First the obligatory
disclaimer: I work as a part-time freelancer for Broadband Mechanics, the creators of PeopleAggregator. I've actually done analysis
and writing work on the PeopleAggregator project itself. So bear in mind that I'm
heavily biased :-) Even so, I think it's in my Read/WriteWeb remit to take a
high-level look at the concept of open social networks - using PeopleAggregator as
my case study.
PeopleAggregator is the first truly open social network system (SNS) on the Web. I don't think anyone will disagree that previous social networking success stories have all been 'closed' systems: MySpace, AOL, Friendster, Orkut, etc. All of those are systems that make it easy to enter your data, but very difficult (if not impossible) to get that data out again. So if you want to move all your data to a new social network, well tough luck your data is stuck in the old system.
An open system would be one where you can both import and export your data with relative ease. Anyone who is familiar with Marc Canter's work over the years knows that open standards and formats are key to his vision - and so it is with open social networks too. With PeopleAggregator, there are several aspects to this. A few of the key ones are: open identity, structured blogging (i.e. tools to use open data formats), APIs and web services (interconnecting services across the Web).
The way Marc puts it is that there are three layers
of interconnection in an open social network: Authentication, Import/Export of data, and
common actions on top of those 2 layers.
The basic premise is that users can create and maintain content across a range of websites and services - and use PeopleAggregator as their central service to manage all that content and connect with others. For example, a user may store all their photos in Flickr. PeopleAggregator can access those photos via Flickr's APIs - as well as establish relationships across the two systems, enable the user to join/create groups, send messages, etc. I'm simplifying, but if you want to know more check this PDF out (which I co-wrote with Marc).
The real value IMO of open social networks is that they create an ecosystem for lots of vendors and web services to participate in. If you're Amazon for example, or indeed any e-commerce vendor, you can create widgets to use in a service like PeopleAggregator - or simply open up your data via APIs so that external developers can create widgets or web apps. Or say you're an online dating service - you could create a plug-in for PeopleAggregator that enables people to create relationships within and across both systems.
While it's possible to hack together an Amazon widget or an online dating app for MySpace, they can't be integrated with MySpace. The identity systems will be different, import and export will be troublesome (if not impossible) and there will be no way to create relationships across the two systems. They'll be two separate systems, in effect.
But with an open social network that has open identity, import/export and a "vocabulary" of common actions (like 'create a relationship') - then data and services truly integrate and interconnect. It makes for a more fluid user experience - and gives more opportunities for vendors and web services!
It's early days yet for PeopleAggregator. The current hosted version of People Aggregator and downloadable version (which enables you to create your own SNS) both have the beginnings of this open social network vision - but there's much more functionality to come. And I'm not saying that as a Broadband Mechanics drone, it's just my way of explaining that the big picture concept of an 'open social network' has a long way to go! That's why I rabbit on about microcontent, widgets and Personalized Start Pages here on Read/WriteWeb - because in the long run I see a Web where little pieces of content and small apps interconnect and interact with one another. I don't think this is airy-fairy stuff, I believe it will be reality within a few years. Open social networks is but one part of that grand vision ;-)
Photo: paolovalde
The NY Times reports that old media won out over new media when it came to World Cup
coverage. The Times notes that television and newspapers benefited from the World Cup,
but seems to overlook (or at least downplay) that Internet services did well too. While
the Times article stated that live video feeds were available in "several countries" and
that mobile coverage was popular in places like Australia, they neglected to quote other
relevant online
stats. For example
Hitwise reported that the official Yahoo-Fifa website (which I reviewed a month
ago) ranked No. 68 overall for the week ending June 24, 2006.
The Times does have a point that new media played "a mostly supplementary role". Certainly in terms of video coverage, because if you wanted to watch the matches live then you had to tune into the major TV networks. But even if Internet coverage of the World Cup was supplementary to TV, one question which should be asked is: why then didn't Old Media take more advantage of the online tools at their disposal? For example, Jeffrey McManus (no relation) notes that television networks could easily have made use of desktop widgets:
"It's interesting because the various widget platforms (not just Yahoo's) are totally open. TV networks could be creating these experiences for their audiences without asking anybody permission or paying the platform providers like Yahoo a cent. Why aren't they?"
Perhaps by the time the next World Cup comes around, we'll not only be able to use widgets on our desktops - but on the TV. How much better would the TV coverage have been if we (the audience) had real-time stats and chat options available on the TV set, rather than our computers? I expect that kind of Web-based technology to be available on TVs in 4 years time.
