Web 2.0 Expo Berlin: Open Platforms and the Social Graph

Open Platforms (with portable social networks) David Recordon Open Platforms Tech Lead Six Apart david@sixapart.com Web 2.0 Expo Berlin 2007

Who am I? • Live in San Francisco • Workthe largest independent blogging company! for Six Apart We're • OpenID Foundation Vice-Chair • Recipient of a 2007 Google-O'Reilly Open Source award

so what's the problem?

My 20+ Social Networks - Balancing many services online already - Having to re-enter the same information and make the same connections

My 20+ Social Networks - Dopplr, great idea, wanted to use it, asked to re-deﬁne friends again - So sick of doing this! - Broke the camel's back

- Dopplr, great idea, wanted to use it, asked to re-deﬁne friends again - So sick of doing this! - Broke the camel's back

why is this?

Social Networks • Generally mammoths • Lots of 80% complete features • Lock-in business models • Strong competition with each other • A long tail of social networks is evolving

Social Applications • Each with a few great features (UNIX philosophy) • Data portability - mashups (RSS, Atom, OpenID, Microformats) • Creating combined value Combined value as they don't compete to do everything, rather compete within their area of expertise

social networks have your friends - You've spent time deﬁning them in each one you use

social applications need your friends - Their mini social networks

social applications - But it isn't Dopplr's fault - Hacks such as scraping address books - No current way to get the social graph without asking for it, choosing a proprietary platform, or only riding on the back of these social networks

social applications OpenSocial - But it isn't Dopplr's fault - Hacks such as scraping address books - No current way to get the social graph without asking for it, choosing a proprietary platform, or only riding on the back of these social networks

So what about platforms? OpenSocial - None of these services interoperate (with rare exceptions of RSS support) - Not a new problem - OpenSocial is promising, though both Facebook and Netvibes UWA are successful

So what about platforms? Facebook OpenSocial Lots of talk of Facebook vs OpenSocial this past week Bill Tancer (hitwise) - Weekly market share - Adding MySpace and Six Apart

open platforms shouldn't be about big company political battles - This isn't about Facebook <em>or</em Google, it is about the web itself

\"IM Wars\" - Their IM networks couldn't interoperate either - People were forced to pick one - Hacky solutions such as Trillian and Adium -- not real interoperability - Going where their friends are

Jabber / XMPP - Still evolving, but providing true interoperability between walled gardens - Even the Dude in his garage can participate

Identity Silos - Have to create a new account everywhere you go - Poor security using the same password everywhere, hack one account get them all - Overwhelming

- Decentralized identity - Reduce the number of accounts - Strongly protect your OpenIDs - Session dedicated to OpenID Wednesday afternoon

HOSTS - Examples of non-emerging technologies - Had to FTP a single \"HOSTS\" file around to resolve all names - Couldn't get to new sites until they were in the file and you fetched the updated file - Didn't scale

DNS - Changes automatically propagate - Made sysadmins happy - More complicated than a white-space line-break separated ﬁle, but it scales

Segregated Messaging - Most successful example of centralization -> decentralization - 1960s demonstrated at MIT, required all users be on the same server

Email SMTP as you know it today - Took until the 1980s for SMTP to become popular - Couldn't imagine a World without interoperable email

Centralization - Social networks today are generally centralized - Remember the business model of \"lock-in\" - By making open platforms via open technologies, the social networks can become decentralized

Centralization (Why can't a LiveJournal user friend an Orkut user?) - Social networks today are generally centralized - Remember the business model of \"lock-in\" - By making open platforms via open technologies, the social networks can become decentralized

Centralization (Why can't a LiveJournal user friend an Orkut user?) (If Orkut supported OpenID and RSS they could!) - Social networks today are generally centralized - Remember the business model of \"lock-in\" - By making open platforms via open technologies, the social networks can become decentralized

Decentralization - But as history shows, technology becomes decentralized

it's harder (but we always get there) - Scale - Data duplication / re-entry - Business decisions (geeks want to do the right thing) - Interoperability standards

\"Either social networks will keep their walls up to force individuals to choose, or they will open up in the hope that they'll get the customer even if their competitor does, too.\" O'Reilly Radar - Dopplr, don't go there for everything - Not trying to steal users, let them go there - This is not a zero-sum game - Traditional network eects

\"A lot that you have heard here is about platforms and who is going to win. That is Paleolithic thinking. The Web has already won. The web is the Platform.\" Jeff Huber - Google (Web 2.0 Summit '07) - There won't be just one walled platform, interop is a must - This battle was tried in the 1990s and was lost - HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML - There will be many social networks and social applications

\"As long as people feel that if they don't like what we're doing they can just switch, then that keeps us honest and keeps everybody else honest as well.\" Eric Schmidt (Web 2.0 Summit '06) - This year has had a trend reinforcing decentralization - With the move toward services in the cloud, data import/export is increasingly important - Good to see the large services understand this

