Looks like Steve Gillmor had fun at the campfire. He’s part of the friend connected web.

Building the open mesh, a decentralized Twitter, embedding profile data, social graphs and content, OpenDD, and the Religion of Bringing Social to Software. My my my - looks like the distributed open web is coming together. Caroline McCarthy sees this as a social mess - but I see it as the elegant organic chaos of an open mesh.  Others are confused as well. And some people are still worrying about MyBlogLog. Or have other opinions.  Stacy Higginbotham (on GigaOm) has compared all three offerings - even better than I did. Thanks Stacy!

I’m looking forward to meeting Daniella Barbosa this week - she’s the one who seems to me - to really grok DataPortability. 

Congrats to Powerset on launching. I really like the idea of focusing on wikipedia - as a first data set.

I really like the idea of HP buying EDS. This approach basically mirrors and confirms Cisco’s approach as well. As all the moving parts and complexity of our world continues - it’s increasingly important that customers be presented with turn-key scenarios - that combine designing, architecting, building and maintaining systems. This is what Cisco is doing. And it looks like this is what HP is now doing. IBM has been doing this - for years.

What to do at the Data Sharing Summit when you’re tired of the arguments over data portability and standards?  Go check out the Babbage Difference Engine!

The death of Net Neutrality is Alive

Facebook growing up

Fiber warfare is born.  The real battle in Beirut is over Hezbollah’s own private fiber network.

Photobucket becomes more Flickry 

Shut up about scalability, no one is using your app anyway

Nine Inch Nails - continues to lead the way with new attitudes

Congrats to Pandora on their apparent deal with Clear Channel

I myself am definitely waiting for games my kids can enjoy.

I guess I should tell Ma.tt about my favorite places in Milan.  Bolognese and the Last Supper.

Best news I heard today - Icahn may go after Yahoo.  :-)   We had some private equity people contact us - they had no clue what business we were in - they only knew that Ning had awakened the slumbering giant of private equity.

CondeNet brings vertical to social networking 

There’s an on-going discussion attached to FactoryJoe’s post on ‘Thoughts on Dataportability’. 

This new Religion of Bringing Social to Software is based upon the notion of embedding one’s profile data, social graph and content into external sites.

The distributed open mesh can be built with this sort of religion.

We’ve had that ability in PeopleAggregator for almost two years now and it shows that we’ve architected and designed PeopleAggregator for the future. As these ‘tentacles’ are deployed around the web - I believe that it strikes a balance between the lock-in tendencies and instincts of vendors - who think that this is the only way to ‘lock-in’ their customers - versus - the free, open nature of the distributed open mesh.

This balancing act must also be taken into context with the other goings on of the open mesh, namely the Live Web, and whether or not its important to decentralize Twitter.

The DataPortability.org effort points to a world where end-users can control their data. This is an essential ingredient to the open mesh.

A dashboard onto one’s ‘digital lifestyle’ is also inevitable. Continued openness from the big players will lead to many different techniques of semi-openness.

But at the end of the day - it appears that a major foundation of this open religion - will be embedding one’s profile data, social graph and content into widgets (or other mechanisms) and plopping those widgets into OTHER web sites and web services.

**

Sort of like what I have here. This is coming right out of my PeopleAggregator.net account.

**

You’ll notice About Me (otherwise known as profile data). This links to my PeopleAggregator page. I also have a link to my Flickr account. I could have added my Twitter or Friendfeed accounts as well.

**

You’ll notice My Friends (otherwise known as social graph). This is my internal social graph.

I could also have displayed my friends from MySpace. Facebook, YouTube, Flickr as well.

**

You’ll notice my list of Groups. This could also include the various networks I am a member of - in the PeopleAggregator meta-network. I could also list associated Groups or other Groups I’m a member of - on different networks. This is where aggregating Groups comes in.

**

I didn’t put up my latest Blog posts (but I could have.)

**

You’ll notice My Photos (sort of like our own Flickr Zeitgeist.)