In any case I think we all agree (apart from the NY Times) that all kinds of media - old and new - benefited from the World Cup. But rather than butting their heads against new media, old media should be finding ways to leverage the two-way nature of the Web and utilize the online tools and services at their disposal.
Over the past couple of
days I've gotten 170 comments (and still going!) on a post I wrote last week entitled Netscape Community
Backlash. I've actually gotten more comments than the
official Netscape story on this topic. The general gist of the feedback is that
existing Netscape users dislike the new digg-like Netscape and want their old portal back.
A few commenters compared the new version of Netscape to the New Coke debacle in the 1980's, when Coca-Cola introduced a new formula which turned into a public relations disaster.
As well as the expressions of hatred for the new community news-style Netscape, it's noticeable how many people still associate Netscape's homepage with the Netscape browser. In many ways it's common sense to associate the two together, because there is still a browser named 'Netscape'. But it does show that Netscape management has a branding problem, to add to the considerable teething problems they're having transitioning a reluctant 12 million users to the digg style homepage.
Without repeating what I wrote in my previous post, nevertheless I think it's worthwhile re-printing a couple of emails I received today - which seem to sum up the feelings of these Netscape users. Here's one from "another older, non-techie":
The latest issue of Wired
magazine has a useful
profile of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, which Wired has elevated to number 9 in its
latest Wired 40 list (it didn't
even make the list last year). The article focuses on News Corp's $580 million
acquisition of MySpace last year, which has not only shown dividends due to MySpace's
recent stellar user growth - but has also given Murdoch his ticket to Internet
hipness.
Looking past the shallowness of conferring Net wisdom onto Rupert Murdoch just because he acquired an innovative Web company, the article does actually show that Murdoch and News Corp are onto it in regards to planning for an online media future.
Interesting article from PingMag, detailing the most popular web apps and services in Japan. The
highlights...
- SNS: "In Japan, social networking is represented mainly by Mixi,
with GREE following a distant second."
- Video: "To my knowledge there is no direct competitor to
YouTube in Japan but there is an interesting little mashup* from the boys at
fladdict.net, and it is called hatenatube.
Hatenatube simply takes popular YouTube videos from a variety of sources and
displays a thumb for each one."
- Podcasting: "Newly-released and IMG SRC-produced ZapZap
is a podcast directory that lets users decide what is popular and what
should be on the front page, whilst also allowing you to mix-and-match a
custom playlist of podcast episodes."
- Productivity: "Checkpad
represents one of the few productivity-oriented web applications in Japan.
Providing a similar service to Ta-da Lists, Checkpad differentiates itself
by also allowing users to access their lists from their mobile phones."
- Start pages: "Japan-based Startforce
takes an altogether different approach. Although they don’t explicitly
state they are a start-page service, some of their ideology is the same.
Rather than providing a panel-based interface like Netvibes, Startforce has
attempted to visually emulate a computer’s operating system. Startforce
allows you to store and swap files as well as chat with other people, all
within an OS-like environment."
- Blog Tracking: "The near-unpronounceable Kizasi
provides a similar service to Technorati, but in my opinion provides a
clearer method of finding out what bloggers are talking about."
- News: "...industry news in Japan is probably best seen through
the eyes of the 100shiki
website. [...] Hatena Bookmarks is a del.icio.us-like social bookmarking
service and is probably one of the best places to look for aggregated
tech-related news in Japan, thanks to an army of IT-obsessed users."
I'm looking to cover more of international markets in the near future, so posts like this from PingMag are very useful. Anyone know of similar articles for other countries?
My third trip to the US is almost over, as I'm flying back to good old NZ tomorrow. I thought I'd write a quick post about my experiences from this trip. In particular about the 3 conferences I went to: Supernova, BloggerCon and Gnomedex. In reverse chronological order...
The most enjoyable conference for me was Gnomedex, in Seattle. It was a lot of fun and I think host Chris
Pirillo (pictured at left) was a major reason why! The man is a human ball of energy and
this rubbed off on the conference as a whole. The content was eclectic and fun, as were
the party venues and the 'little things' - like the free food/drink, a place for us World
Cup fans to hang out and watch the quarter finals, the cool quasi-Maori themed Gnomedex
tee-shirts, and more. Sessions I enjoyed included Dave Dederer (part of the rock band
Presidents of the United States) and Ethan Kaplan, who both discussed the music industry
on the Web. Dederer opened by singing two songs from my favourite band of all time, The
Velvet Underground. He sung 'We're gonna have a real good time together' and 'Waiting for
The Man' :-) Most of the sessions were great - and a bit out-of-the-ordinary (e.g. Susan
Mernit's talk), which is always a good thing IMHO. There was some fiery discussion in Blake Ross'
session, about Firefox, but everybody ended up friends afterwards. Plus getting US
Presidential nominee John Edwards to
speak was a master stroke.
