I don't think Facebook will adopt the open approach (it would be great if they did) but we're going to see newer networks adopt the open format. Once you get a few big players involved it will become defacto standard. I can't wait.
Adam Nemeth
· 2 years ago
I created an Open Socnet concept, which is very similiar to OpenID, except that it sends [requestor-site-specificly] hashed uid's of friends of a given socnet. Say I'm a facebook user, and I want to see who I know of mashable's commenters, I could give my hashed friends' uid to mashable, and if some of my friends provided it too, we could meet here too.
I quickly translated my presentation to English, if you can't understand, tell me which hungarian parts I have to translate:)
I think this is a problem that can be solved by a simple service. I think I first heard about this idea through Simon Willison.
I own the domain openidfriends.com and have been working on a simple concept for the service. If any other developers would like to get involved, contact me or reply to this comment.
-d
Julian Bond
· 2 years ago
One tricky bit in this puzzle is recognising that jbond on Facebook is the same person as jbond23uk on Yahoo who has the Skype ID julian.bond and is jbond23 on LinkedIn. We maybe need a universal ID translator to go with the import/export standard.
strongfams.com
· 2 years ago
I agree social networks should be opened i am tired of signing in 5 places a day. Please add my two social networks to your social networking destination/portal. I have two awesome social networks, lovesports-ent.com for sports lovers and strongfams.com for family oriented users who especially need to share pictures. Now the average guy would have 7 places to sign in. cheers
carlity
· 2 years ago
It will be great once a startup figures out how to solve this problem. Or will it be from the semantic web?
Yes-we absolutely need an open friend standard for import/export/sync of your friends across all the social networks you use. Plaxo is certainly going to do all we can to help define and support such a set of open standards, and everyone that believes in user-centric identity and user control of their data should help convince the sites they use that this is the right way to go! I encourage anyone that wants to talk about this to get in touch with me at joseph at plaxo.com. Together we can really make this work the way we want!
dave mcclure
· 2 years ago
oh c'mon... i call bullshit.
seriously, do we think companies or users care about open standards?
they care about BETTER FUNCTIONALITY.
most users have no fucking clue what open standards are about... nor should they have to.
in a level playing field where there are no dominant forces operating, maybe "open" makes a difference. in most cases, "open" is the response strategy of companies that have beaten to a pulp by other [BETTER] competitors.
users are best served by companies that deliver better features, proprietary or otherwise. mandated open standards are rarely driven by a mass consumer audience, and until or unless they are they're probably not worth paying much attention to.
microformats is a GOOD open standard because it solves problems (and that's how Tantek frames the argument in the first place).
Dave-all the users we talk to (ourselves included) care about the following BETTER FUNCTIONALITY that they can't get in today's closed world of walled social web gardens: 1) why do I have to re-create my friend list on every new site I go to; 2) why is it hard to find who I already know on these services; 3) why do i have to go around to all these different sites to stay in touch with my friends.
These are real issues today and even though some of the most popular social networks have a ton of users, it will just never be the case that everyone in the world is exclusively using one service. This is the web. There will always be people scattered among multiple sites, people will always be trying new things, and users will always have this pain unless we do something about it.
The reason we think open standards are the way to go is because that's what's made the web, RSS, and similar technologies really work at scale. Rather than having to trust a particular vendor, you say "users demand and deserve access to their own data" and they are then free to move it around as they see fit. And the sites don't have to explicitly agree to work together as long as they support compatible standards.
All Comments
I don't think Facebook will adopt the open approach (it would be great if they did) but we're going to see newer networks adopt the open format. Once you get a few big players involved it will become defacto standard. I can't wait.
I quickly translated my presentation to English, if you can't understand, tell me which hungarian parts I have to translate:)
http://jo-hely.hu/~aadaam/publications/opensocn...
I own the domain openidfriends.com and have been working on a simple concept for the service. If any other developers would like to get involved, contact me or reply to this comment.
-d
Looks like it's getting some more attention lately...
http://www.brianoberkirch.com/category/portable...
seriously, do we think companies or users care about open standards?
they care about BETTER FUNCTIONALITY.
most users have no fucking clue what open standards are about... nor should they have to.
in a level playing field where there are no dominant forces operating, maybe "open" makes a difference. in most cases, "open" is the response strategy of companies that have beaten to a pulp by other [BETTER] competitors.
users are best served by companies that deliver better features, proprietary or otherwise. mandated open standards are rarely driven by a mass consumer audience, and until or unless they are they're probably not worth paying much attention to.
microformats is a GOOD open standard because it solves problems (and that's how Tantek frames the argument in the first place).
- dave "closed and loving it" mclure
http://500hats.typepad.com/
These are real issues today and even though some of the most popular social networks have a ton of users, it will just never be the case that everyone in the world is exclusively using one service. This is the web. There will always be people scattered among multiple sites, people will always be trying new things, and users will always have this pain unless we do something about it.
The reason we think open standards are the way to go is because that's what's made the web, RSS, and similar technologies really work at scale. Rather than having to trust a particular vendor, you say "users demand and deserve access to their own data" and they are then free to move it around as they see fit. And the sites don't have to explicitly agree to work together as long as they support compatible standards.