[Privsec] (no subject)

[Garth Graham]

The following article from the Toronto Globe and Mail recommends open  
standards for social networking functions as an antidote to the  
"irritations" of things like Facebook.  It hadn't occurred to me  
before reading it that social networking is an important dimension of  
"user-centric digital identity."  But, since identity is defined in  
social relationship, obviously it should have.  Now Ivor Tossell  
doesn't say anything about identity as such.  But my thanks to him  
for broadening my thinking about achieving ownership of identity online.

Because it will block the kind of "walled gardens" the article refers  
to, achieving user-centric digital identity as an extension of  
Internet Protocol is utterly critical to the Internet's survival.   
But it's one of those  issues that's so highly specialized that  
hardly anyone is paying attention to it.  Because capacity to support  
social networking contributes to the self organization of community  
online, perhaps open standards for social networking is one of those  
issues that community networking organizations should be paying  
attention to?  Does anyone know who is working on open standards for  
social networking?  And does anyone have suggestions as to how  
community networking organizations could support that work?

GG

  =======================
Ivor Tossell.  Why I believe Facebook's days are numbered.  Globe and  
Mail, August 31, 2007, R5


After Facebook, what?

The delicious riddle of Facebook's future is part parlour game, part  
billion-dollar question. It might just be me, but I'm hearing more  
grumbling than raving about the site these days. For people who  
joined earlier in the year, the novelty has worn off. The rush of  
long-lost acquaintances clamouring for renewed “friendship” has  
petered out. After all, one can only have gone to grade school with  
so many people.

There's also the fact that the only thing with tastes more fickle  
than a teenager is the media. In this corner, anyway, Facebook got so  
overexposed so quickly that we're getting loath to raise it again,  
what with readers' groans echoing pre-emptively in our ears.

Facebook moved to forestall ennui by allowing third parties to write  
add-ons to their service, but so far the most compelling of these add- 
ons allow people to play online Scrabble with one another and add  
their pets as friends. So, for many, things have settled into a  
period of quiet stagnation, in which Facebook's mild diversions weigh  
off against its mild irritations.

It follows that I'm not just being curmudgeonly to suggest that  
Facebook's days in the sun are numbered. It's not going to implode  
any time soon, but the sheen will wear off, and the vanguard of cool  
kids will seek greener pastures, and the cheerleading media will  
chase after them as soon as it clues in. But what will those greener  
pastures look like?

One option is that they will look a lot like Facebook, but with a new  
name and some appealing innovations – say, maybe some way of  
structuring “friendships” so that your best friend of decades is not  
given the same status as your Grade 9 nemesis.

But a site like that would share the same Achilles heel that Facebook  
shares with Friendster, MySpace, Orkut, and all the other social  
networks that came before it. To use your Facebook account, you first  
have to log into Facebook. Everything you do there is transacted in  
Facebook's private la-la land. Facebook news, Facebook mail, Facebook  
friends. It's a Web within the Web, a world unto its own, something  
they call a “walled garden” website.

What's the downside to a walled garden? For one thing, it faces users  
with a my-way-or-the-highway decision. If you want to talk to friends  
on Facebook, you need a Facebook account. That's fine and dandy so  
long as everyone is using Facebook. But, as per the immutable laws of  
ennui, it seems unlikely that everyone will stay there forever. You  
can't add people who use MySpace to a Facebook account, and so on.  
Nor is that list of friends you've built up any good for any  
application outside of the Facebook universe.

The whole thing reminds me of a behemoth of yesteryear. Remember  
America Online? In the early nineties, its private network offered  
subscribers a fun, easy-to-use online experience before the Web as we  
know it even existed. You could point-and-click your way through  
discussion forums and live chats. You could even find pictures of  
Marilyn Monroe in various states of undress. I remember this  
specifically, because I was 12, and it was momentous.

America Online was able to leapfrog existing services by using its  
own private technology on its own private network; standards of the  
day were clunky and text-based. But in the end, it couldn't keep up  
with a peculiar open network that crept up from behind: the World  
Wide Web.

You didn't have to subscribe to services from any one company to  
access the Web. Instead, you could use any Web browser on any  
computer, because they all spoke the same language. You usually had  
to pay someone for access, but you weren't bound to them. As the Web  
grew and diversified, AOL's walled garden became less and less fragrant.

AOL's glory days are long gone. Today, it's a big corporate Internet  
service provider like any other, driving users towards a big, dumb,  
mass-market website. (Current top headline: “Crunchy Twist on Chicken  
Salad!”) Facebook today is like the AOL of 15 years ago. It's big,  
it's on top of its game, and it doesn't play nicely with others. But  
imagine if it did.

Right now, Facebook and its competitors own their users' lists of  
friends. To access your network, you have to log into Facebook. But  
what if that list of relationships didn't belong exclusively to  
Facebook? What if your friend's list lived out on the Internet, and  
could be used by any authorized website or application?

For instance, that same network of friends might pop up in Microsoft  
Word, where you could call on people to collaborate on documents.  
Your contacts would be available on the Web-surfing smartphones we're  
all about to have foisted upon us. It would power your instant- 
messaging chat, the list of people who can see your private Flickr  
album, and on, and on.
An open standard would let users access the same universal social  
network through whichever service they like. Facebook and its  
brethren would be left looking like gated suburbs next to thriving  
neighbourhoods.

The nerd in me wants to see it happen, even though the fact remains  
that it's easier to make money from a closed system, at least in the  
near term. But if an open standard liberated networks of friends from  
the clutches of their chosen social networking site, a plethora of  
possibilities would emerge.

So, back to where we started. After Facebook, what? Personally, I'm  
hoping for the deluge.

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