It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up

edmicman notes that "Wired has an article, "Slap in the Facebook: It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up", that calls for the greater programming community to create a truly "open" social network. Specifically, the problems with today's networks, says the author, is that their content is not available to everyone."

6 Billion users....

[pthor1231]

I wasn't aware almost everyone in the world had internet access....

Re:knock yourself out

[pthor1231]

After reading the article, it really looks like it's just this guy whining about being really lazy.

Therein lies the rub. When entering data into Facebook, you're sending it on a one-way trip. Want to show somebody a video or a picture you posted to your profile? Unless they also have an account, they can't see it. Your pictures, videos and everything else is stranded in a walled garden, cut off from the rest of the web.

Honestly, how hard is it to sign up for a facebook account now. You don't even need a school email, just an email. Everyone could have access if they wanted to, in about 5 minutes.

Re:knock yourself out

[PFI_Optix]

Facebook and Myspace allow you to share content with unregistered users. They also allow you to restrict it so that only your friends can see it. This is a good thing.

I think the only thing networking sites could do to be more "open" is to become interoperable: Allow Facebook users to add MySpace users as friends. Of course, that sounds like it would be a royal PITA and would require a whole new standard be developed, but hey...open is good, right?

There's nothing wrong with things as they are today. If you want to make your information public, get a blog. If you want to share something with just a few friends, use whatever networking site they use.

Re:I don't want EVERYONE to see my data!!

[fastest fascist]

Sir, get thee a Clue.

Either you didn't read the article, or your reading comprehension needs serious work. The author was NOT calling for a network where all information is freely available to everyone, simply an open framework within which people can network as they please. It's kind of like IRC versus a web-based chatroom on a website - IRC is an open framework, anyone can make an IRC client that will work with any IRC server, but that doesn't mean users can't form private channels or choose who they communicate with. Similarly, there is no reason an open framework for a social network would require you to give up the ability to have distinct, closed cliques within the open system. You could, however, reuse any profile data you put in for as many different groups in as many different configurations as you like, without having to sign up for and maintain your presence on a multitude of different, specialized social networking services. You'd just need one login for one service, or maybe one login for a master network which you could allow any independent service to access to retrieve your data as you see fit.

Re:knock yourself out

[steevc]

Of course you can get the content to people outside FB by other means, but that means a duplication of effort. Otherwise they have to join FB.

I think that the reason that FB and some other social sites can claim such high membership numbers is that people are joining just to see their friends' pictures, but then never post anything themselves.

I have a blog, but my pictures go on http://multiply.com./ [multiply.com.] I happen to like the degree of control they give me over who can see what I post. I'm also on Facebook, but only because some friends were there. I quite like the look of http://mugshot.org/ [mugshot.org] as it seems to be closer to what the author is suggesting.

What I would like to see is something I can host myself that combines a blog with FOAF and OpenID. FOAF would list the people who I want to allow access and they would log in with OpenID. It could also include XFN. I don't really want to run a full CMS.