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.
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