Open Social Network Roundup

There seems to be more and more discussion regarding the openness of social networks of late. In trying to follow the discussion, it seems that there are a number of different types of ‘openness’ being discussed. Dare Obasanjo has provided a good overview of the different considerations of what it means to be an open social network.

Regardless of what definition of openness you are using, Fred Wilson, reminds that:

…most of Facebook’s traditional users (like my two daughters) don’t care that their data is locked up in Facebook. I’ll show them my Facebook running in Netvibes when they wake up this morning and they’ll say “that’s nice dad but why would you want to do that?

Fortunately, there are a number of people interested in portable, open social networks including Marc Canter who provides us with an overview of some of the people and politics involved in the open social network discussions that are happening. Marc is working on the People Aggregator to be a stand along system and is dreaming of dreams of aggregating aggregators, aggregating conversations and aggregating groups”

Stephen Downes has also done some thinking in this area and defines three areas of need for social network portability and names some of the technologies that may get us there.

Wired recently made headlines with their critique of the walled garden approach that many vendors are using to control customer data. The article came along with a nice how to page from their wiki on how to Replace Facebook using Open Social Toos that gave some good ideas on aggregating content from your network of friends, but readily admitted the difficulty of providing the key component of social networking- relationship management tools.

Forward into the future we go- with mismatched definitions of what it means to be “open”, businesses who build market share by walling their customers in and many customers who don’t feel any need for things to change.
Hopeless?
Hardly. As common definitions emerge, businesses models are adapted and the need for social network portability is recognized then solutions will come forward, it just may be a little bit of a wait.

Other resources:

Accessibility, Availability and Affordability

Of these three, which is the largest obstacle to the free and open flow of online information?

Consider the following:

  1. A 12-year old boy in Western Africa has learned how to read Braille. He has also recently received an inexpensive laptop as part of a corporate initiative to save the world with cheap computers. Unfortunately, he is unable to access the information on his own because he was born blind and the computer did not come with any software that can read the content of web pages.
  2. In rural Idaho a high school student has an inexplicable desire to “make websites”. There are no technology classes at her school, but a teacher allows her to use a school computer during the last part of lunch to practice her craft. She has found a couple of online communities that the school filter allows where she is able to find answers to many of her questions. After school she has a 50 minute bus ride to a small home at the bottom of a hill bordering a National Forest in Central Idaho. Her family does have an older computer, but they haven’t been able to find local Internet service provider.
  3. A young woman in Albania constantly hears her friends talk about people that they have met online. She found a job at a local byrek stand where she earns enough money to accompany her friends to a local Internet Cafe to participate in their online activities. However, her father recently lost his job because of illness and her family expects her to contribute all of her earnings to the family pot. She occasionally gets a few minutes to check her email by tagging along with her friends, but by and large she no longer able to use the Internet.

Each of the above problems might be overcome with some combination of technology, awareness or money. However, each situation does present a problem of accessibility, availability or affordability that might be generalized to include a larger number of people.

Which of these is the most significant obstacle to ubiquitous, affordable technology to allow everyone to connect to this vast collection of tubes that we call the Internet?

What other obstacles keep people from accessing the Internet?

Quick Catch Up on Links

A few links that I would like to unload off of my docket:

Curb Cut, Take 3

The past few years I have been working in the area of religious special education and have recently jumped back into a job where Curb Cut is relevant to my work again. A couple of feeble attempts to start posting again in the past quite awhile have led to a blistering pace of one to two posts a year. Remarkably, some people haven’t cleaned out their feed readers for awhile, so hopefully the remaining subscribers will stick around as we get things going again.

In my new gig I am working as a web developer/architect in the educational division of a large International organization and I’m anxious find a place for standards, accessibility and openness in the work that I am doing. To that end, Curb Cut lives.

We started out as Curb Cut Education and evolved into Curb Cut Design. Neither of those titles seemed quite right for the direction I’m heading, so this blog shall heretofore be known as simply ‘Curb Cut’, enjoy.

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