**

You’ll notice My Videos (but I also could have put up Audio as well).

**

This widget demontrates what each of the MySpace, Facebook and Google embedded mechanisms will do.

The trick is gonna be “what can you do with these imported ‘widgets’ once they’re there in your destination site.

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

Lots of feedback and talk about Data Availability and Facebook Connect. I’ll be posting about this separately.

I’ve been doing these Gillmor Gangs - which are webcast here. There is one of these every day.

My daughter just signed up for Club Penguin - and she’s real excited about being able to send messages to her friend Zoe.

The Well used to have an initiative called You Own Your Own Words

Filtering is the next step for Social Media

Arrington brings up a good point many of us have to deal with: “Sell out now or go it alone?”

Here is a nice post comparing two different conferences - which appear to be very similar. Its nice to see this sort of clarification - instead of a flame war.

Why is it called Data Availability rather than DataPortability? What about OpenSocial? And why isn’t Yahoo leading this announcement? Hmmmmm - Yes - very hmmmmmm

Frengo is doing some totally coolio inter-connection between social networks! To quote their CEO (Mahi de Silva): “What we do may not appear to be aligned with the business goals of social networks.” But I really think this DOES increase value - for all parties!

Facebook is announcing all sorts of onerous “keep this place clean” efforts. Though I certainly support these efforts and I’m sorry for the extra costs they’ll incur I also think this will slow down the ‘opening up of user’s data’.

Murdoch’s opportunity to sell off MySpace high - has passed. And usage on Facebook has slowed. So the migratory humans continue their journey.

Revisiting Cluetrain looks like it’ll be a great event.

There’s no need of a Facebook India - there’s iTimes.com

Dan Farber reports on the unfortunate demise of free refills.

Ted Leung reports on CommunityOne

Even though its funny to joke about ’some’ friends bering worthless - this calls to a head the very issue I hate most about social networking. That from a business POV its all about monetizing people. If (God Forbid) folks would change this attitude and see relationships (in every shape and size) as opportunities to connect people together to facilitate and enable all sorts of great new activities - then the monetization happens with those activities. NOT in the people’s eyeballs and page counting. That is so conflicting with the very nature of ‘relationships‘.

Sun has hooked up with Amazon and will ‘resell’ their grid web services. This seems like a final admission of defeat by Sun. Shouldn’t they have their OWN grid and web services on-demand. Kind of pathetic really. So Sun goes from “building the network” and inventing Java to - what? Yet another system integrator and channel presence? But at least they can get Neil Young to play along.

Congrats to the folks at Slideshare. I really like this approach. Macromedia has a slide show thingie - that they charged $10k for. This is what they should have been doing. Another example of how clueless Macromedia has been. But meanwhile kickass technologies and companies continue to thrive off their missed opportunities.

Google translate rising. I’ve been a loyal Babelfish customer, but now……

Ma.tt on infrastructure

New version of Orb a software Sling Box

Conversation threading

More details on how badly Verisign wants to get rid of Kontiki

The rise of video comments and Seesmic. Looks like Loic is getting work done.

Piet, xrdstype.net, OpenDD, Dragonfly, Lycos Cinema, Enomaly, Connectbeam, SearchMonkey, Tributes, Mosso, Bizzlr, Piwik, SitePoint, Lefora, Coolspotters, Yoono,

Ben Werdmuller and his colleague Marcus Povey of Curverider

Its a schema and an approach to representing all the disparate kinds of data that a social network stores - so that this stuff can be successfully exchanged, synchronized and subscribed to between different social network and social media systems.

One of the battlefields that have been fought over the years - are schemas. These data structures are the lists of the exact fields and structures that make up a particular set of ‘information’. Of course - everybody thinks that THEIR schema is the best - and I’ve participated in these relatively academic debates.