BloggerCon
was great, although the turnout was surprisingly small. Perhaps due to the overlap with
other events - including Supernova and a San Francisco Bar Camp. Nevertheless there was a
nice community feel to BloggerCon and host Dave Winer made sure all the discussions were
relevant and thought-provoking. The one issue I had with the "unconference" format was
that it tended to favour the extroverted personalities in the crowd, which meant the same
old people were doing the talking all the time. I guess it's up to us quiet thinkers to
summon up the courage to pitch in, but maybe the Discussion Leaders could do a little
more to encourage that to happen? An unconference should include the introverts too :-)
Oh and BloggerCon was yet another conference where my friend and BBM boss Marc Canter
fell asleep (pictured)!
Supernova
in San Francisco had its moments, but at other times was a little disappointing. I felt that in too many
cases, panelists and speakers talked mainly about their own products or companies. The Future of Search panel was the best
illustration of this - the 5 panelists all talked about their own search products at
every opportunity, which left me none the wiser about the future of search by the
end. I really hope Kevin Werbach and his team addresses this issue for the next
Supernova, because I really want to hear technical issues being discussed - I don't want
product pitches. The panel called The Future of Desktops was more to
my liking, as a lot of thought-provoking information came from that panel. Somewhat
ironically then, one of my favourite moments of Supernova was Mike Arrington's Connected
Innovators session - so I guess little 5-minute product spiels I can deal with :-) The
Supernova backchannel was interesting too, with Valleywag (pictured) a prominent snarker,
along with David Weinberger.
There are lots of other things I enjoyed about all 3 conferences (and stuff I've forgotten to mention I'm sure), but no time to go into it all. I want to thank all 3 of the conference organizers: Kevin Werbach, Dave Winer, Chris Pirillo and Ponzi. It's a lot of hard work to do conferences, so I've got to give big wraps to those people.
p.s. sorry about the lack of blog posts here recently. Once I'm home I'll get back to my normal blogging routine!
Photos: Laughing Squid, Niall Kennedy, JoshB
I've been tracking the
release of the new Digg-style community news site Netscape.com, because there is a lot of
backlash within the Netscape community about it. A story called Netscape's
Blunder!!! was number 1 on Netscape.com for a while and the latest post on the
homepage is entitled
A Request by the Netscape Community to Bring Back Our Netscape.com. There's another
Netscape story currently on the homepage called Netscape
Reborn: Why? Why? Why?. The backlash has presumably led to this message currently on the right of the homepage, from
the Netscape team:
"Attention Netscape users Your Netscape mail hasn't gone anywhere, you can find it right here! Also, My.Netscape and your Stock Quotes are still online as well."
There appears to be a genuine feeling of betrayal by the (very large) set of users who have had Netscape.com as their homepage for some time. Indeed I've been getting comments on my own posts and even emails from Netscape users, upset about the change to the Digg style.
All of this shows how passionate people can get about their Web homepage - and they're just as much a 'community' as the Digg.com users are. It's just that they like the old-school Web homepage, not the new Digg style. Also what this tells me is that while a lot of us geeks and 2.0 types are addicted to our own technology (and our own voices, to be honest), it's pretty darn obvious that A LOT of people want to stick with the status quo. Plus I've noticed a number of comments on the above Netscape.com stories which equate Netscape (still!) with a browser.
I'm not sure what to think about this, because I really do think Jason Calacanis and his team want to do well by the Netscape community - and change can be hard to take. Even Valleywag seems to support Calacanis! The number of Netscape users seems to be rising, but even so they're encouraging users who like the old style to go to MyNetscape:
"For those of you who are missing the old Netscape format, have you tried My Netscape? You can customize your page any way you see fit."
Unfortunately there are signs that many of the existing Netscape community hate the new Digg style passionately enough that they will jump ship to other more traditional portals like MSN. So is this backlash a sign that Calacanis and his team have misjudged what 'normal' people (i.e. non-geeks) want in a homepage and they could lose their brand value with that set of users? Or is it a necessary 'bitter pill' for the Netscape community to swallow - i.e. this is the New Web, get used to it?
I'm interested in these questions because obviously it can be generalized to the broader base of web 2.0 services across the Web, which have yet to make much impact on the mainstream.
