Calls for Social Networks to open up

"Humans are migratory beasts and as soon as they figure out that they’ve been locked-in-they’ll rebel."
Marc Canter
friendster.gifAs Facebook faces a lawsuit from uni-peers of founder Mark Zuckerberg claiming he stole the idea from them, Wired publishes a debate of why Facebook - and other social networks need to be open. With social networks evolving into operating systems for how you stay in touch with your friends and family - as  well as share and consume media - the advantages of an open system (like the web itself) over a closed system, controlled by one company (like Microsoft) are pretty clear.

That said, given the size of the social capital which networks such as facebook and myspace create and earn from their users (through ads), it may only be a matter of time before the web creates its own more open alternatives, as Dan Farber suggests on ZDNet (who also points out that Marc Canter has long been talking about this). A campaign for 'transportable identity' has been started by Nick O'Neil on his unofficial Facebook blog. To paraphrase someone, information is like water, always running towards the biggest, most open ocean, corroding whatever stands in  its way. Personally I must admit to be a little addicted to the 'book, but I'm ready to move on if (when) it becomes part of some big multinational media behemoth. Sooner or later a user-owned and run system will evolve, and we can finally talk about web 3.0. If only someone, like a public agency, would invest in creating an open source / open standards social network, with the same sort of backing MyFilms received. (For those interested in trying to start one up, Wired has published a Wiki on how to build a Facebook using open tools).

 

 

From the Wired wiki:

With a little savvy, anyone can create a page that hosts all of the essential stuff one would find on a Facebook profile that can be set up with the same plug-and-play ease. You'll have to store all of your photos, videos, and contacts elsewhere, but at least you'll be able to get to your stuff.

Start by setting up a blog. Say what's on your mind. Unlike your blog on Facebook or MySpace, everyone will be able to read it.

From there, you can pull in your photos from Flickr or Zooomr, show off your impeccible musical tastes hosted at iLike or Last.fm, share your favorite web bookmarks from del.icio.us or Ma.gnolia and put up a list of your most recent reads using Shelfari or LibraryThing.

All of these services have open APIs, making it easy for third-party developers to build widgets for displaying public data stored there. As a result, many such tools exist.

Need to keep up to date with your friend's activities? Pull in a feed from their blog or from their Twitter page. The Upcoming event notification service has a dead simple code generator that will create a widget listing all of the events you plan to attend, as well as those your friends are interested in. Like to chat? Meebo offers an embeddable widget for AIM chatting, and Jaxtr does the same for SMS. You can even drop in a Skype button that lets your friends call you with one click.

One of Facebook's unique features is the "everything in one place" feed service (Mini-feeds and News Feeds), but you can build such a thing yourself. Just create an account at one of the many feed re-mixing sites like Yahoo Pipes, FeedShake or FeedBlendr. Plug in all the feeds from the various sources you want to track and paste the resulting URL into a widget on your site. Voila.

The free blogging software from WordPress has all of the functionality to let you embed these widgets and RSS streams. WordPress also has a thriving plug-in ecosystem, so it's likely a developer somewhere has done much of the dirty work for you. Alternatively, want to create your own Facebook? Elgg is an open source solution that embraces open standards; People Aggregator is a commercial solution, and Ning allows you to host networks on a central server. All have made a public commitment to opening up their data.

An even easier option is to use a sharable and customizable start page from Pageflakes or Protopage. Pageflakes in particular allows you to build a customized chunk of cyberspace that aggregates all of your desired content just like Facebook, which you can then publish publicly (Pageflakes calls this a "Pagecast"). And beyond a simple user registration, Pageflakes doesn't lock in any of your personal data.