Who owns your friends (or rather the list of who your friends are and how they are connected to you) has been a big source of debate in the social networking world. Control over that data is what makes social networks like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn so potentially valuable. Yet there has also been a movement afoot towards letting people take their friends with them, if you will, to other sites. In an interview with Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Web takes social networks to task for hoarding data. The interview, conducted by Paul Miller, focuses mostly on the Semantic Web, which to Berners-Lee is all about linked data.
The interview is long and has everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about the Semantic Web (a set of evolving technologies to make the Web more readable by computers). But about 42 minutes into the interview (transcript here), is one of the most interesting parts. Berners-Lee says data on the Web is the new links, and Websites should stop keeping it to themselves:
I think, it is a very grown-up thing to realize that you are not the only social networking site… otherwise it is like a website which doesn’t have any links out. In the Semantic Web similarly, if you don’t have any links out, well, that’s boring.
In fact, a lot of the value of many websites is the links out.
Now if you look at the social networking sites which, if you like, are traditional Web 2.0 social networking sites, they hoard this data. The business model appears to be, “We get the users to give us data and we reuse it to our benefit. We get the extra value.”
So, first of all, are they going to let people use the data? I think, the push now, as we’ve seen during the last year, has been unbearable pressure from users to say, “Look, I have told you who my friends are. You are the third site I’ve told who my friends are. Now, I’m going to a travel site and now I’m going to a photo site and now I’m going to a t-shirt site. Hello? You guys should all know who my friends are.” . . . So, the users are saying, “Give me my data back. That’s my data.”
Of course, social networks are already moving in this direction. Last month, everyone from Google to Facebook pledged to work towards this and similar goals by joining the Data Portability Workgroup. And earlier this month, Google took a more concrete step by announcing that it would adopt certain standards in OpenSocial to give developers access to that coveted social graph (the map of connections between friends). The standards are called Friend-of-a-friend (FOAF) and XHTML Friends Network (XFN). And these are some of the same standards Berners-Lee is talking about.
It is one thing to join an industry workgroup, and another to actually implement some of these standards. More people like Sir Tim need to keep nudging the social networks and sites in general in this direction. Remember: data is the new links. Sites that don’t give it out won’t get any back, and eventually may disappear from view.
They didn’t come up with a new logo yet?
typo: XNP should be XFN.
This is very true. It is now becoming more common to see the “find your friends” and “invite your friends” modules at social networking sites. Components like the “Address Book Contacts Importer” from Octazen allow for easy implementation of email address extraction. It seems though, that there is a glut of social networks out there all doing the same thing. Facebook and MySpace knock offs are now too common. The FOAF and other protocols are just emerging and I think it could backfire. People want control over all of their information and there doesn’t seem to be any kind of controls in place for eliminating such information and some network keeping tabs on all of their friends.
Brian B
RideSearch.com
“Carpool for a better tomorrow”
Great headline Eric, wish I would have thought of that. Or Mike’s GrandCentral headline. Positively inspirational.
Wait…so does this mean that we will all have to have the same usernames on all services?
If I try to take all my data to another site, I’m obviously going to have friends that are NOT on that service, or are already there with a different username or email…
So, basically doesn’t every consumer or person have to join the initiative too?
- MysteryCEO
Data Linkability vs. Data Portability?
And, while yes it’s your data, the data has been value-added…
This is just anti-capitalist, pussy bullshit.
Data Portability = No Barrier To Exit
What Mr. Tim may think is “boring” is a competitive advantage to the company that built the service and doesn’t make it easy for users to leave.
It never ceases to amaze me that most geeks know jackshit about marketing and business. Too many “I’m going to build a startup” dorks seem to miss the fundamentals of BENEFITS and creating a product that people will actually want to buy — and building a business model that will actually produce CASH.
Enough of this “Open” this or that COUNTRY-FRIED BULLSHIT.
When is Google going to release their “OpenSearch” initiative where other developers can use their search results without Google’s branding and ads?
ANSWER: NEVER.
It’s called a Competitive Advantage.
The same thing goes for much of this “Data Portability” argument. Any company that positions itself where users can quickly and easily export their data and leave is committing financial suicide. Especially online where users are more fickle than ever.
“anti-capitalist, pussy bullshit” – hahaha I like this guy.
But I agree, the company IS providing value by being there. All the big social networking companies spend alot of time/money keeping those resources up.
It’s not like we don’t have ENOUGH of them out there already…
Capitalist Pig has made me definitely re-think my stand on this…
MysteryCEO
@7 – old school
@capitalist pig, by your logic Prodigy should still be around. Once the Web came, it was bypassed and forgotten because it was a closed, isolated system.
The point is not whether it makes economic sense to hoard data. It does, and that is why companies do it. The point is, will the rest of the Web follow suit, or start exchanging data freely because they have nothing to lose?
Tim Berners-Lee may be the ultimate geek, but there is some deep business insight in what he is saying.
This is a rather good thing for people having several accounts on different social networking website but in the end, who will be the owner of the information. But should it not be the user?!
@ Capitalist Pig – I’m amazed to find others on this blog who understand incentives. 95% of people here live in La La Land. Wait, that’s called Web 2.0.
@ Eric – Why are people so trusting of “their data”? Once you’ve given it over, why don’t you keep a notepad of all your friends? I mean, they are your real friends right? You’re not Scoble and have friends that have never met or would want to meet you in real life.
@ Everyone – Why should these sites open up their data? What is the INCENTIVE? If they don’t have an incentive, they won’t do it. Companies are designed with the goal of making a profit and increasing shareholder value. Facebook will likely never really do much of the former, but as long as it can fool a bunch of people, it will do well at the latter.
At the end of the day, if you trust your private “data” to a social network, shame on you for turning around and expecting that very social network to open it up. Are you going to pay them to do it? No. Blogging about it isn’t going to change anything.
OpenSocial is nice and gives everyone a fuzzy feeling but there’s very little that’s tangible to point to that’s happening relating to major networks opening up this data.
Also, please stop calling it the “social graph” That makes it sound intellectual, statistical, and intelligent. It fits none of those criteria. Kthxbye.
The culture of being able to take your data with you is desirable, yet it is even more desirable to be able to have control of how each site uses your data. For example, one may wish to allow access to friend contacts and not family contacts or perhaps, just my few best friends. Greater flexibility and portability gives control back to the user!
Even the walled-garden aol is opening up, by providing apis for their various services. Other than that’s what user want, another reason mightbe to shun bad press.
@everyone, especially the capitalist pig. Erick, correct me if I am wrong.
Site’s are already benefiting from being “open” and “portable” from API’s and RSS feeds. This is the same concept, correct?
I can list a ton of business reasons why this could be very effective marketing. Here is one example:
So let’s say i am on a social network about dogs (dogster.com), and i am also on a social network for cats (catster.com), and both have the “about me” section. I of course want to tell the catster world that i have a dog. So on catster, i pull in my info (maybe a pic of my dog) from dogster, which also links back to dogster.com. So, now i (the user) just promoted dogster, and dogster didn’t have to pay for a banner ad on catster.com. In addition, when a user promotes another site, the click thru rate is WAY higher than an ad.
So, isn’t this whole dataportability mov’t a good thing for capitalism?
Ok OK. So what about something practical in the conversation: what actually would provide this incentive???
The answer is that the thumbnails and pictures of your friends could link back to the first social network that you became friends with them on–something like this. It’s the same idea as viral flash widgets: the widget has links to the site that generated them.
I’m totally on the Capitalist Pig’s side. I think the point is that when these technologies get seriously implemented, the Facebooks and Myspaces that take advantage of it first will get more traffic as a result of it.
The hooks and incentive just need to be in place, and they will be there. Just make the data you let out link back!
…But am I wrong here? Is there something I’m missing? Anyone have any other monetization models for this Data Portability Openness???
James
from
FaceySpacey.com, Your One Stop Social Media Shop
Even Microsoft is opening up their live platform with these new toys…
greed as a business model is coming to the end of its long run
i can feel when a company is thinking of itself more than it is thinking of me, and my natural response is not to patronize it
i think more of us will feel this way, and businesses who want to thrive will have to adjust, slowly but surely
@Erick – Prodigy got smoked because the Internet itself was a better product. It provided more content, more entertainment, and more porn. The Internet itself became a part of our lives in the now “Networked Society.” The ‘cost’ associated with keeping a Prodigy account did not outweigh the additional benefits as the Internet itself had everything Prodigy had, and more.
Now let’s look at today’s “situation”…
You’ve got Facebook and millions of users (and growing); a tipping point and critical mass in one. The only other social network that comes close is MySpace (with more users). Facebook (and MySpace’s) critical mass is a major competitive advantage. It’s going to be nearly impossible for other competitors to surpass them at this point on the ‘viral’ equation alone.
The Facebook ‘product’ is superior to almost all the other social networks — and I’m not referring to services, functions, or UI. I’m referring to the fact that most people’s friends are using it which makes it a better product. Facebook would be an IDIOT to open things up to make it easy for users to extract data and even ‘move’ to a competitor.
Do you know what “OpenSocial” really is? It’s Google’s way of saying, “We lost the social network game.”
That’s right, THEY LOST.
So now Google is behind this “OpenSocial” initiative so they can build things to siphon off users from Facebook and MySpace — as well as to mobilize other companies to do the dirty work for them and to bring over more users.
It’s all BULLSHIT.
The idea of true “Data Portability” across the Web is a nice, let’s-all-hold-hands-and-sing concept, but it works against many Internet-based companies’ competitive advantage of making it hard for people to leave.
Profitability online in 99% of businesses comes down to a company providing a product that many people really want and a huge barrier of exit to make it PAINFUL to leave.
And while we’re at…
WEB 2.0 IS TOTAL BULLSHIT TOO.
All “Web 2.0″ is, is a dumb label that the Tech industry came up with to try and make Wall Street forget how much they suck at actually creating companies that MAKE MONEY.
“Ohhh, no, Web 2.0 is definitely real… it’s all about user generated content and more interaction!”
REALLY?
Usenet. Discussion forums. Epinions. Consumer Reports. CuSeeMe (video conferencing developed by Cornell in the early 1990s). Enough said.
User generated content and “social media” have been around since 1990. This isn’t “Web 2.0″ this is “Let us have a do-over because you know we suck at building things that make money.”
“Do As I Say, Not As I Do” should be Google’s new motto.
Again, while this “Data Portability” pipedream sounds nice and cozy, it goes against the profit interests of the companies IN CONTROL.
>could link back to the first social network…
I’d tend to think Linked Data and Data Portability are two different things. The latter is more about data migration and/or service or provider migration (in addition to being able to link)..
@19 – mightbe a simpler summary of logic: “Monopoly is good. Anti-trust legistrations are all bullshit.”
[I don't necessarily disagree with that btw]
@21 – because that’s the best “competitive advantage”, because there’s no competition.
Here is another business reason:
Ok, so since I am a capitalist and I enjoy facebook, I am in a facebook group called, “i am a capitalist pig, suck me hard”. Here, I made a lot of friends, but all we can do is post messages to each other and look at each other’s pics.
So, this new company sees the opp for a niche social network and starts, capitalistz.com and this is great because it has all this new and amazing functionality that facebook doesn’t have, such as the ability to hate hippies by putting a virtual arrow thru their heart, etc. First thing I do, is invite all my facebook friends from my fav group. Now capitalistz.com value just rose due to the increase in relevant members.
This is the economic reason for joining:
1) similar companies will die, the best will survive. this is great and will push business people to come up with creative ideas rather than making copies (stop recreating digg please). It encourages businesses to think strategically and complementary. i.e. how can i leverage your product? (all the twitter apps and mashups are good examples). so we are talking basic econ here, an increase in complementary products. more peanut butter and jelly.
2) and maybe there will be more companies that partner up. if our code can work together then buy each other out for godsake and make 1 product that works well instead of 4 products that suck. (i.e. friendfeed.com, streem.us, tumblr.com, and soup.io)
3) there will be less businesses. the “ease of entry” is not always a good thing. What has happen here is there is way too much out there and a lot of it sucks. I waste hours surfing the net (i kinda get paid for it tho) and it’s totally inefficient. I mean, goddamn! there are a lot of websites out there.
BOTTOM LINE: It’s time to get real. Clean up the fing internet please.
Umm. Not that Capitalist Choncho is wrong in general about how to conduct business and that the internet is about business in the first place, but in terms of a prediction of what’s going to happen, I’m pretty sure he’s wrong.
All that needs to happen is that users find themselves getting more of what they want and happier in an Open Social Data Portability type of environment, and more and more companies start going that route (new and old companies), and eventually, companies like Facebook have to follow suit.
Of course its all bullshit when a company like Facebook joins the Data Portability workgroup. They’re’ just saying it to be like: “Look at me, I’m OPEN…bla bla bla!”
So it’s definitely a stupid expectation to think these companies will do this and lead the way if they have to. And the only way to make this happen quickly is pretty much if Facebook leads the way in this, which they won’t in actuality. So, it’s going to take like 2.5 years of small startups chipping away at the Open thing, making technologies like RDF, APML, FOAF, etc more commonplace. And ultimately, only the users will suffer. They could have Data Portability now, but they won’t because it’s not financially viable for the Heavy Hitters.
