Fighting for the Future of the Social WebSelling Out and Opening Up

Joseph SmarrMember of Technical Staff, GooglePortland, OR – July 26th, 2011

http://profiles.google.com/jsmarrhttp://twitter.com/jsmarrhttp://josephsmarr.com

A bit about me… Software Engineer at Google since 2010

- Worked a lot on Google+ (esp. circles & sharing)

- Also worked on Webfinger, Portable Contacts, Social Graph API, Buzz APIs

Former CTO of Plaxo (and first employee, joined 2002)

Long-time advocate and early adopter of Open Social Web

- Bill of rights (opensocialweb.org)

- Plaxo as early mainstream OpenID relying party

- OpenID / OAuth hybrid spec

- Portable Contacts spec

- Former board member, OpenID Foundation

- Former board member, OpenSocial Foundation

The obligatory disclaimer:

These are my personal views, not Google’s!

Is the social web actually opening up?

Is open web tech getting more useful & user-friendly?

Have open web proponents “sold out” to big companies?

Hint: “yes and no…”

But first…a brief reminder:

Why we fight: Trying new things should be easier!

Why we fight: Trying new things should be easier!

Why we fight: Users should control their own data!

Why we fight: Innovation leads to awesomeness!

When will we have won?

Users can try new services without having to “start over” or leave their friends & data behind.

Users can connect across services that don’t know of each other (or like each other).

Developers can thrive in a “social web ecosystem” and quickly find success.

The social web is vibrant, innovative, and not owned by anyone (i.e. just like the web itself).

So…how are we doing so far?

OpenID: As mainstream as Lady Gaga?

A nice “give and take,” even with the big guys.

Random collection of “social site logos”

Nearly all support OpenID and/or OAuth(or are out of business)

OAuth-based APIs are now the norm.

OpenIDSampleStore.comBest practices and sample code – “just add social”.

Sounds great! So…where’s the problem?

So near and yet so far…

So near and yet so far…

So near and yet so far…

How do I sign in with my Yahoo! account here?

Sign-up forms stubbornly refuse to die.

Hmm, which account did I use last time?

Fresh companies bring fresh ideas.

code.google.com/apis/identitytoolkitGoogle is making account UI more visual…and open!

The future: Re-building OpenID on top of OAuth 2.

PortableContacts.net

Why are contact APIs like snowflakes?

We fixed password-scraping, but not much else.

Open protocols only work if businesses let them!

“@”

What happened to “bridging the islands”?

The technology is ahead of the market.

Have we “sold out”?

Fixing “If the big guys don’t do it, why should we?”

Facebook became a champion of OAuth.

Will Google+ be more than “YASN”?

Circles are “federation-friendly” by design.

Reminder: The social web is not a “zero-sum” game.

Is the social web actually opening up?

Is open web tech getting more useful & user-friendly?

Have open web proponents “sold out” to big companies?

Is the social web actually opening up?

Is open web tech getting more useful & user-friendly?

Have open web proponents “sold out” to big companies?

Answer:

We’re making solid progress.But we all need to keep pushing.

The future is still ours to build.

If you want an open future, do something about it.