31–40 of 66 posts
What if social networking is like instant messaging? After many years, the proprietary instant messaging services have not been replaced with an open alternative. Open does not always win.
Facebook has a nice beachhead, but that does not mean the game is over.
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Sorry, but no way. By 2014, Facebook will BE the distributed protocol. Look how many sites already use Facebook as their primary (or only) source of login. Next up will be allowing people to pay for things using Facebook credits with a single click. Aside from that, what's the real benefit to an "open distributed social network" for normal people? Comparison to email isn't quite right, because email was still taking…
By 2014, Facebook will BE the distributed protocol. If Facebook pushes a truly distributed protocol, then I have no issue with that. I'll build a set of hooks for Appleseed to support that protocol, and I'm sure the other projects will do the same. Look how many sites already use Facebook as their primary (or only) source of login. That's not a distributed protocol, when you're dealing with a centralized login. just…
A post ago, you said they would use an open distributed protocol by 2013/2014, but now they'll just have to be facing a "major challenge" from one by 2015?
You should post a challenge on longbets.org.
I don't like the analogy. AOL wanted to be the gatekeeper to the Internet and charge users a fee for their "premium" content. They were replaced because the internet is infrastructure, and a million other entities created sites and services that were better than what AOL was trying to charge for. Facebook on the other hand, embraces the open web, and sinks it's hooks in via extremely elegant and lightweight hooks lik…
Facebook on the other hand, embraces the open web No offense, but I find that to be an odd definition of "open web". They don't support a distributed protocol and they don't support data portability in any meaningful way.
Facebook Platform supports OAuth as a standard authentication protocol for 3rd party apps. It also provides APIs that developers can use to export data users have entered into facebook (with the user's permission, of course). What do you think is missing in Facebook's support for data portability?
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By 2014, Facebook will BE the distributed protocol. If Facebook pushes a truly distributed protocol, then I have no issue with that. I'll build a set of hooks for Appleseed to support that protocol, and I'm sure the other projects will do the same. Look how many sites already use Facebook as their primary (or only) source of login. That's not a distributed protocol, when you're dealing with a centralized login. just…
I don't mean "distributed protocol" in the same sense that you do. A post ago, you said they would use an open distributed protocol by 2013/2014, but now they'll just have to be facing a "major challenge" from one by 2015? You should post a challenge on longbets.org.
What do you mean, then? Facebook's graph api is definitely not distributed, it's very centralized.
now they'll just have to be facing a "major challenge" from one by 2015?
I'll gladly take the wager that they'll be using an open, distributed protocol by 2013/2014. How about this, $2 for that, $1 for a major challenge by 2015.
What if social networking is like instant messaging? After many years, the proprietary instant messaging services have not been replaced with an open alternative. Open does not always win.
What about IRC and XMPP? I know that there are several proprietary IM networks strongholds but these two seem very popular to me.
(Global penetration of the various services are very uneven; if you're an American you may think ICQ is dead but it's still big in Russia, for instance. Yes, I know ICQ and AIM are basically the same thing but the brand is still separate. Everything I mentioned is indeed still a going concern in at least one major region of the world,. You can of course add IRC, and depending on your mood you can add Google Talk; it may be XMPP and perfectly capable of XMPP federation but almost nobody realizes it, so in practice it's more isolated than you might think.)
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Facebook on the other hand, embraces the open web No offense, but I find that to be an odd definition of "open web". They don't support a distributed protocol and they don't support data portability in any meaningful way.
I work on the Facebook platform team. Facebook Platform supports OAuth as a standard authentication protocol for 3rd party apps. It also provides APIs that developers can use to export data users have entered into facebook (with the user's permission, of course). What do you think is missing in Facebook's support for data portability?
EDIT: and a full realtime read/write XMPP-style interface for all the data going in/out of my profile please! :)
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Facebook on the other hand, embraces the open web No offense, but I find that to be an odd definition of "open web". They don't support a distributed protocol and they don't support data portability in any meaningful way.
I work on the Facebook platform team. Facebook Platform supports OAuth as a standard authentication protocol for 3rd party apps. It also provides APIs that developers can use to export data users have entered into facebook (with the user's permission, of course). What do you think is missing in Facebook's support for data portability?
Most importantly, though, a clear change (or clear guidelines) to the Terms Of Service which would guarantee that moving your data to a competing service would not result in cancellation of the account or deletion of the new service's API key.
As for a distributed protocol, take a look at the functionality in Appleseed's QuickSocial and StatusNet for an idea of what a distributed protocol entails. I should be able to login to facebook with an external identity, and add someone as a friend on facebook, without having an actual facebook account.
If Facebook is interested in these things, you can have some representatives join the Federated Social Web mailing list, and you can support the W3C working group on federated social networking, as well as supporting the Data Portability Project.
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Keeping them alive even though they don't rake in any serious money.
You can be assured they aren't doing it to be nice. For one, that would be against their fiduciary duty. IM networks are used by companies like AOL/Microsoft/Yahoo/Google to keep people coming back to their respective services (which is also why traditionally they weren't big on interoperability). They aren't making money, but do more good than the savings not running the services would bring.
This is completely untrue.
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What about IRC and XMPP? I know that there are several proprietary IM networks strongholds but these two seem very popular to me.
Open alternatives exist; they have not replaced the proprietary alternatives. "Replaced" is the key word. AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve are dead . There's still a company with the AOL name and I guess I can't quite guarantee there isn't some AOL-subscription-only service left somewhere, but they don't matter. AIM, ICQ, MSN messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger, QQ, and Facebook chat all matter. (Global penetration of the…
AOL still has 5 million paid subscribers. Dead is hardly ever truly dead. Facebook in 2020 might still have 500 million users, but the game will be very different.