Web2Summit: Opening Up the Social Graph

A story of <3 and </3

(David) - Story of social networking love and hate, love and heartbreak

My 20+ Social Networks

(Brad) - 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

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 or choosing a proprietary platform

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 or choosing a proprietary platform

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 or choosing a proprietary platform

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 or choosing a proprietary platform

So what about platforms?

(David) - None of these services interoperate (with rare exceptions of RSS support) - Not a new problem

"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

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

- Reduce the number of accounts - Strongly protect your OpenIDs

HOSTS

(Brad) - 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

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

(David) - 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 (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

"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

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

So how can we all make this happen?

(Brad) - 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

export data

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

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

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

• Twitter

• Pownce

• LiveJournal

• Google Profiles

• TypePad and Movable Type this month

(Brad until TypePad) - Markup both on the service and outside the service - Context matters for XFN rel-me

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

Let's all open the social graph!

- This is user generated data - Watch for developments in this space - O'Reilly radar