Decentralized Social Networking

Decentralized social networking
Barcamp Brussels
1 dec 2007

Blogging versus social networks
Platform & software
Same server or different server
Several clients
Self-controlled or hosted

Identity ! (missing piece)

permissions and authorisations
Private posts
Pictures for friends & Family

T ransactions
Yahoo Games
Facebook applications
Collaboration...

Access (messaging)
Ability to comment
Ability to see availability, status
…

Identity
Identity exists within silo's
Identity = local accounts

Disadvantages (of silos)
Social network fatigue *
Reputation jacking
Security (lots of usernames/pswd's)

Solution 1: Separating identity from social network
Identity providers
Google account
Yahoo BBauth
Live.com ID's
OpenID
Silo's want our attention/demographics data!

Solution 2: Social network as application platform
Facebook: applications via a proxy
OpenSocial: embedding widgets and javascript
(making the silos even more sticky)

What do we want
We geeks long for a world where these connections are made regardless of system. Where you can endorse someone even if he's on another social network like you can send an email to someone if he's with another internetprovider .

What do we want (2)
You can make a connection with someone just like you can put a link from your blog to someone else's blog, even if he's with another internet provider. You can give someone permission to see private content, not by asking him to register to your system and by provide permission to the newly created account, but by giving permission to his openID that is hosted elsewhere.

What do we want ( 3 )
We geeks dream from a world where relationships between our digital identities exist regardless of the platforms and systems that host them, just like website and blogs and rss feeds exist regardless of the server software and blogging platforms they're hosted by.

Decentralised <> "open" <> public

OpenID and Identity
Prove that you are who you are
Trust? (no, everything is self-claimed)
blog comments, forums...
Export/reuse your social capital
multiple personas
Typical use cases:
bloggers
second life
...

OpenID against social fatigue (website perspective)
1 username/pswd
attribute exchange
you have millions of accounts already (openid = useraccount for the web)

portable social networks with xfn
Several people in the O penI d world have been advocating Microformats here as a way of publishing personal and social network information on "authorative pages" (aka their OpenID urls).
http://microformats.org/wiki/social-network-portability

portable social networks with xfn ( 2)
An Hcard-formatted on the OpenID url, could be scraped by all kinds of applications where this OpenID url has been used to login, XFN is a way of publishing your friends list, HCalendar the events you're going to attend etc... All of these being "the authorative sources" for address, friends and calendar data that are syndicated across all kinds of long- or shortlived social networks you participate in.
Another option would be all kinds autodiscovery: meta tags in the html pointing to the OpenID provider (obviously!), Public key, FOAF friends list, sites that store and manage other preferences (like LastFM for music taste, del.icio.us for link list...).

Objections to portable social networks
Do you have the right to export your friendlist?
Closed social networks are successful because they protect and provide that context - relationships do not exist outside context

OpenID and Access (to your content and time)
pre-approved accounts *
private posts
whitelisting and xfn *

OpenID and attention data
Claiming attention data and moving it around
There's a movement around the concept of "attention data" (= all the data you produce by your actions online, such as your search queries, the stuff you read...) that advocates the idea that you're the owner of that data and you should be able to take it with you (export it out of a service), and be able to "rent out" access to your attention data.

OpenID and attention data (2)
Doc Searls coined the term "Vendor Relationship Management" http://cyber.law. harvard . edu / projectvrm /Main_Page indicating tools and practices with which you have vendors come to you with their best offerings based on your attention data (and only their best offerings, because your time/attention is scarce!).
One could imagine trusting this to an intermediary party paying you for your attention (an ad broker like Google...) with which you have a more or less permanent relationship (but still the ability to switch). Exotic idea? It was Bill Gates himself who once suggested it... *

Vendor relationship management
Own your attention data
Rent it to the best intermediary
Autodiscovery
Tools and formats still have to be built!
(APML)

Identity and communication
current identifiers are communication handles (email, phone...)
we need handers that abstract these (XRI, XDI)
Succesfull services will have privacy-enhancing features (Grandcentral, Twitter, Jangle)

Identity and Telecom
Telco's risk to be made irrelevant
should reposition themselves as identity services

Links…
http://del.icio.us/pascalvanhecke (tags openid , socialnetworking, microformats…)
http://pascal.vanhecke.info/

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Decentralized Social Networking

by Pascal Van Hecke on Dec 06, 2007

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Decentralized Social Networking — Presentation Transcript