Web 2 NY: Social Media Standards Launches

Tonight at the Web 2.0 NYC meeting, Jonathan Vanasco from FindMeOn announced the launch of "Social Media Standards" which is apparently a non-profit group looking to create new standards that we can all use. He talked about Facebook and MySpace and Data Portability and a variety of programming languages. I've embedded his demo below and while it was WAY over the five minute length, I honestly have no idea what this group plans on doing. Jonathan spent the majority of his presentation talking off slides that had way too many words on them and it seemed to keep moving round-and-round without moving forward. And for some reason, he kept pointing out that he was the most arrogant person in the room. What I'd suggest is that Jonathan film another video explanation and if he does, I will update the video below with the new video.

He says that 40 Interactive shops, startups, developers and non-profits have already signed up to be a part of SMS but then noted that there are some legal issues with getting involved. Again, very confused.

Here's how Jonathan describes this new Social Media Standards group:

What is SocialMediaStandards? We're aligning Social Media producers - startups, advertisers, agencies, non-profits, brands - into an open community to define and mandate standards for Social Media Websites.

While DataPortability is concerned with the formats of transferring data, SocialMediaStandards are concerned with standardizing: 

• Legal & Privacy Policies 
• Backend Architecture 
• Client Supported Technologies 
• Industry Best Practices 
• Common code base + integration points across technologies

Our standards will be open, Our processes are open, Our discussion is open, Our shared code is MIT/BSD (do what you want!)

Here's his demo video: