Just don’t let it be the first step down that dark tunnel!!!!

A couple of weeks ago, Jason Kottke published a couple of brilliants posts comparing Facebook today to AOL in the nascent days of the web. Like Jason, I’d like to stress that I have nothing against Facebook as a company. In fact, unlike every soc…

The point is that I don’t trust Plaxo with my personal contact info any more than I would trust Mike Vick to train my dog. But I am just one guy. It will be interesting to watch if this change helps out with active user growth.

I would also like to chime in on Nick’s behalf. I think he has the right idea, Plaxo’s adoption of OpenID is a big step toward opening up and transferring ownership of the user to the user. Which is in-line with the spirit of Open Source.

With OpenID you can create multiple personas per OpenID account. For example you can have one persona for your trusted sites including a field for friends emails or OpenID accounts, and one with only basic info (including perhaps a disposable email address) to use for new sites. All your information is stored on the OpenID server that you choose, and you pick what to share with which site and when. This makes it easy to ‘push and pull’ information relating to your identity between applications.

ok, so maybe it’s a stretch to call Plaxo “open”, however i’d agree they are a modestly legitimate source of a large group of social networking info, and indeed the 3.0 rev + the sync with multiple providers is a big step forward.

don’t know if i’m ready to tap them as an alternative to FB, but i have been using the new product lately and altho it could stand some usability work it’s not bad. the multi-sync function is a bit rough for me, but it does appear to be working.

all this aside, i think Facebook is a juggernaut that won’t be stopped… especially not for some rather dubious “open standard” issues being driven by an elite few rather than the unwashed masses. Kottke and others might as well be tilting at windmills — calling Facebook “closed” isn’t going to initiate change… rather, that comes from competition.

“open” is only as good as the underlying infrastructure, and right now i think Facebook has proven it’s got a pretty good foundation. remains to be seen if others like MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, & Geni can become solid enough social infrastructure to support competitive ecosystems… but the is promise there.

ultimately, change happens when competition forces innovation. Microsoft & Windows didn’t become monopolies because they’re inherently evil… it’s because Apple (& others) were such crappy competitors in the early / late 90’s.

so will Plaxo cut the mustard as a true Facebook competitor? i doubt it… but i think Nick’s right there’s a lot of potential there. as with LinkedIn & Geni & Spock as well.

- dave mcclure
http://500hats.typepad.com/

ps - full disclosure: i’m a Facebook addict, a LinkedIn fan, and a Spock advisor. i use all three services pretty often. and if you’d like a Spock invite, drop me an email with your name + 3 tags that describe you, along with what you think is the best / worst feature in Facebook.

ps - Nick: you need to kick some hiney in the comments. tell ‘em who’s boss. (and i don’t mean mike

While your intentions are most likely noble, it -is- hard to forget the past.

As many have pointed out, and many more to come I’m sure, the very name Plaxo sends shivers down the spines of those that have been abused in the past by this company’s questionable actions. Sure, they have responded to these accusations by stating that the end justifies the means - but is that someone that we really want to be associating with?

I’m sure you have your reasons… and I’m only sorry that you’re one of the few that have shown support for Plaxo, but I know that I can not forget. If they’ve done it once, they can do it again and I’m not about to let a company take it upon themselves to spam my family, my friends, and my business associates.

Perhaps it is possible for Plaxo to turn their image around. For their users’ peace of mind I hope so, otherwise membership will be so low that once again we will find our inboxes stuffed with unsolicited requests.

Settings->Plaxo Identities->Manage Your OpenID’s

https://www.myopenid.com/directory

And what does this mean for existing Plaxo users? How do I relate my existing Plaxo account to my existing OpenID.. um… ID?

To Dave Winer, I saw you posts and your invitation to the Plaxo team to dive into more details. Would love to have that discussion. To you (and to anyone else interested), please feel free to contact me directly. I’m john@plaxo.com.

Fundamentally, we are putting actions behind our words, actions that are in support of a user-centric view, in an open social web.

Open source is a whole different beast to open ID, the thought processes and evalengical zeal found in the OS community is poles apart from open ID. That said, this is a highly relevant discussion as we all continue to play with the concept of a truly open soc net.

I keep thinking that “many to many” trumps “many to one” or “one to many” and this can be applied in the context of socnets and socnet apps — developing many apps/sconets for many socnets/apps may just be the most appropriate path to take.

I am interested in considered thoughts on this.