Blogging on the day after f8
Yesterday was quite a day - but the world moves on. We did a Gillmor Gang show today on Open Web Foundation, MySpace/facebook/Microsoft with David Recordon and Chris Messina.
I agree with Arrington that a payment system, better message client and reconciliation with Google should have been announced at f8 yesterday, but this is a company that’s achieved a whole lot (in a very short period of time) and they’re pushing the innovation boundaries - like no one else - IMHO. Eric in the comments left on my post on “DRM bits for people” asked “are you sure you can leave the data on the destination site?” and he says he couldn’t find it written down anywhere. Eric also points to the TOS where they say they are ‘reveiwing the current TOS. So perhaps that’s one thing Dave Morin can do - clarify that!
Today the OpenWeb foundation was announced. It will provide a clearing house and single point of support for new specs that ‘could‘ turn into standards, but have all these requirements to meet - before large BigCos can adopt them. Patents and non-assertion is one set of issues. There are others.
Dan Farber explains “Facebook is the next generation portal”
Kara Swisher has a fascinating anlysis of Ballmer’s memo on strategy. What jumps out at me is this Balllmer line: “We’ll introduce new approaches that move beyond a white page with 10 blue links to provide customers with a customized view of their world. “ As a former multimedia guru I can’t tell how sweet that sounds to me. The world, indeed is more than just blue text on a page!
Om Malik groks a unique aspect of Facebook’s strategy. They’re publishing and sharing tools encourage external content to flow through Facebook - thereby giving them an even BETTER idea of who these people are and what they like. Next step - Facebook Ads.
Meanwhile - speaking of revenues, Microsoft exerts it’s equity shareholder exclusive global rights terms and annunces an advertising deal with Facebook. Why do they have to buy Yahoo when they can get ads rolling on Facebook?
Congrats to Chris “hardest working man in open social networking” Messina - in being named ‘Best Community Amplifier” of the year at OSCON.Getting social software more [to be] human
So goodbye to another $100M AOL shuts down XDrive. What a legacy. I could have SWORN I heard that deal was for upwards of $100M. Maybe I’m wrong, but either way AOL never did ANYTHING with it. What do people like Kevin Conroy DO when they go to work? I was actually hired to come up with an open strategy for Xdrive. Small world.
We’re still waiting for a GPL test case.
Now hear this - Loic will not be at Arrington’s party.
Dick Hardt is a bit off kilter thinking that Facebook Connect and OpenID don’t live in the same world. Facebook will support OpenID - by year’s end - I predict.
I’m gonna pour some energy into Knol - once my family leaves for Michigan and I have the house to myself.
Congrats to Om Malik on making an acquisition - jkOnTheRun
I just love this photo - I’m re-running it.
July 25th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Thanks for the shout-out Marc, and for the questions about the Open Web Foundation yesterday. Indeed questions abound and we’re happy to see so many people respond with such vigor — should help to keep us honest, focused and to hone in our scope. The last thing we need is another corruptible foundation or “standards-creating body” (which is why we’re focused merely on *specs*) and yet at the same time, as you well know, there is clearly a need to provide a streamlined, repeatable process for enabling larger organizations to adopt technology as scale to lower the cost and increase distribution while enabling communities and individuals to do what they have been shown to do well, especially in the context of open source.
I’m watching Facebook very closely, and agree with your assessment that Facebook will support OpenID by year’s end, if not OAuth as well. It’s simply to valuable to the ecosystem for them not to come along here… it’s not like their authorization or ID protocols are all that better — but the friction of having to support multiple protocols, and keep track of them, I think will weigh on implementors (or worse, on individuals who don’t want to have to get a Facebook account to take advantage of social web services) that Facebook will move in this direction. But of course, we shall see, we shall see.