Web 2.0 Expo Berlin: Open Platforms and the Social Graph

Slide 1: Open Platforms (with portable social networks) David Recordon Open Platforms Tech Lead Six Apart david@sixapart.com Web 2.0 Expo Berlin 2007

Slide 2: 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

Slide 3: so what's the problem?

Slide 4: My 20+ Social Networks - Balancing many services online already - Having to re-enter the same information and make the same connections

Slide 5: 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

Slide 6: - Dopplr, great idea, wanted to use it, asked to re-define friends again - So sick of doing this! - Broke the camel's back

Slide 7: why is this?

Slide 8: 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

Slide 9: 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

Slide 10: social networks have your friends - You've spent time defining them in each one you use

Slide 11: social applications need your friends - Their mini social networks

Slide 12: 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

Slide 13: 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

Slide 14: 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

Slide 15: 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

Slide 16: 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

Slide 17: 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

Slide 18: 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

Slide 19: 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

Slide 20: 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

Slide 21: "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

Slide 22: Jabber / XMPP - Still evolving, but providing true interoperability between walled gardens - Even the Dude in his garage can participate

Slide 23: Jabber / XMPP - Still evolving, but providing true interoperability between walled gardens - Even the Dude in his garage can participate

Slide 24: Jabber / XMPP - Still evolving, but providing true interoperability between walled gardens - Even the Dude in his garage can participate

Slide 25: Jabber / XMPP - Still evolving, but providing true interoperability between walled gardens - Even the Dude in his garage can participate

Slide 26: 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

Slide 27: 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

Slide 28: - Decentralized identity - Reduce the number of accounts - Strongly protect your OpenIDs - Session dedicated to OpenID Wednesday afternoon

Slide 29: 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

Slide 30: DNS - Changes automatically propagate - Made sysadmins happy - More complicated than a white-space line-break separated file, but it scales

Slide 31: Segregated Messaging - Most successful example of centralization -> decentralization - 1960s demonstrated at MIT, required all users be on the same server

Slide 32: Email SMTP as you know it today - Took until the 1980s for SMTP to become popular - Couldn't imagine a World without interoperable email

Slide 33: 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

Slide 34: 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

Slide 35: 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

Slide 36: Decentralization - But as history shows, technology becomes decentralized

Slide 37: it's harder (but we always get there) - Scale - Data duplication / re-entry - Business decisions (geeks want to do the right thing) - Interoperability standards

Slide 38: "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

Slide 39: "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

Slide 40: "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

Slide 41: 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

Slide 42: "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

Slide 43: 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)

Slide 44: 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

Slide 45: people

Slide 46: relationships

Slide 47: people + relationships

Slide 48: social graph

Slide 49: Isn't it already portable?

Slide 50: Not really... • My phone • My address books • My email addresses • My IM accounts • My 20+ social networks

Slide 51: They don't really talk to each other!

Slide 52: Translators (and many others)

Slide 53: Feed Aggregators (and many others) - Aggregating actions versus only content

Slide 54: Open Aggregators (and some others)

Slide 55: 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

Slide 56: What about privacy? (Tom may only be my friend on MySpace)

Slide 57: "Didn't you say privacy was harder?"

Slide 58: Yes, but still possible!

Slide 59: 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

Slide 60: 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

Slide 61: How does it work?

Slide 68: I never gave Keynote my YouTube password

Slide 69: let's imagine a world

Slide 70: Of portable social networks

Slide 71: Of portable social networks

Slide 72: Of portable social networks

Slide 73: Of portable social networks - Already better today since Dopplr uses Microformats

Slide 74: Of portable social networks MyFriends.com - Already better today since Dopplr uses Microformats

Slide 75: Of portable social networks OAuth MyFriends.com - Already better today since Dopplr uses Microformats

Slide 76: OpenID says who and describes where ...to find my services and data

Slide 77: OAuth keeps me in control

Slide 78: 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

Slide 79: markup and share data - Microformats, FOAF, RSS, Atom, etc - Format wars don't benefit users, we don't care where the curly braces go

Slide 80: import data - This is common

Slide 81: export data - This is not so common but many services do a good job

Slide 82: put the people in control - History shown - Network eects as David said - Decentralization

Slide 83: privacy is important (As seen on Facebook and others) - Just fully public or fully private doesn't cut it - Share with your friends

Slide 84: 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

Slide 85: provide context outside your walls if users want to link accounts, allow it...they may even link to your service from another profile

Slide 86: 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

Slide 87: TypePad

Slide 88: 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

Slide 89: 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

Slide 90: We Have the Tools • Identity • Data formats • Distributed authorization OAuth • Distributed applications OpenSocial • Translators • Open aggregators • Realtime data Streams, PubSub

Slide 91: Now we all need to weave them together! - Watch for developments in this space - "social graph" as a tag - O'Reilly Radar, TechCrunch

Slide 92: Questions? David Recordon Open Platforms Tech Lead Six Apart david@sixapart.com OpenSocial session today at 15:50 OpenID session tomorrow