Perspective: Open standards for social networking

Looking over the landscape of recent blog posts on open social networking, it's clear that folks are interested in connecting together some of their disparate accounts on a wide range of social networks.

The dream is that distributed social networks will mesh with individuals--each who are on multiple social networks--and that the whole thing kind of slides up next to the blogosphere and extends the notion of a free, open, distributed Long Tail environment. Microcontent is part of it--but people are at the center.

This topic is one that won't go away until end users have been satisfied and they control their own data. It's hard to argue against opening up social networking, unless of course you're a vendor who currently has locked in all your users.

Today, we could standardize what labels you use to call someone your friend.

But we haven't--yet.

Entire philosophical arguments and debates could be silenced if end users could decide what to call each other's relationships. But right now vendors control that aspect of social networking. So, wouldn't it be coolio if some sort of name service kept track of all these labels and mapped them to each "arcing connection" between people?

Entire philosophical arguments and debates could be silenced if end users could decide what to call each other's relationships.

There are some successes we can talk about in this world of open social networking.

One can sign up for an ID that can be used to sign in to more than one system with the same ID Partners. And we've standardized how to move your profile ID and various kinds of content between systems. But no one has really deployed this standard--yet.

These early successes can't be overlooked as it has taken many smart people many years to get us where we are today. My own company has been working on these efforts, and we've even gone so far as to open source some simple Web services, which come in handy when trying to provide a wide range of "meshing" standards.

We have a standard for end users to set which tool the "Blog This" button should send the post to. We call that the Universal Blog This button. I worked with AOL to get folks to support this.

We have a standard for routing blog posts to where you have your personal blog, your work blog, or group blogs that you're a member of, or any of your social network blogs. We invented that routing standard with a chap named Lucas Gonze.

But we've got a long way to go before we can truly open up social networking. All sorts of social-networking APIs (application programming interface) will be implemented by different vendors--and we need a way to map these APIs together and create some sort of normalized world--where friends, profile pages, groups and messages all can line up and be compatible with each other.

We need a way to find people and not have some vendor own that list of people's names. There are a few "people search" plays out there right now, but none of them are offering up the source code to their platforms or promoting the notion of open people search.

We even tried to do a PeoplesDNS once. So, it's not like we haven't been trying!

I have dreams of aggregating aggregators, aggregating conversations and aggregating groups. Those opportunities will all breed standards as well. We did a crazy standard years ago called ThreadsML, which spec'ed out how to connect together message board threads, IM conversations, e-mail interchanges and any other kind of "threaded" anything.

There's also an effort afoot to standardize how we talk about events. Combine that with microformats, and you can see that lots of people are trying to achieve standards around social networking and everything that goes with it.

And as we know very well, the best thing in the world about standards is that there are so many of them. But as Dave Winer says, "The only way to get something to stick is to put up a compelling app and let the market drive a standard. Tech people don't play nice unless the market forces them to."

And that's what we're doing--unless that wasn't clear before.

Biography
Marc Canter, CEO of Broadband Mechanics, is an advocate for open social networking. His company produces a white label platform for social networking called PeopleAggregator. Canter was the founder of MacroMind, which became Macromedia.

More Perspectives

[Len Bullard]

Why? Won't that Mess Up The Game?

Tech people can't get that done. It's too hard or perhaps impossible to be the nicest person AND the smartest person in the room. Sadly, achieving social status makes the former a minor contributor and the latter the major contributor to a self-image based on the illusion of creative invention.<br /><br />Social networks on the web are about the perception of a self-image not the reality. It is the ultimate 'fortune in men's eyes' game. That makes standards for it even less attractive to the current winners. Standards mess up the game.

[Travis742]

Similar to Open IM Standards

I agree there are some really neat applications that would surface if we had open standards for social networking, and if vendors used them. Innovation for innovation's sake usually doesn't work well, and it takes a user base requesting such innovations to get vendors to adopt them.<br /><br />Take for example the e-mail world. It used to be that you could only e-mail within your service provider. Prodigy customers couldn't e-mail AOL members, and vice versa. Look how far we've come. Now we can't imagine a world without open e-mail standards having been adopted.<br /><br />On the other hand, take IM. We still haven't gotten to the point, after more than a decade of heavy IM use, where a person using AOL's IM product can IM with a person using Microsoft's IM product. There are tons of neat applications of IM technology that could change the world if vendors would only work together. But alas, the innovation that would take place if open IM were adopted broadly is not realized by most users, and without that realization, vendors have no incentive to offer it.<br /><br />My point is that while I think open standards for social networking is important and beneficial, it too closely mirrors the IM world and we'll end up a decade down the road still trying to convince vendors of the benefits, and users will still not be forcing vendors to use open standards.

[wildchild_plasma_gyro]

US Green and farming black

You might say its fair to say that all countries should put an equal effort into going green.<br />This is industrius and su=ome what usful but not as usful if you home in n certian areas like the US.<br />I know you guys in the US might be there preserving your brain fluids/thort processes for bearing the lovey comming weather.<br />However this misery is the perfect oppertunity for a new project.<br />I call it farming Black.<br />This is where you work on flat farming technologies that are based on replicating the benifits of equilibrium formed by nature as to add more moisture and moderation to the weather system around the us alonside technological advance.<br />Infact others would be wise to home in on areas like the us which have the ability to moderate weather and make subsidy deals.<br /><br />Areas like here where i live in the UK wold be the ideal place for a differn type of next generation farming.<br />Vertical farming.<br />Vertical farming would be ideal for the wet old uk and the US wouldent be as hospitiable.<br />However making use of Ecology and technology to moderate moisture would be ideal in the US and such areas.<br />Also farming black involves better use of pigment research to inprove health of ecology including human ecology.

[CaseyHughes]

early adoption...

You're so right on although somewhat compulsively so Marc... we love that about you.<br /><br />I suggest the "killer app" for an aggregated (OpenID) identity embracing all social networks will come from a specific "test-bed"... a small pilot which has a core passion, desire and need for social networking. One that will blow the doors off any closed approaches. One that demands identity transportability. One that has global reach, local touch and sustainable business and social values.<br /><br />Am interested (and actively pursuing) such in the IT Channel... a new eco-system extending the supply-chain notion to it's more native journey.<br /><br />The IT Channel is perfect for it's characteristics... it demands TRUST and HONOR for the individual in balance with the corporate balance sheet (ergo the institution). Human and social capital ARE forms we must (finally) embrace in our acocunting practices. And how better than by establishing an open social network whereby "no-one owns it, anyone can use it, everyone can improve it".<br /><br />And from this soil of an Open IT Channel Commuity shall be harvested new forms of technology channel (business and social) relationships in harmony with the human spirit and biosphere. And nurturing the change towards open social networking along the way.