Birthing pains in the colonization of the social Web

The social Web is going through some birthing pains (see Techmeme). In the name of data portability, Facebook, MySpace.com, and Google made announcements last week about creating a more open social Web. For the most part, they are press releases and not yet fully released into the wild.

(Credit: www.travel-tuscany.net/)

On Thursday, Facebook suspended involvement with Google's Friend Connect, claiming that it redistributes user information from Facebook to developers without users' knowledge, violating the company's terms of service.

Google responded that Friend Connect is designed to keep users fully in control of their information at all times. "Users choose what social networks to link their Friend Connect account to. (They can just as easily unlink it.) We never handle passwords from other sites; we never store social graph data from other sites; and we never pass users' social network IDs to Friend Connected sites or applications," a Google representative said.

Full openness in the colonization of the social Web is counter to the instincts of companies funded by venture capitalists and with quarterly earnings to report. The companies are conflicted. On one hand, they want to maintain walled or semi-permeable gardens and find ways to keep users from defecting and the money from evaporating.

On the other hand, Facebook, Google, and MySpace are part of the Web generation, fueled by young people who value openness and advocate users having control of their data.

At this juncture, all the major social-networking players recognize that the walls separating them are crumbling, but they haven't agreed on how to implement global openness.

Taking a historical perspective, the social-networking community hasn't formed its Continental Congress to unite the colonies with a common vision and approach for openness. It's a political and economic, not a technical, issue. The technical building blocks, such as OpenID, oAuth, and OpenSocial APIs, for an open social Web are taking shape.

The complexities of an open social Web, allowing for granular control by users over their online identities and information, will require a lot of new thinking about user scenarios and experimentation.

The Data Portability Project is developing guidelines and has the endorsement of the big social-networking players. But endorsement doesn't mean they are gathered together to create a common social layer for the Web. It's time for the social networks, like the 13 colonies in 1774 banding together to be free of British authority, to unite and manifest that the Web is by and for the users.

[stegdag]

Mr. Farber:

A pleasure talking with you today at the Berkman@10 event. The stanglehold some businesses like to keep on their data is probably going to remain one of the sticking points in convincing 'old' businesses to trust the new methods.

It's surprising though, that FaceBook is acting in such a legacy way.

Nice piece.

Jeff
Jeff Cutler.com

[MaryTrigiani]

Dan, how we do know that the big social networks aren't giving users what they want? How do we know there is a mainstream need for open identity, data portability and apple pie? If it were profitable to be open, I think we all know that the for-profit entities would be all over the entire spectrum, from openness to portability. Any chance they know something we do not?

Either way, companies in the space of creating networks and serving them need to put the mainstream user first. You do that by understanding what that user values -- not what you think they might value.

Thank you for the thought-provoking post. Mary

[GraemeThickins]

What a topic to shed light on, Dan -- thanks for doing so!

<< Full openness in the colonization of the social Web is counter
to the instincts of companies funded by venture capitalists >>

you got that right! and that's pretty much all of 'em, isn't it?

the word you bring up -- "conflicted" -- that is so right on

cheers,
Graeme
http://www.tech-surf-blog.com
www.twitter.com/graemethickins

[JoeDuck1]

It's time for the social networks, like the 13 colonies in 1774 banding together to be free of British authority, to unite and manifest that the Web is by and for the users.

HUZZAH!

Right on Dan, this is exactly what is needed. The commercialization of the internet has brought some wondrous things but it is critical that users REgain the control that has been lost thanks to the love of money. Social standards will help with this and we *must* insist on them until the power players get it right.