how to build the open mesh

How to build the Open Mesh

eDay 08

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

Act pragmatic, but dream like a visionary

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

Two-way APIs are key

•Take data out as easy as put it back in

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

Our Infrastructure

•Redundant – rely upon no one vendor

•Show Context and State

•Underlying ID layer

•Shared Knowledge bases

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

What every social app needs

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

NEA

•Nobody owns it

•Everybody can use it

•Anyone can improve it

•We stand on the shoulders of others

Doc SearlsDave Weinberger

Doug Engelbart and Mimi

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

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”

Copyright © 2008

My back yard fence

Copyright © 2008

The Open Mesh Architecture

Copyright © 2008

#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

Copyright © 2008

•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

Copyright © 2008

•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

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

“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’

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

•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

Copyright © 2008

•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

Copyright © 2008

•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

Copyright © 2008

•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

Copyright © 2008

#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

Copyright © 2008

•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

Copyright © 2008

•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

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

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!

Copyright © 2008

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)

Copyright © 2008

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

Copyright © 2008

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

how to build the open mesh

Technology

open data

open standards

open ideas

open leadership

open mesh eday

open mesh architecture

structured content

social media apps