But the coolio thing about what Ben and his folks at Curverider have done - is that OpenDD not only covers all the schema stuff and what’s needed to facilitate data inter-change but its also grounded in a pragmatic approach to updating and synchronizing disparate system’s data structs together which are often dynamic and which are thought of completely differently by each system.

This is crucial because as the battles of the behemoths continue, we need to find common ground for open standards.

Since one man’s Group is - is another man’s Network - we’d better have a way of synchronizing the two together.

And since what a playlist, album or collection are is different in each system - there had better be a way for me to move my playlists from Ning to hi5 or Bebo.

How one keeps track of lists of contacts, friends, etc., is different. So any traditional schema approach just ain’t gonna cut it. We need something that is designed to deal with dynamic data, that is changing as fast as you follow some other Twitter twit - or add a name to your FriendFeed.

So OpenDD is a solution for inter-change, streaming, subscribing to and getting feeds from and synchronization. This is what Atom is all about - so I’m hoping to see OpenDD wrapped inside of Atom.

And this is what the OpenID2 attribute exchange was designed to handle - so utilizing the OpenDD approach with OpenID2 should all go smoothly. Watch for first implementations in June.

Like any good open standard, OpenDD is based upon UUIDs (universal unique identifiers) so it should be able to work with anything and anybody.

Curverider - like Broadband Mechanics has a real need to inter-connect their various networks together (their platform is called Elgg - and it’s positioned to work with (what we call) “inside the Firewall solutions.” Our platform (PeopleAggregator) is positioned to consumer facing solutions.

But we both wish to inter-connect our networks together.

NOTE: Right now we’re just talking about dataportability. Interoperability will come next.

And needless to say - this is exactly what the DataPortability.org effort has been hoping for and is supporting. They’ll be a presentation on OpenDD at the upcoming Data Sharing Summit next week.

So congrats to Ben and Marcus and the team on a job well done. Ben and company are looking for feedback - so please join the list and let’s get this puppy rolling! I’ve already seen postings on the Ning API on the list and now I wonder if Ning will expose anything more than just profile info - in their CVS.

Here’s Ben in front of a piece of my mural on the open mesh. We added some key stuff to it - once we reviewed everything. State, Redundancy and Context.

Now whenever I run into these dudes at public events I can ask Zuckerberg when he’ll release the enslaved personal data of his users - and I can ask Andreessen when he’ll publicly disclose what’s really going on inside of Ning. And they’ll probably be hanging out with each other allot now.

Cause afterall - anyone who can scam private equity firms for $100M in cash and never make a profit is the kind of guy Facebook wants on their board - right?

I know that Kara sees my blog and writing this post may get noticed by others as well. What better way to get your message out and questions answered than to call people on their bullshit and take it to their face?

Apparently when I unjustly attack somebody I get noticed - so I just thought I’d explain myself here to those who care. I’m not attacking unjustly because I think my attack is unjust. Quite the opposite. I attack and critique and call people on what I consider to be the bullshit that keeps this industry back.

I call people on what I consider to be the unjust decrepit disease of greed and insider gamesmanship that keeps the rich rich and the entrepreneurs who work their asses off - poor.

When VCs purposefully lead their young founders on and then kick them out - this is what’s wrong with our world. I don’t use theFunded to complain - I use my blog to attack.

My company doesn’t have a $15B valuation or even a $500M valuation. We don’t need valuation at all. We have a platform we license and offer as SaaS and I have ideas and questions. I use my blog to create change.

So when I read about Fred Wilson’s arbitraging - I write about it. And when I get responses that support Fred - I appreciate the love he gets.

And if I ask a question to an AT&T VP about why they won’t turn on some of their dark fiber - and the conference moderator lets him walk off the stage without answering the question - that pisses me off.

When I see trends like OpenSocial and I figure out what Google is really doing - I blog about it. And I let it be known that we’re “bringing social to software”. And that we can all work together.

When my gut tells me there’s something wrong with Twitter - I complain about it early and often.

And when I earlier created an Open Letter to Marc and Gina - I don’t complain - but I remember.

