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Decentralized social networking

Barcamp Brussels

1 dec 2007

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Blogging versus social networks

• Platform & software

• Same server or different server

• Several clients

• Self-controlled or hosted

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Identity!

(missing piece)

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permissions and authorisations

• Private posts

• Pictures for friends & Family

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Transactions

• Yahoo Games

• Facebook applications

• Collaboration...

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Access (messaging)

• Ability to comment

• Ability to see availability, status

• …

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Identity

• Identity exists within silo's

• Identity = local accounts

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Disadvantages (of silos)

• Social network fatigue *

• Reputation jacking

• Security (lots of usernames/pswd's)

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Solution 1: Separating identity from social network

• Identity providers– Google account– Yahoo BBauth– Live.com ID's– OpenID

• Silo's want our attention/demographics data!

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Solution 2: Social network as application platform

• Facebook: applications via a proxy

• OpenSocial: embedding widgets and javascript

• (making the silos even more sticky)

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What do we want

We geeks long for a world where these connections are made regardless of system. Where you can endorse someone even if he's on another social network like you can send an email to someone if he's with another internetprovider.

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What do we want (2)

You can make a connection with someone just like you can put a link from your blog to someone else's blog, even if he's with another internet provider. You can give someone permission to see private content, not by asking him to register to your system and by provide permission to the newly created account, but by giving permission to his openID that is hosted elsewhere.

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What do we want (3)

We geeks dream from a world where relationships between our digital identities exist regardless of the platforms and systems that host them, just like website and blogs and rss feeds exist regardless of the server software and blogging platforms they're hosted by.

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Decentralised <> "open" <> public

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OpenID and Identity

• Prove that you are who you are• Trust? (no, everything is self-claimed)• blog comments, forums...• Export/reuse your social capital• multiple personas• Typical use cases:

– bloggers– second life– ...

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OpenID against social fatigue (website perspective)

• 1 username/pswd• attribute exchange• you have millions of accounts already

(openid = useraccount for the web)

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portable social networks with xfn

• Several people in the OpenId world have been advocating Microformats here as a way of publishing personal and social network information on "authorative pages" (aka their OpenID urls).

• http://microformats.org/wiki/social-network-portability

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portable social networks with xfn (2)

• An Hcard-formatted on the OpenID url, could be scraped by all kinds of applications where this OpenID url has been used to login, XFN is a way of publishing your friends list, HCalendar the events you're going to attend etc... All of these being "the authorative sources" for address, friends and calendar data that are syndicated across all kinds of long- or shortlived social networks you participate in.

• Another option would be all kinds autodiscovery: meta tags in the html pointing to the OpenID provider (obviously!), Public key, FOAF friends list, sites that store and manage other preferences (like LastFM for music taste, del.icio.us for link list...).

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Objections to portable social networks

• Do you have the right to export your friendlist?

• Closed social networks are successful because they protect and provide that context - relationships do not exist outside context

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OpenID and Access (to your content and time)

• pre-approved accounts *

• private posts

• whitelisting and xfn *

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OpenID and attention data

• Claiming attention data and moving it around• There's a movement around the concept of

"attention data" (= all the data you produce by your actions online, such as your search queries, the stuff you read...) that advocates the idea that you're the owner of that data and you should be able to take it with you (export it out of a service), and be able to "rent out" access to your attention data.

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OpenID and attention data (2)

• Doc Searls coined the term "Vendor Relationship Management" http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Main_Page indicating tools and practices with which you have vendors come to you with their best offerings based on your attention data (and only their best offerings, because your time/attention is scarce!).

• One could imagine trusting this to an intermediary party paying you for your attention (an ad broker like Google...) with which you have a more or less permanent relationship (but still the ability to switch). Exotic idea? It was Bill Gates himself who once suggested it... *

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Vendor relationship management

• Own your attention data

• Rent it to the best intermediary

• Autodiscovery

• Tools and formats still have to be built!

• (APML)

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Identity and communication

• current identifiers are communication handles (email, phone...)

• we need handers that abstract these (XRI, XDI)

• Succesfull services will have privacy-enhancing features (Grandcentral, Twitter, Jangle)

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Identity and Telecom

• Telco's risk to be made irrelevant

• should reposition themselves as identity services

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Links…

• http://del.icio.us/pascalvanhecke (tags openid , socialnetworking, microformats…)

• http://pascal.vanhecke.info/