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Decentralized Microblogging - Twitter 2.0?

Added on by Chris Saad.

Michael Arrington has just published a post about how a decentralized Twitter might work called "Twitter can be liberated". Much of it was based on a discussion we had on the subject and how RSS, XMPP and Microblogging software could create a decentralized Twitter (Much like Wordpress, Blogger and LiveJournal are decentralized software platforms for traditional blogging).

The key component would be an easy bridge between RSS and XMPP. We actually already have such a technology in our labs called 'SyncStream'

This new model would, by necessity, push a lot of the work to the edge where aggregators would need to manage subscriptions, blocks and @ reply tracking. I think, however, that this is an opportunity rather than a problem.

The idea is discussed pretty thoroughly on the post so I wont rehash it here. It's a fascinating notion, one my team and I have been kicking around for more than a year.

I wonder if it will gain traction...

I'm going to Web 2.0 Expo - Are you?

Added on by Chris Saad.

Web 2.0 Badge

The conference that stated it all is back in town next week. Regardless of what you think of the term, it's the place to be to see all your favorite people in one place. Let me know if you are going to be there - will be great to catch up with some people!

Register here

Sounds like there might also be a DataPortability meetup happening at the same time too!

Gadgets vs. Apps - Google App Engine

Added on by Chris Saad.

David Recordon has a very clever observation over on the O'Reilly blog about the Google App Engine potentially marginalizing both OpenSocial and Facebook Platform. I think he might be right. Long term, the goal of most App developers should not be to develop gadgets in containers, but rather to build first class applications on the ultimate platform of all, the Web.

With tools like Amazon Web-Services and Google App Engine reducing infrastructure and scale costs even further, an emerging data interoperability layer via DataPortability and an increasing desire to add social functionality to most apps and services, the future looks bright.

I look forward to the day when I can use my best-of-breed applications (such as Flickr for photos - and now video!, Twitter for status updates, Ma.gnolia for Bookmarks and Google Docs for document collaboration) all backed by my personal, universal address book. My personal social network.

Combine everyone's address book together and you get what you get is what Tim Berners-Lee calls the Giant Global Graph.

The opportunity for Myspace, Facebook and other large social networks? Continue to provide a simple user experience for the mainstream in the mean time, and evolve quickly into an Identity Provider and social hub of the future.

What have you done for me lately?

Added on by Chris Saad.

Often in the DataPortability project we get asked "What have you guys actually done?" I often times find the question both amusing and confusing, while other times I can understand where the question comes from.

The DataPortability project received a lot of attention very quickly and very early in its life and it left some people asking 'Why?'.

The answer, however, can be quite multifaceted and complicated.

The first thing I do is encourage people to look at the DataPortability Road Map.

It clearly maps out our plan and shows that we have actually successfully completed 2 out of the 5 planed phases.

  1. Foundation (done)
  2. Invitation (done)
  3. Investigation (underway)
  4. Design
  5. Evangelize

Foundation is self-explanatory - but invitation is a very interesting step along this long journey.

We have invited the industry to start a conversation about data portability. And I think we have been quite successful in doing just that. It is now one of the most visible topics at most industry conferences, dev groups and board meetings. The mere existence of the project and the phrase has given people a handle from which to drive the conversation.

The result has been actual and practical. It has resulted in an acceleration of every discussion and implementation around openness and standardization.

This is indeed a journey of a thousand steps, but by defining our destination (as DataPortability has begun to do) we have helped the community shift from a steady walk to a jog. Next comes the run.

But we can't rest now - there is still a lot of work to do. We need to execute on the rest of our plan. We need to put aside our agendas, egos, doubts and fears and embrace this new, broader conversation.

Next, I remind people that, as a project, the DataPortability group is currently executing on Phase 3 - Research. During this phase we are speaking to each standard community about their relevant technologies and contributions to understand how they might fit into any future best practice document or documents. If we are not speaking to you yet, please drop me a line. After that, comes the Documentation phase. But not before.

The journey is indeed long - there are indeed a thousand steps to come - maybe more. Some of us are focusing on making shoes, others have given us iPods to keep us entertained, and others still are drawing directions in the sand. It will take all kinds of efforts and all kinds of people to arrive at our destination.

Are you helping? Join a standards group, write some code, or join the DataPortability project!

Of course, there's another, shorter answer. "Just you wait and see..."

I'm nominated for the 30under30

Added on by Chris Saad.

I just got this email from Antihill Magazine:

Dear Young Entrepreneur,

A friend, colleague or fan of your work recently nominated you for Anthill Magazine's 30under30 Awards, a national awards program designed to recognise and encourage young Australian entrepreneurs.

Details of your nomination are below, including th name of the generous person who nominated you for this awards program.

Cool!

If you'd like to nominate me you can do so on the Antihill website!

Some challenges in current DataPortability trends

Added on by Chris Saad.

In the last couple of weeks there have been a number of very positive steps forward for Data Portability in general and the DataPortability Project specifically. These include wins by the OpenID Foundation, the IC report, the DataPortability Report and others.

A couple of trends, though, are causing me a little concern and may require a slight course correction before they spin out of control and fragment, rather than standardize, the ecosystem.

1. Tightly coupled OpenID Implementations

On Plaxo right now there is a 'Sign in with YahooID' button. This is effectively an OpenID login mechanism, except to remove the user experience complexity of OpenID, Plaxo has worked with Yahoo to make it easier by creating a direct relationship.

This seems antithetical to the promise of OpenID and could ultimately create another mess of tightly coupled vendor relationships that defeat the purpose of a single sign-on identity that any provider can provide and consume.

A more long term solution must be to improve the generic OpenID user experience or devise an education campaign to help users learn the new login process.

2. Google's Social Graph API

While revealing an enormous usefulness in the existing XFN and FOAF data out on the web, Google's Social Graph API also reveals a weakness in current XFN and FOAF implementations. Many users are not aware when XFN data is included around URLs they enter, much less when the URLs are marked as rel=me.

For example when Twitter asked me for my homepage, I didn't understand that I was asserting a semantic link from Twitter to my blog that Google would later document and carve into stone as part of its implicit global social network in the sky.

As it stands, there is a real concern for user backlash as these APIs start being implemented and users find themselves presented with eerily accurate information about themselves magically appearing on websites without their 'consent'.

Some sort of best practice text and/or iconography is required around fields that will be marked up with XFN - particularly if rel=me will be used to that users can make informed decisions about the type of data they provide and how it might be used. Perhaps even an opt out checkbox is appropriate.

This is probably a job for the Microformat community to dig into and solve. They should probably solve it quickly though.

3. OpenSocial++

As OpenSocial implementations role out, it's becoming clear that there is no such thing as a pure OpenSocial container. Each container includes proprietary APIs and extensions that widget developers may choose to use.

Presumably these exist to differentiate each network and encourage developers to write enhanced apps for the environment.

The problem, though, is that developers need to write defensively for each custom API leading us to a place similar to browser compatibility hell. App developers will need to write and test their apps across every Container and will either have to hard code support for special APIs or keep their apps generic and ordinary.

Is this sustainable? Is there a better way?

If OpenSocial is going to be the Write Once, Deploy Many model for widgets, then the OpenSocial team at Google need to find a way to address this concern quickly.

'08 - The year of DataPortability

Added on by Chris Saad.

It's been a hectic few days. Our little project to create a reference design for Data Portability has been put at the center of a storm when Robert Scoble, video blogger to the stars, experienced his very own Data Portability use case - getting his personal information out of a closed system. In this case, Facebook. The DataPortability project sort of happened by accident for me. The goal was simple. Having worked hard to create and champion the cause of APML, the FaradayMedia team and I tried to join the broader standards discussion. The problem, though, was that the same questions kept on getting asked over and over, and the answers -while slightly different each time - were always basically the same.

It usually went something like this...

"So how can we use [X format, standard, protocol, technique] to get data [Y] from silo [Z] for purpose [1, 2 and 3]."

"You could use [my personal format of choice] because [I am personally invested in community A]."

"But that only solves part of my problem, what about [B, C and D]"

"Oh we have not really solved that, probably check out community [E, F and G] for that part".

The result, was very little standards integration work actually being done because while the standard file formats exist, there is no standard way of implementing them end-to-end.

So we started the DataPortability Workgroup with some friends to try and get the story straight in our own heads and share the results with the world.

The world, though, seems to have come knocking before we were quite ready for the attention. But that's OK. It has only served to re-double our efforts and seems to prove that there was indeed a problem that needed to be solved.

I'd like to personally thank everyone involved and welcome all the new people who have come to join the conversation. It has been an adrenalin packed few days and I have enjoyed every second.

I really feel quite grateful to have connected with so many people who believe in the same things - including personal heroes who have made all this possible with their hard (and often thankless) work to create the standards that will make DataPortability possible. I'd particularly like to assure those people that DP is not about re-inventing what they have done, but rather shining a light on their work by putting it in context for those that need to see the big picture spelled out.

It seems that the web will dramaticlly evolve again this year. It used to be the Web of Pages, most recently it evolved into the Web of People... it seems in 2008 the Web of Data begins to take root.

Look forward to the fun...

Seesmic Vs. TV

Added on by Chris Saad.

Watching the Le Web Panel on "TV Rebirth", I was struck by the tendency to compare seesmic and other video sharing platforms with TV. I think that comparing Seesmic (in particular) with TV is like comparing the phone with radio. They are totally different things that happen to just use the same media (video and audio respectively).

Also I am not sure why Current.TV does not get the recognition it deserves. I really believe that they need to join the conversation more aggressively. They deserve far more attention that they get. I'd say they should offer me a job, but chances are they are not even watching for references to their brand.

Also, well done to Robert Scoble who once again identified Attention and filtering as the next great frontier. As he knows better than most, the quantity of content around these days simply does not scale for most people. Content discovery and filtering (based on APML probably) will be huge in the coming years.

HD-DVD+Blu-Ray Hybrid

Added on by Chris Saad.

This cracks me up

I think both formats suck. DVDs and anything resembling a DVD is a hoax played by the studios so that people can 'own their own video store'. What's the point? The number of times you would watch the DVDs cannot justify the cost. And if everyone has a video store what's the point? Whatever format you choose to embrace and collect will be obsolete in a few years anyway.

But all those reasons against owning your own DVD style collection pale in comparison to the fact that all this content should be streamed from the net anyway - we should all have access to all content all the time. Anything short of that is a joke on consumers.

Is Google's size beginning to work against it?

Added on by Chris Saad.

I stumbled across an interesting article today - thought I would share.

"Quigo is not the household name that these other two search giants are. But the privately held company, which competes with Google (Charts) and Yahoo (Charts) in a key part of the online advertising business, is quietly becoming a bigger player."

Oh really?

"Quigo is benefiting from a perception of independence. There is general angst about the power that Google and Yahoo have and Quigo is able to sell against that. They have quietly replaced Google and Yahoo in a lot of newspapers for that reason," Sterling said.

So does that mean that size and weight can actually work against them in areas of perceived conflict of interest with publishers when it comes to advertising?

I've seen a growing tide of 'Is Google Evil?' type sentiment over the last year or so this is not exactly new. However this is the first business justification I have seen for old media to actually avoid 'feeding the beast', as it were, in favor of more independent ad networks operated by companies who are not 'competing for your business'.

Read the whole article on CNN Money.