Jeff Jarvis: I want the opposite of what Facebook just did
thefastertimes.com
thefastertimes.com
Rishad Tobaccowala tweeted: “you are right. What we want closed (our data) they want open. What we want open (create and transfer) they want closed.”
There's room for someone to give us what we want. What if there was a P2P open source app about communication / status / notification?
A web browser would be a good platform for this to reside in. There would have to be a daemon/service component as well. Perhaps a cloud component, but with distributed control and controlled encrypted access, so only immediately linked nodes could ever be compromised.
your browser client gets permission to subscribe to a "friend" and keeps up to date via [something like] rss over [something like] tor.
modified google/blogger, default private +
existing rss that blogger already has +
some kind of permission/auth mechanism
Not as free/open as you might like, but quicker/easier to implement.
Even though Google is fumbling this service, it really could launch decentralized social networking services.
They just need a 'phase 1' client that draws better imaginary walls between the 'parts' of the service, to fit most users' current conception of how the internet works.
People aren't 'getting' the idea that an email, a chat and a picture archive are the same thing under the hood. Google, meanwhile, is so proud of the technical possibilities that they won't shut up about that part. And it's confusing the crap out of the users they should be enticing.
Google needs to build that more-traditional-looking client and pitch it as a decentralized Facebook competitor.
The one key element that makes the web possible, isn't HTML, HTTP, CSS, blah, blah, blah... it is the fact that it is decentralized. If for some reason we are tricked into moving away from this we are not longer using the web. We are just using AOL 2.0 - Google, Facebook, twitter, bit.ly.... are all trying take control of not users, but their information and the web.
Don’t think it will happen... it already has. The URL is the essence of how the web works and you no longer control yours. Link shortening, makes it easier to paste and share links but it breaks the web. Currently, I am sitting in China writing this comment and every link that bit.ly has under its control are completely useless to every person in China. My slogan that I came up with for Bit.ly is "Billions of links useless to billions of people!" Please don’t respond its China’s fault; that is too simple. The issue is that we haven’t responded fast enough from a standards perspective to combat this hijacking. The solution is actually quite simple to implement.
Social networking requires a critical mass; the critical piece of building an open architecture isn't writing the software and putting a site up, it's convincing enough people to join to make the experience worthwhile. And for that you need a better carrot than geek fodder.
That's extremely condescending. Everyone I know wishes they had better control over their privacy on Facebook. The problem is that properly understanding and maintaining Facebook's current privacy controls would probably take several hours a month of analysis. That's intentional - Facebook is making the privacy controls too complex, and changing them too frequently for anyone to manage them properly.
Sure -- everyone you know. However, the average person has little or no interest in learning about and/or configuring privacy features.
Sure, you need to wrap features into the protocol that will appeal to FB people. You should absolutely take the opportunity to solve some real problems. But the open architecture is crucial to protecting privacy. Without competition, no flavor-of-the-month network has incentive to put user needs ahead of its own wants.
Just look at history. MySpace went from hero to zero in the blink of an eye.
Such a startup would have to operate like Craigslist. It would have traction because it's there to provide functionality for users, not to maximize profits.
Reddit-style ads would pay for cloud resources, with the ability to opt-out by paying for services directly. By reddit-style, I mean that the ads can be shared with your friend network and voted up or down.
Smartphones and the iPad could be used to implement such a network.
Now, one of these providers might be ad-supported, but I would gladly pay $10/month for ad-free Facebook if it was just like a hosting provider - no data crawling, no new features, basically it's the job of the people I'm paying to make sure I can back up my data and that others can access it subject to my privacy controls.
Email anyone?
I just wanted to point out that authentication and security for emails is possible.
I think this is a beneficial effect of the rather strict data protection laws in Europe. Especially since one of the *VZ properties explicitly targets minors, they had to come up with a novel solution that actually takes user data protection into account.
Their opt-out-by-default (that is, they opt you in) policy as well as Google's--anybody's--drives me nuts! It is EVIL! They argue that they provide you with value but who are Google and Facebook to decide what value means to you and when you should have it shoved down your throat? We own our data, and we get to decide who to share it with and when as we go, not by default.
I agree with J. Jarvis, Facebook is clearly thinking about themselves and the opportunity to finally bootstrap and rule the ever-so-elusive semantic web--that's really what they're building if one thinks about it w/ their Open Graph protocol. They want to rule this upcoming decade, they want to cut into Google's ad revenue with machine readable content, explicit interests, real identities, "personalization", etc.
I am not quite sure what it is mocking, but I like it.
There have been proposals for intermediated privacy settings controlled by users since the early 2000's (at least). The problem is that commercial websites never wanted to put that control in the user's hands.
Now Facebook "releases" what is essentially a siphon on your online activity, and the tech press lauds it as some kind of innovation.
Some days it seems like everywhere I turn, I see people doing the exact opposite of what is good for them. It's really bizarre.
Surely there is a market opportunity here? And whatever happened to opensocial?
But like Jeff Jarvis says: Facebook should give us the control of which sites get instant personalization etc. It's like walking through a mall and every time you enter a shop you're not sure if you're wearing clothes or not.
Currently, I have my Facebook access running through one browser that is doing nothing else. I use other browsers for other access. I would disallow Flash "super cookies" except that that borks a few other sites I access, so I wipe them at each shut down. (I'm also not entirely trustful of Adobe's online control panel and "black box" implementation.) I'm now considering controlling them yet more aggressively, as I see them as a means of cross-browser communication during the course of access that takes place between wipes.
All that aside, I too am becoming quite uneasy with Facebook. Opera's Unite continues to intrigue me, and if I can shake some time and energy free, I'd like to look at that more, not just or primarily for myself but also for friends who may want something "simple" to implement that places their data under their own control.
Most, however, won't want to leave the convenience -- and the "games" -- of Facebook. At least their browser should keep Facebook locked up in its own little pen, segregated if and as they wish from the rest of their online access.