In an interesting post by Dan Farber yesterday, he drew the comparison of the battles between companies firmly entrenched in the development of social media ("the social Web") such Google, Facebook, and MySpace, to early American colonial efforts. Sure, they have the same goal - but what can they agree upon? Okay, not a perfect analogy, but:
Taking a historical perspective, the social-networking community hasn't formed its Continental Congress to unite the colonies with a common vision and approach for openness. It's a political and economic, not a technical, issue. The technical building blocks, such as OpenID, oAuth, and OpenSocial APIs, for an open social Web are taking shape.
So what DO they agree upon? I'm not sure that the organizations mentioned above, and to which the Big Players have committed PR time and in some case resources, are the stellar examples of a true Congress that they could be. Nobody but nobody is really opening up their APIs for integration with these "open" APIs in the way that would draw everyone to giving up individual rights in interest of the greater good. Google's own "do no evil" mantra was even called into question (read the article). Additionally,
The Data Portability Project is developing guidelines and has the endorsement of the big social-networking players. But endorsement doesn't mean they are gathered together to create a common social layer for the Web. It's time for the social networks, like the 13 colonies in 1774 banding together to be free of British authority, to unite and manifest that the Web is by and for the users.
Right. The colonies took a really, really long time to do that. And so we wait. How do we move it forward when the really big issue is openness? The only answer I come to is a lot of the work from the entire community that I suspect engineers from all camps are already engaged in: matching the OpenSocial APIs with the Google Apps and Facebook Apps APIs, and uncovering a Killer App for social media connectivity in the process, probably igniting lawyer letters about violations of terms of use/service the same day.
But, at the end of the day, do we all get the right to own virtual guns? I say we need to start collecting them to find out. And by THAT, I mean we need to start building our own Killer Apps.
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