And when Wikipedia then says that I often criticize people - I take them at their word - afterall Wikipedia is authoritative - right?

And when I go on panels at conferences I say what I think, not what will play well to the press or get me VC investment.

And when I’m NOT invited to speak at conferences - I get up in the audience and ask hard questions. Sometimes my questions are completely ignored, sometimes they’re dodged - like some vicous bullet trying to extract the truth.

Or when I blog about what I see is Lock-in - and others support it - I criticize then too - cause they’re adding to the problem.

So in general I try to ask the right questions at the right time.

But at the end of the day - my words are my swords. We don’t have big bags of capital - so that we never have to make a profit. I believe companies should make money and VC deficit funding is a big problem in this industry.

The insider games that happen (and why Loic Lemeur moved here) is also a problem. I’m not saying Loic isn’t a great guy and that Seesmic doesn’t rock - but the truth is that Loic moved here so that he could be close to the games.

Facebook has said it won’t make any money and will budget to break even next year. COOLIO - cause at least they innovate. But Ning doesn’t really innovate and I’m afraid that with Andreessen joining the Facebook board - that only means that Facebook will NEVER make a profit.

But if they get bought by Microsoft - with some of that leftover Yahoo money - who cares. Right?

His Quibblo poll (which asked what price would Yahoo’s stock price would close at today) - was picked up by 24 blogs (including his own.) It collected almost 2,200 votes within a day.

But did Fred do this out of some interest in Yahoo or because he actually cared about all those poor Yahoo shareholders? No - he did it so he could put in some buy prices at the low price and make some money off of somebody else’s misery.

Ah Wall St. Gotta love it - huh?

And capitalism - what a great system.

This arbitraging behavior has been around for a while.

But what does it have to do with making things?

Or bettering the world?

Michael Arrington has a surpringly nascent post on what he sees as a solution. Though Michael is surprised at my cognitive state, I was happy to see a typo in his post. This means Michael is still a human (despite his godfatherly posture) . My bet is that by the time you get to read his post “complaint” - will get fixed to “compliant”.

Meanwhile - back at the scaling conversation, Arrington lays out how microblogging tools can simply use XMPP to route messages to Twitter and each other via XMPP, while not relying upon the existing way its done now. Clients like ‘Alert Thingy’ can easily add this - so now we will see what happens.

Genius’ at work - like Dave Winer and Bill LeFebvre - will figure it out.

If we could create a giant list of ‘microbloggers’ - somehow federated together - that would be a good thing - too. Maybe this is where the ’shared social graph’ comes in? How ’bout using OpenID?

I have nothing more to add to this - YES - please do it.

Now - back to my regularly scheduled work day.

UPDATE: Typo fixed!

Happy Birthday to BigDave Jacobs

Dan Farber groks what I’m trying to say. The open mesh is not Microsoft’s mesh - it’s ours. Please go and read my series of 10 blog posts and stay tuned for the evolution of my mural. Like I said I’ll be throwing a party a month this summer - to collect folks thoughts and evolve the mural - organically.

Now lets see what Yahoo will do. I certainly think that the Y! OS initiative is correct. But now they gotta execute! That’s been their problem - execution .

Dave Winer responded to my post on Decentralized Twitter. Thanks Dave. I can’t wait til some solution is found to this lock-in situation.

This Intel-NVidia screamer sounds outrageous

Doc Searls has another way of looking at these behemoths colliding, merging and gossiping.

Thanks Om! I’m gonna buy me a X300

And meanwhile now we can all speculate on whether Apple will buy Adobe

Orson Scott Card Rips Apart JK Rowling For The Lexicon Lawsuit

Verisign takes a bath on Kontiki.  The company has raised $42M in VC had been sold to Verisign for $62M - and lord knows what it went for now.  This is a classic Silicon Valley story.  This shitty ass technology had too much money put into it - so it keeps bouncing from company to company. I wonder why?