And I’m totally fine with this, because it’s friggin capitalism. And I too am not here for fun and games.
James
from
http://FaceySpacey.com Your One Stop Social Media Shop
I think the only people caring about data portability are the geeks and nerds who build apps to try to make money off the regular people. Do these people actually think users jump from one social networking site to another once a week? No, in fact chances are the user probably has 1 social networking site that he is content with and the hell with the rest of them.
As a user, if I’m truly interested in your product, you can trust me to take the extra 5 minutes and create an account.
Exactly. The timeline with which regular people jump around changing their routine favorite destinations is several times longer than how much time it takes a Web 2.0 geek to build 3 startup websites. Most people will be content using Youtube for the next 5 years. Face it–they’ve been content using the Television for their whole life.
They’re just moving at a slower rate with technology than everyone else. Honestly, Youtube and Facebook handle most of their online needs. Do they really need Twine-like super semantic AI-style recommendations. Twine isn’t going to do anything but show smarter more business-savvy, people-oriented techs what is possible. If anything, they will strike a deal where Facebook uses their system to power recommendations.
All this crap is just way too much for regular people. period. Call me if you want my company to build some of it though. I’d be more than happy to help you.
James
from
http://FaceySpacey.com Your One Stop Social/Semantic Media Shop
scoble conducted an interview with me on the subject recently:
http://scobleiz...ityorg-just-pr/
The often lost message when digesting material relating to “Linked Data” and an adjunct to “Linked Documents” is that we are simply enhancing where the Hyperlink (href) takes you. If you note “href” has “ref” in it, meaning: you are referencing a data object on the Web of type “Document”. The Linked Data Web (nee. Semantic Web) is simply saying: there are other data objects on the Web that we can Reference via a hyperlink. Thus, we have the emerging term: Hyperdata as the Linked Data analog of Hypertext.
Here is a simple example of a Linked Data Reference via a Linked Data Web ID (constructured using the familiar URL format):
http://dbpedia....rce/Linked_Data
You will note that it will return a normal Web Document, but note how the ability to expose related data via hyperlinks is a natural part of the materialized Web Document. Each link is a Data Link that can be consumed as traditional HTML or if you so choose (i.e. you have alernative perspectives you seek to create) RDF which exposes the raw data and all its relationships.
wow. who knew Tim Berners-Lee would inspire such passion in the comments!
One obvious HUGE problem is that the second you open up user data, the unscrupulous folks out there will scrape you into porn, ponzi, and other scheme sites faster than you can say “porn is awesome”.
Here’s the question…if MySpace and (now) Facebook can’t stop the spammers from ruining the internal user experience within their own closed network systems, how on God’s green earth will open, cross-pollinated, FOAF networks do it?
I for one will be looking for rest stops on the information super highway
@ capitalist pigs… whats your position on net neutrality? Seems like Comcast and the rest just want to harvest the value from their ‘competitive positioning’… no?
Is this a debate about the state of the web today, or what it “should be”? It would seem that TBL is the perfect man to conceive of the open web, seeing as how he donated his contribution to your “capitalist” opportunity.
There is a larger notion of capitalism that the web is enabling… it is one that starts with the community marketplace as the core value commodity, individually owned by each identity that creates its transient structure. Its transience is absolute, and any concept that does not take that into account will find itself on the outside looking in eventually. Today, consumers have limited powers… but that is not always going to be the case. So the challenge then is to search for answers to the problems that have been raised here, and many more. Do not be fooled into thinking that the web today is much of anything in relation to what it will one day become. Web 2.0 may only be a marketing slogan, but it was necessary to kick-start a new round of momentum in the development of the web. Companies have begun buying into openness. None of us want the version of the web that the RIAA would have us experience… and that is the problem with the capitalist pig.
Your ideas are old… tried… tested…known… proven…
The web is new… untried… untested…fertile… developmental by nature… there is potentially a 14 year old kid working right now on an idea that will change the developmental curve of the web forever… when have you ever seen something like that before?
So, you are right pig. You see the world as it is.
But here is what I see. I, as any user of the web, have yet to be identified properly on this network. I am the owner of my identity. My participation is a commodity yet to be properly organized for the long term. Anyone wishing to service my identity should begin to realize that a day is coming when, as a capitalist owner of my individual marketplace, I am in the driver seat, and the value of our relationship is solely based on the value of the service you wish to provide. The data you hold about me and my activities is based on permissions I give to you to handle such data. Your rights to use said data are not written in stone.
The web is an immature idea still… passionately immature.