web 2.0 expo berlin: open platforms and the social graph
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Open Platforms(with portable social networks)
David RecordonOpen Platforms Tech Lead
Six Apartdavid@sixapart.com
Web 2.0 Expo Berlin 2007
Who am I?
• Live in San Francisco
• Work for Six ApartWe're the largest independent blogging company!
• 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 witheach other
• A long tail of social networksis 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
- 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
- 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 OpenSocialLots of talk of Facebook vs OpenSocial this past week
Bill Tancer (hitwise) - Weekly market share - Adding MySpace and Six Apart
So what about platforms?
Facebook OpenSocialLots of talk of Facebook vs OpenSocial this past week
Bill Tancer (hitwise) - Weekly market share - Adding MySpace and Six Apart
So what about platforms?
Facebook OpenSocialLots 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
Jabber / XMPP
- Still evolving, but providing true interoperability between walled gardens - Even the Dude in his garage can participate
Jabber / XMPP
- Still evolving, but providing true interoperability between walled gardens - Even the Dude in his garage can participate
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
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
EmailSMTP 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 effects
"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
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
OAuth
Of portable social networks
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 offering 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 effects 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 becomesb448b79a2380daec5578d8df767c7b639c745250
• 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 wallsif users want to link accounts, allow it...they may even link to
your service from another profile
Who does this right with XFN?
• Wordpress
• 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 networkmore 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
• Distributed applications
• Translators
• Open aggregators
• Realtime data
OAuth
OpenSocial
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 RecordonOpen Platforms Tech Lead
Six Apartdavid@sixapart.com
OpenSocial session today at 15:50OpenID session tomorrow
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