Social Media Is Opening Up

I hate having a separate account profile for every single social media website in which I participate. In an average day I log onto (with different account info!) what I consider the bare minimum of social sites that I must maintain: Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, MySpace, YouTube, Digg, Twitter, and WordPress. Add to this the numerous online newspaper sites, bulletin boards, and other services (like Scribd, UStream, Talkshoe, Surrge, andTwine) that I signed up for because they seem pretty useful but can barely squeeze in the time to check out since I’m busy with the social “obligations” of my other sites. I’ve become socially overwhelmed online, and truth be told, the whole thing has become a bit of a chore. I’m just about ready to burn out on this form of socializing unless someone can come up with a useful and secure solution to managing my identity online across multiple sites.

Enter MySpace, Google, and Facebook, who for the past year have been scrambling to be the first to change the way we socialize online by making social networking more open. By open, I mean a couple of things: Open as in open source, where the platforms and technologies used to power Facebook and MySpace are unlocked to developers so that widgets and third-party applications can be developed to enhance the sites, but also open in the sense that the user’s data can be freed to interact with other websites and appear in other online contexts. For instance, your Twitter status could appear in Facebook profiles, or a new picture added in Flickr could show up on your MySpace homepage. This is also known as data portability.

In the last half of 2007 these companies made a show of opening up their sites to developers–the proven method to fast track the adoption and advancement of your product, and get some cool free apps in the process. In quick succession, Facebook and then Google with a MySpace partnership announced products that would eventually give developers deep access to APIs in order to create third-party applications. Now in the first half of 2008, we’re seeing social networking companies begin to address what the public has started to demand: a way to break social data out of the “walled gardens” of its originating social site.

To provide overall context to the developments in the past year, I’ve charted a rough timeline with links to relevant articles and sites as well as a description of the technologies involved. It’s still unclear how users will respond to these new products and which one will become the most widely adopted. To lead the change in the social web will rely a great deal on which products users find most secure and private, most useful and user-friendly, and most flexible, open, and transparent.

• May 27, 2007
  Facebook Launches “Open Platform”
  Possibly as a way to change the game on MySpace, who was expressing concern with third-party widgets, Facebook creates “Open Platform” that allows developers deep access to Facebook’s APIs opening the possibility for any conceivable third party application to run on the Facebook platform.
• September 21, 2007
  Google Challenges Facebook’s Openness
  Techcrunch posted details about a confidential meeting at Google where it was decided Google would go head-to-head with Facebook’s “Open Platform” in the competition to become the most open service on the net.
• November 1, 2007
  Google and MySpace Announce “OpenSocial” Partnership
  True to their confidential word, Google partnered up with MySpace to challenge Facebook’s “Open Platform” with “OpenSocial” – a set of common APIs that unlike Facebook would allow developers to create applications for any social networking site.
• May 8, 2008
  MySpace launches “Data Availability”
  In partnership with Yahoo!, eBay, and Twitter, this project would allow the movement of MySpace data into partner websites. The partners can combine MySpace data with their own and are not limited to presenting it in widgets, frames, etc. MySpace plans to allow smaller partners to incorporate MySpace data in the future.
• May 9, 2008
  Facebook announces “Facebook Connect”
  Facebook Connect allows a user to integrate their Facebook profile data and networks to any partner website, including sites like Digg.com.
• May 12, 2008
  Google announces “Friend Connect”
  Friend Connect allows you to add social networking features to ANY site by inserting code snippets. In addition, the service would use public APIs from Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Plaxo, and others in order to allow those profiles to also be linked to any site that was using the Friend Connect code.
• May 17, 2008
  Facebook puts an end to Friend Connect Connection
  In a not so surprising move (since they have their own competitive product), Facebook, who was announced as a Google Friend Connect partner, bans the utility from accessing Facebook data claiming privacy issues with the Google product. Oddly enough, a few weeks later, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic filed a 35-page privacy complaint against Facebook claiming the company violates the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. http://www.cippic.ca/en/.

It’s clear from the activities of the past year that the competition to see who will become the most open online property is quite fierce.

In addition to the developments of individual companies, the online industry in general is starting to push towards an open Internet. This effort is being spearheaded by organizations like DataPortability.org, http://dataportability.org/. Founded in November 2007, the DataPortability Project is a grassroots effort that wants “to put existing technologies, techniques, policies and initiatives in context in order to facilitate translation, education, advocacy and ultimately implementation of data portability. Portability is defined as both physically moving data or simply porting the context in which the data is used.” The efforts of these and like-minded organizations hope to solve some primary issues of data portability. As DataPortability.org describes it:

• Vendors: Vendors have spent many years and millions of dollars to build networks that people like and use; but what do they get out of sharing their data with potentially competing businesses? The challenge before us is to explain the economic and business benefits of being open.
• Consumers: Many consumers have privacy concerns. A key challenge for the DataPortability group will be to explain how proper implementation of the DataPortability Blueprints will actually improve user privacy and control.
• Standards and Technology: While many have been working on the standards and technologies that make data portable, there has, until now, not been a complete, cohesive and simple story for vendors, consumers and developers to follow.

I like the ideas set forth by the Data Portability Project about a truly open Internet where users control their content and data and can move it about freely and for free. However, I can’t help but wonder how opening up social network data will impact advertising revenues, and therefore longevity, for these sites. Is openness antithetical to the current advertising model on social networking sites? For instance, say my favorite Origami enthusiasts’ website decides to incorporate social networking data from Facebook. If I start spending more time on the Origami site with like-minded Facebook friends, who’s going to be serving me ads and who’s going to be making ad revenues? Would Facebook data portability include embedded ads? Or would sites that port social media data into their own sites share advertising revenues with the social networking site? Will websites start paying to incorporate social data?

I’m sure that the question of who makes the money in an open Internet is in the minds of all online companies who primarily make their money from other people’s data and content. At this point, as open technologies are still being developed, it’s unclear how companies will address the profit part of this equation. More than anything I’m just curious as to how the online marketing and advertising industry will have to evolve to embrace this new way of thinking about online data.

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