Brad Fitzpatrick, The Creator Of LiveJournal, On The Long Road To Open Social Networks
Wired's Compiler blog had an interview piece recently with Brad Fitzpatrick, creator of one of the first popular blog sites LiveJournal, about the future of social networking.
As Fitzpatrick sees it, in order for the social networking movement to develop, it will need to become de-centralised: the information that you submit to one site will be held in a central location and will be accessed by a multitude of different platforms for a variety of reasons. Moreover, he says, sites should begin developing practices of sharing information between one another; information you submit to Facebook about your current employment, for example, could be passed on to a job-hunting website should you decide to change jobs. Ditto internet dating sites, online forums and other forms of online social interaction, such as commenting on YouTube videos. Granted, some of this is already possible with things such as OpenID, but many sites have yet to cotton on to the vast new landscape which could be created by merging and opening up access to all the information that already exists. The problem at the moment is that Facebook and other similar sites function as 'gated' communities -- if you post a link using fb's share applet, only those who you've selected as friends will be able to view it. Want other people to see it too? You'll have to switch to a different place -- a blog, or Twitter, or text messaging -- in order to get the "Hey, check this cool video out!" meessage out there, so to speak.
The obvious retaliation is the privacy claim -- "What if I don't want all those sites seeing my information?!". Well, chances are they already can: Facebook already displays information about you, no matter how stringently you've set your privacy settings. The information's out there, why not just put it all together?
See also "Slap in the Facebook: It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up".
As Fitzpatrick sees it, in order for the social networking movement to develop, it will need to become de-centralised: the information that you submit to one site will be held in a central location and will be accessed by a multitude of different platforms for a variety of reasons. Moreover, he says, sites should begin developing practices of sharing information between one another; information you submit to Facebook about your current employment, for example, could be passed on to a job-hunting website should you decide to change jobs. Ditto internet dating sites, online forums and other forms of online social interaction, such as commenting on YouTube videos. Granted, some of this is already possible with things such as OpenID, but many sites have yet to cotton on to the vast new landscape which could be created by merging and opening up access to all the information that already exists. The problem at the moment is that Facebook and other similar sites function as 'gated' communities -- if you post a link using fb's share applet, only those who you've selected as friends will be able to view it. Want other people to see it too? You'll have to switch to a different place -- a blog, or Twitter, or text messaging -- in order to get the "Hey, check this cool video out!" meessage out there, so to speak.
The obvious retaliation is the privacy claim -- "What if I don't want all those sites seeing my information?!". Well, chances are they already can: Facebook already displays information about you, no matter how stringently you've set your privacy settings. The information's out there, why not just put it all together?
See also "Slap in the Facebook: It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up".
posted by Hugh at 4:37 PM
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