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
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: PeopleAggregator and Open Social Network Systems.
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An open social network, IMHO, would by definition include the open social networking XML format, FOAF. Would it not? I guess it's a matter of degrees. A proprietary API just doesn't seem very open to me.
Posted by: Randy Charles Morin | July 11, 2006 6:10 AMOpen social networks are definitely going to happen over time. I remember Marc talking about this all the way back in 2003.
I have a blog post that goes into Windows Vista's new Address Book store an how that could be useful in this space.
The schema for a contact can be extended. For each of the user's contacts in their social network, the addressbook can store the open identity, location of the social network service(s), and data exported from from different services. This can enable a local store before the data is then imported into the next service.
Posted by: Bryan Starbuck | July 11, 2006 6:16 AMFOAF and XFN/hCard support are coming - I PROMISE! But we HAD to hit Gnomedex as a deadline - so we shipped with what we got. Remember nobody is funding this - but me.
Meanwhile there's one subtle thing I'd disagree with Richard's excellent article. He implies that you NEED to use PeepAgg to achieve all this.
Well today you do - but we're hoping that the APIs and open data structures (like FOAF and XFN/hCard) will be adopted by others - so others can provide the same functionality. In fact we NEED that to happen or else we'll be all by ourselves in our sandbox.
So we're not saying you HAVE to use PeepAgg or that your data eventually resides inside of PeepAgg. We're just showing the way, we're giving the APIs that we develop to the community so they are - in fact - NOT proprietary.
And standards like Microsoft's contact list can be meshed into our web, just as easily as FOAF or XFN. The underlying principle is of inclusion - and particiaption by all.
Posted by: Marc Canter | July 11, 2006 8:44 AMMarc, you are one guy who gets to use all caps in his comments, especially as regards FOAF ;)
Posted by: Dick Costolo | July 11, 2006 8:57 AMVery briefly... I have a problem with (1) the notion of portability of "data"... and (2) the notion of data being "your own."
Conversations do not produce "data" that can be moved easily (if at all) out of context. Conversations are con-texts.
And conversations are con-versations... they are co-owned by definition.
Posted by: Emil Sotirov | July 11, 2006 11:01 AMEmil, I agree that context is crucial. But still I think the ability to import/export one's content will yield a great many benefits. Even in the world of blogs, if I leave a comment on another person's blog post - wouldn't it be great to have that comment show up in some form in my social network, or my own blog? Kind of like what co-comment and the like does already, but hopefully with open APIs etc this will be much easier.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | July 11, 2006 5:26 PMJust to put things into perspective... when I try to explain stuff like this to my RL friends that use MySpace and such they can't understand it. These are intelligent people in their late 20s that use computers for communicating every day. They ask, "How is this problem going to be solved by joining another service?" Whatever my explanation, they don't see it.
Marc, Richard: I believe you guys have the right idea, just the wrong implementation. I've had a similar vision for years. I don't think a service and API(s) is going to cut it. What I believe is needed really is an open protocol that clients and APIs can be developed for. If you care to hear the real details of my own vision just drop me a note... I never seem to find the time to actually publish it, hehe. (Actually, I'd love to discuss some things with either of you so drop me a line if you have any time.)
But, yes, for the time being there is going to need to be a transistion period of (comprably) messy ways of pushing things out of walled systems and making them retrievable by the right parties.
As for comments/conversation. Blogs are far from ideal for either. Forums are generally the best, while forms of listservs work for very for some purposes. All of these are tools (as the web is a tool on the internet). Integration can be good for some massively popular news services (ie. blog type news with forums as a back-end) otherwise, there's not much use. CoComment is virtually useless, though there are several other solutions for tracking your own comments and followups to them for yourself or even to post on your own blog or whatever. I was toying with the notion of writing my own simple method of doing such but it's not really worth it since more methods are developing a lot lately.
Personally, I've been following OpenID for a long time and I'm excited to see what trust systems are worked out to go with it. I haven't been following it much for a bit. Any good resources on that?
The participation by all is going to be the hard part at this point. Even with enough individuals and smaller companies, the big boys may not want to play nicely, which is sad.
Marc, at this point you should just make your sig: "Remember nobody is funding this - but me." Haha. Oh, hope you're having fun at MashupCamp 2... say hi to my brother if you bump into him. He's also Marc (SecretPrices/Nextgen).
Cheers!
Ja
Posted by: Ja | July 12, 2006 1:40 AMi Did want engage in the networking system and become one of the best and to help my society on solving networking problem I will be grateful if I could be supported.
Posted by: sunday oluwatoki | August 3, 2006 5:46 AMpleas alway send massage to me on networkin
Posted by: sunday oluwatoki | August 3, 2006 7:21 AMg system