themselves into the open mesh.

Bringing social to software will be applied to content sites, social media sharing sites, productivity apps, intranet and other inside the Firewall collaborative solutions, affinity meta-networks and ecommerce sites.

All of these kind of sites will utilize this technique of embedding their member’s data, social graph and content - into other services and sites.

So the battlefield remains “which portal/platform” do users keep their MASTER info/data on.

It may seem like Web 2.0, but it’ll still the portal lock-in game all over again - but this time - with widget tentacles protruding out from originating portals into any receptacle/destination site that will take them.

So the process of “bringing social to software” has commenced - across all platforms now. Coolio!

What makes this all interesting is that each major player has their own interpretation of how to make this happen, their own “version of open“.

So that’s why we have Data Sharing Summits. Hopefully they’ll be reps from each major platform at the summit and we can discuss how to inter-connect these various approaches - together.

Here’s my current assessment of each player’s version of open:

Microsoft and their alliance has created a way for their Windows Live Contacts to be accessed via APIs. This represents 100’s of millions of names. The APIs are two-way and their alliance members (Flickr, Facebook, Bebo, hi5, LinkedIn) can access MSN Messenger contacts and Live Spaces profiles and connect these with their own internal ’social graphs’ (like Flickr’s Friend Finder.) This scenario completely locks developers into Microsoft’s walled garden, but HEY! They’re Microsoft - right? Something is better than nothing.

Facebook seems to get openness, privacy and extensibility - best. If you read Dave Morin’s intro to Facebook Connect - he not only makes it clear that they wish to work with other platforms and that standards are essential, he also launches the notion of ‘dynamic privacy’ - which represents the real world issues that have to be dealt with, to make the open mesh - work. I know Dave Morin personally and he’s not only really smart, but also incredibly sincere and honest. Despite the various goings on with Facebook, I believe Facebook Connect appears to have the right model, approach and balance between keeping user’s lock-in as a monetizable asset (gotta make Wall St and the bosses happy!) while providing users with a powerful, pragmatic approach to openness and data portability. As Dave states- this goes beyond just dataportability.

Meanwhile MySpace started this recent rush of openness with their Data Availability announcement - which (to me) seems like a widget strategy and something that our PeopleAggregator platform has had for a while. Any or all of a user’s profile data, social graph or content can be encapsulated into a widget and placed anywhere. MySpace has chosen to launch their effort with ebay, Yahoo and Twitter. So all these alliances don’t necessarily compete or overlap with each other. The trick now is “what do you do with it - when you get there”. I’ll summarize where all these four platforms are coming from on this issue - at the end of this post. MySpace is flexing it’s considerable platform muscle and saying “we’re gonna keep the user’s data here, but we’ll allow you (the user) to plop it into any other platform you wish.

David Recordon (as he usually does) weighs in on the MySpace’s Data Availability initiative.

As others have said - and will be bound to say - we’re seeing a battle unfold in front of our eyes - for “who can be more open than the other!” And this is the sort of battle we wanna see! This can only mean good things for the open mesh! They’re all bringing social to software - in their own way - and as I always say: Vive la diffrance!

Today Google announced Google Friend Connect. It’s as if we’ve run out of titles, sayings and buzzwords to use - so they’re kind of borrowing from Facebook on this one. We’ll be talking about Connecting Connect to Connect - soon. We can think of Google Friend Connect as OpenSocial2.

OpenSoical never made sense as a name - until the next shoe dropped - which it just did. Now we can see plainly that Google is out to become the next generation social network. They want to hold the social graph data of everyone on THEIR servers. That’s what Brad Fitzpatrick is working on - with his Social Graph APIs. Google has Orkut - but that’s not enough for them. They want it ALL!

I don’t see this as a change in direction as much as an expansion and exposure as to Google’s real intention with OpenSocial all along. Of COURSE Google Friend Connect ties everything back to what’s on Google’s servers! Of COURSE Friend Connect is really OpenSocial2.

I was going to originally call this post Data Availability = Facebook Connect (both are still lock-in) - but Google made it a three-way game today. Including Microsoft seems apropos because it typifies how important this battle is - and how important it is for us - to continue to demand our rights.

Though I agree with Dare Obasanjo that interoperability is just as important as data portability, these three initiatives prove that Data Portability is a subject we need to keep screaming about.

These three announcements prove that MySpace, Google and Facebook assume that once a user enters into their domain, that they own that user, that they control what happens with that user’s data and that they fully intend on squeezing every last dime out of monetizing that user - until the cow’s come home.

This is essentially the mantra Jonathan Abrams spoke to me about - when I first met him in 2003 - and it’s the mantra of every single large social networking platform since then.

This is why we created the Bill of Rights for Users of Social Media. We had to make it clear what we wanted - and so far - no one has really given that to us.

This initiative will be a hot topic at this upcoming week’s Data Sharing Summit - down in Mountain View at the Compter History Museum. I highly recommend that anyone involved in social media, social networking or anything having to do with privacy or identity show up. This event was designed to complement the upcoming Internet Identity Workshop - as well.

I want to start off concluding by saying that Facebook’s dynamic privacy approach- essentially maps the real world activities of humans to computer systems. Static dogmatic privacy policies and technology seems to be the way of the world - now. But Facebook continues to KEEP the user’s data on one place. That’s the fundamental problem with any of these approaches.

YES - we know that moving this data around seems pretty esoteric and something only advanced nerds worry about. And YES we know that moving data brings up all sorts of fears and potential of loss of privacy. But all the roots of all our problems go back to the fact that THEY are telling ME what I can do with MY data.

Its a fundamental right we own - not them.

Now let’s put these behemoth’s announcements in light of these ‘open’ technologies:

- OpenDD (and my post on it)

- Specific attribute types for the OpenID2 attribute exchange

- oEmbed (which is actually kind of like an open version of Data Availability)

- DiSO

All of these approaches are coming from the independent developer community and are based upon NOT locking user’s data into sites. So when you hear Facebook, Google or MySpace talk about privacy, securing user’s rights, etc. - just know that they’re perpetuating their OWN version of open!

We NOW this is about lock-in and monetizing their users.

It would be nice if they’d just be honest about it.

So see you all next week!

====

OK so here’s my quick list of issues that we can compare between the various platforms version of open. Obviously the blogosphere will be all over this in the coming days.

Where does the user’s data reside?

In all four cases - the user’s data STAYs in the originating platform. So none of them are proposing an effective way to allow user’s to move their data around.

What do you do WITH this data - once it gets there?

Facebook = they talk about something called Friend access and show this screen shot. updating

Microsoft - just…. limited

Google - invite, updating, lots of coolio stuff done with gadgets, lots of resources available to do just about anything. All building on Google’s social graph on our servers approach.

MySpace - invite - no email addresses available.

I haven’t seen any mention of merging data into an external account or sending messages or creating or joining groups between systems. But we’re getting there.

What about Privacy and access controls over this data?

Facebook - they talk about something called dynamic privacy. This is the first time I’ve seen any large platform express the understanding of the types of access controls and opt-in controls - which are needed.

Microsoft - you are bound by the covenants and controls under the Microsoft deal. Alliance partners can get access to Microsoft users’ data - as long as they play along with Microsoft.

Google - at this time - it’s not clear what Google is doing in this regard. I’ll hopefully find out more about that tonight - at the Campfire.

MySpace - uh - couldn’t tell yah - really.

Any connection or mention of Groups of Friends lists or other ’sets’ of people

none

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