How to build the Open Mesh

How to build the Open Mesh eDay 08

My name is Marc….
Happy to be back in Holland
Our platform is called PeopleAggregator
I’ve written this book “How to build the Open Mesh”
And we’re planning on building some new kind of tools

Two constituents for this treatise
Practitioners build systems, portals, web sites, applications, dashboards, web services
Creating their own solution
Want to be a compatible puzzle piece in the mesh
Marketers need to describe what’s going on
Educate, facilitate conversations, proselytize
Digitize their brand, market their product or services
Form alliances, find revenue streams

Open is the New Black
Do you think MySpace would have opened up – if Facebook didn’t do it first?
Who would have thought that Microsoft would open up – or produce Live Mesh?
Y! OS is actually very well architected, now they just have to execute!
In exchange for not letting us at the data, Google is trying to grab Open leadership

Act pragmatic, but dream like a visionary

All of life is a compromise
Who’d have thought we’d be this far along?
Proprietary formats versus Open standards
Centralized versus Distributed
Keeping up with the Joneses
BigCos versus small Independents
Many forced to take VC money, no alternative to funding

We’ll be living in a distributed world
Widgets, OpenSocial and Facebook apps
International, not just English
Everything in the Cloud
Long Tail publishing and sales
Work at Home, virtual offices, outsourcing
Global economy

Everything is a URL in the Cloud
A Person is a URL
A Group is a URL
A Conversation is a URL
A Media item is a URL
An Event is a URL
A Post (of every kind) is a URL
Meta-data and structured content make things smart

Two-way APIs are key
Take data out as easy as put it back in

Access controls and privacy
What if I don’t WANT to be part of the mesh?
Control who sees:
My profile
My social graph
My content
What I am doing
Where I am
Establish trust

Open Standards are our Infrastructure
RSS = subscription format
Atom = subscription and publishing protocols
XMPP = real-time transport
OpenID = who I am
oAuth = who gets access to what I have
OpenSocial = lots of social functions
Portable Contacts = accessing contact lists
Microformats = reviews, ID, events, friends, place
FOAF = rdf schema

Our Infrastructure
Redundant – rely upon no one vendor
Show Context and State
Underlying ID layer
Shared Knowledge bases

Look for common, and standardize
LiveWeb = real-time communication
(Converse, Presence, Microblogging, Streaming):
Twitter, Meebo, IM, Vid Conf, VoIP
Watch = your friends and content sources
(Activities, Subscriptions):
Newsfeed, FriendFeed, RSS Readers
Express = yourself via text, media, links
(Publish, Upload, Comment, Rate, Bookmark, Review):
blog, podcast and vlogging tools, IPTV channels
Media Gallery = your media stored ‘ somewhere ’ (Upload, Share, Tag):
Flickr, YouTube, Photobucket, Picassa, blip.tv, Metacafe

What every social app needs

Must display
Who’s here now and what they’re doing
Comments and Ratings in this place
The Content of this place and My Content
The Activities of this place and My Activities
My Profile
My Social Graph
My Media

Open: Source, Data, Standards, Ideas
Open Source: make it your own
Open Data: use the data yourself
Open Standards: agreeing to work together
Open Ideas: give it away and benefit in many ways

NEA
N obody owns it
E verybody can use it
A nyone can improve it
We stand on the
shoulders of others
Doc Searls Dave Weinberger Doug Engelbart and Mimi

Work with others, form alliances
We need to show that open can benefit vendors – as well as end-users
Alliances of non-overlapping agendi
Competition means something different – when we live in the shadows of behemoths
We must live off the crumbs they leave behind, while keeping our heads up high

Figuring out how it’ll unfold
Pure chaos
We’ll be explaining and translating for years to come
No one set of standards or approach
Lots of different kinds of platforms
Early adopters will lead the way
Adhere to our principles:
“ Bill of Rights for Users of Social Media”

My back yard fence

The Open Mesh Architecture

#1 – ID, Persona, Groups, Social Graphs
It’s all about me, the decentralized me
And my Friends
And the Groups I’m a member of
And the Personas which I go under
ID Hub - your own underlying ID layer
Utilize:
Personal Contacts
logo here

When all the Content in the world is in the Cloud
All YOUR stuff, all ‘their’ stuff
And a whole lot of free stuff – as well
#2 – Persistent Ubiquitous Content

By adding meta-data (tags and info) with content, it makes it smarter
By storing this content on shared public servers with two-way APIs we can bake this stuff into our apps and services
The “Our Data Server” effort is an example of this idea
Just think “semantic web”
#3 – Structured Content

We can all be web celebs
Share your profile, social graph, content
Be part of a shared social graph
Voice your opinion; post, comment, rate
Try out new services, move your data around
Participate in Groups, Communities, Social Media apps, Message boards, Conversations
Folks like Robert Scoble, Jason Calacanis
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Leo LaPorte

We can all have our own platforms
Be your own Brand
Use widgets to spread yourself around the web
Aggregate and Watch your friends, Collect your Content, Connect to others, always try out the latest thing, find your voice
Play with the BigCos, run promotions, cut deals
Support Open Standards
And collectively we’ll all make the open mesh happen

