Its been a great year.
In the parking lot at Canter’s Deli in West Hollywood.
Platform Love panel - at LeWeb ‘08
I’m a super techie
Constructs for the Open Mesh
the birth of Portable Contacts (Joseph Smarr)
Facebook f8 - Dave Morin (facebook), Allen Hurff (MySpace), Kevin Marks (Google), me
the family all together
Date: Friday, December 26th, 2008 |
Time: 1:13 pm
Tags: Allen Hurff,
Aron,
Aryeh,
Canters deli,
constructs,
Dave Glazer,
Dave Morin,
David Recordon,
Facebook,
family,
Google,
Jacob,
Jeff Hansen,
Joseph Smarr,
kevin marks,
lisa,
lucy,
Max Engle,
Microsoft,
Mimi,
MySpace,
open mesh,
Portable Contacts,
SixApart,
super techie,
ZDNet
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Very coolio little event put on this evening by theSocialWeb.tv dudes.
There were presentations from:
- Yahoo on the XRD Discovery format and oAuth
- OpenID
- Portable Contacts
- OpenSocial
Folks talked about MySpace ID, AOL and OpenSocial. What was missing was someone from Microsoft.
Dave Morin was talking about connecting up the Facebook feed with Chris Messina and their efforts revolving around a shared, public aggregation model of lifestreams.
The guy from Digg talked about standardizing container for messages, registration and log-on and showed how much code he save and how efficient the “open model” was for Digg. They’re supporting OpenID, Facebook and their own proprietary formats, and loving it.
John McCrea was his usual enthusiastic self, David Recordon MCed and Joseph Smarr just kicked ass.
It was a totally inspiring evening. There were almost 100 people.
Thanks to all.
Date: Friday, December 19th, 2008 |
Time: 10:26 pm
Tags: oAuth,
OpenID,
OpenSocial,
Portable Contacts,
XRDS
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Welcome Yahoo
Welcome the BBC
Welcome AOL
All of a sudden you don’t have to explain WHY you want to be open. Now it’ll just be “tell us exactly HOW you are open”. For portal players like AOL and Yahoo - the folks who defined portals in the 90’s - it has to do with letting “others” onto their home page properties.
For the BBC it has to do with fulfilling your promises of putting up ALL your content online - and establishing persistent ubiquitous content.
For Google it has been creating and supporting open standards like OpenSocial and supporting OpenID, oAuth and now - Portable Contacts.
For Microsoft it’s about the live mesh and connecting together the living room, game consoles, car, mobile and the PC.
My my my - what a world we’re in today!
The sanctioned grounds which make up a BigCos assets are no longer walled gardens. That’s the first stage of opening up. Next comes open standards to facilitate interop and dataportability. Then will come new kinds of apps, services and mashups which rely upon two-way APIs and a level playing field where SmallCo players can ‘live off the crumbs left behind by the behemoths‘.
This is why I wrote my book ’cause now the question is “with so much openness - how can we all connect together?” By using openness for their new resurgence these BigCos have forced us to ask - “what’s left for ‘us’?”
We need to be strategic in these days, making sure that two-way APIs allow us to get in there and share in some of that ecosystem juice. So that’s why Portable Contacts, OpenID, oAuth, the Open Web Foundation and our Data Sharing Summits are so important. And our “Bill of Rights for users of Social Media“.
Open standards will be one way we can judge just how ‘open’ a platform is, and how well they’ll play with others. For instance - Yahoo has something called Yahoo Application Platform - which was described to me as ‘OpenSocial’. Well it’s either EXACTLY OpenSocial - or something like OpenSocial. The difference?
Well ladies and gentlemen - that’s the point. Either you support and USE open standards or you create ripoff knockoffs and pretend like they’re open standards but they’re not - they’re YOUR open standards. I hope you see the subtle but important difference.
The way to tell if these BigCo platform are truly open is interoperability and dataportability. Will we be able to connect our personae and activities ACROSS platforms - or just within one semi-open walled garden?
If I create an app that’s designed to work with AOL Music and Ticketmaster events - can I take that SAME app to Yahoo and connect into their Yahoo Music and Live Nation ticketing?
If I invent some new format - let’s say for monitoring lifestreaming - is it based upon RSS or Atom or is it yet ANOTHER new format?
We need to think of things from the end-user’s perspective. Will they be on Facebook and nothing else? Or will they use Friendfeed, Flickr and Gmail as well? That’s what I do.
Yahoo’s recent announcements show that they ARE implementing their Y! OS strategy!
Microsoft’s upcoming PDC and LiveMesh announcements will rock the house and send a clear message “this Pandora’s box of openness ain’t getting shut”.
We’re all witnessing a transformation of closed into open and now the devil is in the details. Whenever we see something that’s happening over and over again - something that is common - that’s fodder to make it a standard. Why subject our end-users to try and figurte out if Yahoo supports OpenSocial or just something that LOOKS and FEELS like OpenSocial?
