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Open Your Social Network or Face Wired's Wrath!
Update: Mashable Pete has a good writeup about opening up social networks. Dave McClure has some great insights into why open for open's sake is not best.
Scott Gilbertson from Wired goes off today on Facebook and every other closed social network.
He begins with:
When entering data into Facebook, you're sending it on a one-way trip. Want to show somebody a video or a picture you posted to your profile? Unless they also have an account, they can't see it. Your pictures, videos and everything else is stranded in a walled garden, cut off from the rest of the web.
He continues:
Social networking should be based on open standards, just like e-mail. Some social networking companies are starting to build open platforms that allow your personal data to be exported and put to use anywhere you like. At this point, "friend" relationships remain unique to the social networks. The web still lacks a generalized way to convey relationships between people's identities on the internet.
I agree with Scott on this point. Imagine being able to trust a friend for any network. So if moo@moo.com is a friend, then any social service I sign up for will automatically associate moo@moo.com to my account. Would save Jason from declaring bankruptcy on the next popular service.
Scott concludes that anyone can create their own Facebook by combining a variety of "open" tools. He leaves out the fact that without users, the open network is meaningless.
One question for the average Facebook user would be, "how many other social networks they are using?" While some of us might be on every network possible, is the average non-geek doing this? I doubt it.
Fred Wilson also discusses the Open Social Network and agrees with my point above. He notes, "I wish it were so, but most of Facebook's traditional users (like my two daughters) don't care that their data is locked up in Facebook."
Think about the time and effort it would save if the friends piece was separate from the social networking tool. It would also save time when we de-friend a person. One click and they are out of the network of 20 social networking sites. There is a lot of power there. Scoble could probably sleep another 2 hours a night instead of clicking "add to friends, skip this step" 200 times a day.
First, if you are a user on 20 different social network sites, there is definately something wrong with you.
Second is Your pictures, videos and everything else is stranded in a walled garden, cut off from the rest of the web.
I like that.
Just because a person joins a particulair network doesn't mean he wants to join all of them.
You quote Fred Wilson saying:
Fred Wilson also discusses the Open Social Network and agrees with my point above. He notes, "I wish it were so, but most of Facebook's traditional users (like my two daughters) don't care that their data is locked up in Facebook."
I would question whether we can have the notion of a 'traditional Facebook user' seeing as how Facebook has been open to 'the rest of us' for less than a year.
For sure, there is a huge sucking action that is pulling everyone in to Facebook. But we have no idea at all whether they will still be there or using it in a few years. That's not to say that Facebook will fold up overnight - no more than MySpace or any other network with users will. But what our practices and attitudes are going to be over the years, we just don't know.
Thus, describing a couple of teenage Facebook users as 'traditional' is pointless.
nice piece allen. completely agree:
http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/08/facebook-not-fo.html
I think that is why many people are on MySpace and Facebook. The two don't really compliment each other, but rather your social networks interfere there. Some have MySpace, some have Facebook. Converting someone over to another is always hard.
The moo@moo.com got me thinking about OpenID (again), which is great, but no one gets it and uses it.
And still, if people were, where is the value for MySpace to open up? They want to be closed, because everyone tries to get in anyway (widgets, ...). Same for Facebook. If I owned either, why should I open up?
Right now people join those sites and are kept on board. It's not too easy to migrate somewhere else. If you look at the recent Flickr issues - you see exactly that. They are so open - API, communication, they love you - as long as it suites them. In the end they censor people on their plattform, censor their protest and just get away with it.
But not just because they banned protest pictures from the public "streams", but rather because the social network is strong. So many people stay because others stay. The best reason of all reasons - at least for many.
I think to combat this notion people need to get aware here. Aware what is done on those sites with the data they provide and aware if they really want to allow anyone to do this.
E.g. in Flickrs case I am (of course) not aware that Y! is harvesting data - no idea - but they censor it which is just as bad and should concern everyone. It doesn't matter if you are directly affected or not (yet).
One of my friends has done some work on an openID application. Check it out here