Collective “We” is constantly evolving
Buzzword du jours :
Social Networking
Citizen Journalism
Shared Galleries
Crowdsourcing
UGC
Twittering
IPTV channels
Narrowcast shows
That’s why we need to invite our friends into new services
Cause we want to try out these new things
Be part of the Community Commons

So I’m proposing….
The “ Our Data Server ” effort
Our Data will be a simple service that stores and aggregates one’s social graph in a public place and allows fans to sign up, rate, leave comments, etc.
Our Data will be used by Celebs to ‘invite’ their social graph into new services
NOT controlled by a particular platform
Early example of how the open mesh can evolve and prosper

“ Brad’s Thoughts” can become a reality
Start off small, and niche
Only for public ‘web celebs’
State some principles, utilize Open Standards and set some precedent
The site will be geared towards people who want to help swarm into a new service
By aggregating the aggregators, and positioning Our Data ‘downstream’

Have to keep in mind – it’s “Our Data”
I’m in charge of my data
You’re in charge of your data
And we together share “Our Data”
Without that model in mind, we won’t be able to work together equally or fairly
Or safely
And maintain privacy

The real-time is becoming infrastructure for persistent conversations, on-going communication and a real-time transport
IM, micro-blogging, video confs, streaming
Presence, context, fun
XMPP is a standard in place to unite the LiveWeb together
#4 – Live Web

Tools + Community + Commerce fosters new kinds of creativity and control
Normalize disparate data from multiple sites
Reach out to your peers for Help from within the Tool
Share assets and buy/sell in a marketplace
Pricing can adjust to context and time
#5 – New kinds of Tools

Dashboard + modules
ID baked in
4 Inter-changeable tools (multi-vendor):
Standard UI toolbox ‘components’
Customizable environments
Tied into CMS, LiveWeb and web services
#6 – Reusable User Interface objects
Gallery
Express
Watch
LiveWeb client

Standard Social Networking verbs
Two-way APIs, Activity feeds
Constructs like Events, Places and People
Persistent, re-entrant Conversations
#7 – Infrastructure
Send a Message
ADD as a Friend
Synchronize
Bookmark
Join or Create Group
Comment or Rate
Tag or Categorize
Follow, Subscribe to

#8 – Underlying Constructs
People: ID Hub, profile pages (public/private), aggregated Social Graphs, privacy controls
Media items, Content Posts, Permalinks
Messages, Persistent Conversations
Events, Places and Items
Groups, Entities, Collections and Directories
Tags and Categories
Lots of kinds of Pages, with any kind of module
Widgets: both going out and coming in
External Accounts: synchronize, point to, update

Everybody has to make a living, so we need APIs and infrastructure to monetize
Buying and selling all sorts of things
Matching user profiles to……
Auctions, Listings, Transactions
Monetize our attention
VRM – vendor relationship marketing
#9 – Marketplace

Identity oriented
Content oriented
Leverage real-time transport
Mesh architecture
Microcontent publish/subscribe
Route posts to your preferred tool
Master list of destinations and services
#10 – Standards

I’m also proposing 2 new standards
ReDirectThis
Enables a universal ‘BlogThis’ button
Route the post to your preferred tool
OutputThis
Manage a list of all the destinations and endpoints you’d like to publish to, route to, interact with, etc.
No one owns the list
Access the list from with your Express and Gallery tools

Routing content & pivoting conversations

Our Data Server
A shared social graph server
Used by celebs to swarm their social graphs into new services
Aggregates account data and supports open standards
Portable Contacts
Acts as an Anchor and Pivot
DNS-like backbone

DNS-like backbone
Imagine if there were 100 Twitters, Identi.ca,
Pownce, Jaiku and Plurk
And your account (and your followers) could aggregate across all the different instances
No one vendor would dominate or control
This approach should be taken for ALL infrastructure in the open mesh!

Build on Others
RSS, Atom, XML-RPC
OpenID, oAuth
XMPP
OpenSocial, Social Graph APIs
LAMP, Mozilla
Microformats, FOAF, OpenDD
Portable Contacts

Data Sharing Summits

How can we all contribute to help build?
Each platform should mesh with all the other meshed platforms (eco-systems)
The chaos of multiple markets, dimensions and platforms necessitates the open mesh
We’re all the glue between the colliding BigCo tectonic plates
This strategy plays well around the world
Each personal mesh will mesh into all other meshes, have their own knowledge base(s)

Conclusion
Compelling User experiences is what it’s all about
Our Data is for web celebs
Underlying ID layers is where to connect to
Persistent Conversations will arise
Social features will be in all software
The Cloud , persistent and structured content will enable new experiences

PeopleAggregator is the reference design
Source code available
Free to non-profits and government agencies
Enterprise license available (with support)
Also available via a ‘ PayAsYouGo ’ license
Starting at $2,500
No support
We also offer SaaS packages
Can move to a license deal at any time
Consulting, custom work available

BBM is an International company

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How to build the Open Mesh

by Marc Canter on Sep 01, 2008

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How to build the Open Mesh — Presentation Transcript