I’m finalizing my book “How to build the Open Mesh” and Mary Hodder suggested that I add some Appendices on how various BigCos are building THEIR versions of the open mesh.  The full title of this Appendix is “Aren’t Facebook and MySpace really Closed Meshes and how can we connect to them?”

So here is Appendix - D

The tentacles of Facebook and the satellites of MySpace don’t fool us. They don’t REALLY want to mesh in with us, but they have to.  So they put limitations and control over their user’s data, keeping them locked into their platforms.  That’s their business model.

Both Facebook and MySpace have come up with architectures to allow for tight coupling of their user’s profile data, social graphs and content to the outside world.  That will have to be good enough for us to mesh into - for now.  Hopefully by the time this book is read - things will be better and we’ll be able to gain access to their user’s emails - which is the holey grail.

But our relentless pressure and insistance upon full freedom of our data - will win the day!

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