The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting Pieces Together
ACTA Guide, Part 1: The Talks To-Date
ACTA Guide, Part 2: The Documents (Official and Leaked)
ACTA Guide, Part 3: Transparency and ACTA Secrecy
Getting Social Networks to Socialize |
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Tuesday August 14, 2007
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Appeared in the Toronto Star on August 13, 2007 as Getting Social Networking Sites to Socialize Appeared in the Tyee on August 14, 2007 as Cracking Open Social Networks Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have become part of the daily routine for millions of Internet users who connect with friends, share photos, and reach out to other people with similar interests. The popularity of social networks has resulted in an unfortunate by-product, however - the mushrooming number of requests that come from dozens of these sites. While not quite spam, the steady stream of requests for Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, Dopplr travellers, or Plaxo contact updates, highlights the lack of interoperability between social network sites and significantly undermines their usefulness. The interoperability issue is likely to become more prominent in the months ahead as hundreds of specialty social networking sites covering virtually every area of interest from dogs to cooking, jostle for new users. In fact, services such as Ning now enable anyone to create their own social network site. The result is that Internet users are repeatedly required to re-enter their personal information for each new network they join and find that each network is effectively a "walled garden", where the benefits of the network are artificially limited by the inability to link a friend in Facebook with one in MySpace. These limitations are particularly striking when viewed from a global perspective. While Facebook is a leader in Canada (as well as in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Norway), nearly a dozen other sites hold leadership positions in other countries. These include:
The obvious solution is to facilitate greater interoperability between social networking sites, thereby enabling users to better control their personal information and reduce the need for duplication, while simultaneously enhancing the value of all social networks by removing the current barriers. This suggestion is not new - experts began commenting on the desirability of open social networks years ago - yet there are reasons to believe that the opportunity for greater interoperability may have finally arrived. First, the focus on the benefits of interoperability cut across a wide range of technological issues including recent calls for interoperable wireless networks and the music industry's recognition of the need to offer downloads that operates with all music players. Moreover, the frustrations associated with the initial lack of instant messaging interoperability serves as an important reminder of how the issue resonates with consumers. Second, there are signs that the social networking industry recognizes the value of openness. Facebook moved toward an open platform for software developers this spring, enabling third party developer to bring thousands of new Facebook applications to market. Similarly, Plaxo recently launched a service called Pulse, a social networking aggregator that works with many popular sites. Third, there is mounting interest in developing open standards for social networks that would facilitate greater interoperability. For example, the Liberty Alliance and Project Higgins are two privacy-focused identity management initiatives that claim to provide users with the ability to manage their personal information across social networks in a secure and trusted manner. The irony of the current generation of online social networks is that although their premise is leveraging the Internet to connect people, their own lack of interconnectedness is stifling their potential. Some services may believe that it is in their economic interest to stick to a walled garden approach; however, given the global divisions within the social networking world, the mix of language, user preferences, and network effects, it is unlikely that one or two services will capture the global marketplace. The better approach - for users and the sites themselves - would be to work toward a world of interoperable social networking. Michael Geist holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He can reached at mgeist@uottawa.ca or online at www.michaelgeist.ca. Comments (3)
Julius Q.
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A Privacy Advocate Sounds like a task for a (globally) interoperable identity management system. I wonder how you imagine this could be accomplished in the most privacy-friendly manner? |
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Greg J. Smith Ha, something is in the air at the moment, I think this is going to be a huge discussion over the next several months. OpenID is not enough! I posted some commentary on this topic yesterday on my blog Serial Consign. The specific aspect of interoperability that interests me is the idea of the .OFF (Open Friend Format) proposed by Pete Cashmore in a recent Mashable post. Jyri Engestrmmmmmm's most recent post is also worth taking a look at. |
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