Open Data is increasingly important as services move online Tim O'Reilly (OSCON '07) - Hosted services change the \"open\" game - Data is as important as source

\"Proprietary platforms based on the web are ice cubes. They can, for a time, suspend themselves above the web at large. But over time, they only ever melt into the water. And maybe they make it better when they do.\" Anil Dash - Six Apart (Dashes.com 2007) - Embracing open technologies earlier will get you more later when others catch up - Proprietary platforms, like tried in the 1990s, don't survive forever

So to Recap... • I like social networks and social applications • I like my friends • I hate ﬁnding my friends again • Decentralized technologies end up winning • The web is the platform • OpenSocial allows light-weight applications to run on potentially thousands of social networks (more detailed talk at 15:50)

social graph (another type of user generated/owned data) - Social graph already exists as Zuckerberg said - Everyone is having to map it out - Every user is declaring their own maps - The user maps are THEIR data, not the services they're giving it to

people

relationships

people + relationships

social graph

Isn't it already portable?

Not really... • My phone • My address books • My email addresses • My IM accounts • My 20+ social networks

They don't really talk to each other!

Translators (and many others)

Feed Aggregators (and many others) - Aggregating actions versus only content

Open Aggregators (and some others)

How are they open? • Open standards (RSS, Atom, XFN, FOAF, hCard, OpenID) • Publish, not just aggregate • Manage my friends across networks and republish them for social applications - So via Lifestreams I can comment on a blog and have it published on the blog

What about privacy? (Tom may only be my friend on MySpace)

\"Didn't you say privacy was harder?\"

Yes, but still possible!

OAuth (emerging standard; \"your valet key for the web\") - Standardized existing duplicate protocols from Google, Yahoo!, AOL, and Microsoft - Remove the need to ask for email provider passwords

What is OAuth? • Distributed authorization • Open community speciﬁcation • Converging proprietary speciﬁcations from Flickr, Google,Yahoo!, AOL, and Microsoft • With the involvement of Flickr,Yahoo!, and Google! - Companies had very similar specs - Wouldn't use each others - Would use an open version from the community - Really important for sharing non-public data

How does it work?

I never gave Keynote my YouTube password

let's imagine a world

Of portable social networks

Of portable social networks - Already better today since Dopplr uses Microformats

Of portable social networks MyFriends.com - Already better today since Dopplr uses Microformats

Of portable social networks OAuth MyFriends.com - Already better today since Dopplr uses Microformats

OpenID says who and describes where ...to ﬁnd my services and data

OAuth keeps me in control

So how can we all make this happen? - Today you'll be laughed at if you say you're a blog site and have no RSS/Atom - Want to get to the same thing for social networks oering an analogous form of data interop - To make it just as easy to move it, share it, mash it up as it is with blogs

markup and share data - Microformats, FOAF, RSS, Atom, etc - Format wars don't beneﬁt users, we don't care where the curly braces go

import data - This is common

export data - This is not so common but many services do a good job

put the people in control - History shown - Network eects as David said - Decentralization

privacy is important (As seen on Facebook and others) - Just fully public or fully private doesn't cut it - Share with your friends

Email Hashing • david@sixapart.com becomes b448b79a2380daec5578d8df767c7b639c745250 • Protects against SPAM • Doesn't protect against account linking • Six Apart doesn't share your hash if you're not sharing you're email - Have to think about all aspects of privacy when running services

provide context outside your walls if users want to link accounts, allow it...they may even link to your service from another proﬁle

Who does this right with XFN? • Wordpress • Twitter • Pownce • LiveJournal • Google Proﬁles • TypePad • Movable Type, LiveJournal, and Vox coming soon - Markup both on the service and outside the service - Context matters for XFN rel-me

TypePad

make your network more accessible You can't ﬁght it forever...David beats Goliath - As seen with content, services will just scrape you if they want it - Proactively sharing while respecting privacy reduces your own server load - Talk of nasty hacks within the browser for uncooperative services

Real-time Stream of Relationship Changes http://updates.elsewhere.im coming soon - As a way to make more accessible - Allows real-time relationship changes to be noted across services - Don't have to \"ping\" every news feed service that you're now friends with me

We Have the Tools • Identity • Data formats • Distributed authorization OAuth • Distributed applications OpenSocial • Translators • Open aggregators • Realtime data Streams, PubSub

Now we all need to weave them together! - Watch for developments in this space - \"social graph\" as a tag - O'Reilly Radar, TechCrunch

Questions? David Recordon Open Platforms Tech Lead Six Apart david@sixapart.com OpenSocial session today at 15:50 OpenID session tomorrow

Web 2.0 Expo Berlin: Open Platforms and the Social Graph

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