The Real McCrea

In another sprint, Joseph Smarr and the team at Plaxo, working closely with their counterparts at Google, now have Plaxo/Friend Connect integration live. Joseph has a nice writeup on the Plaxo blog. [Reminder/disclaimer: I work at Plaxo.] [Screenshot below.]  

As regular readers know, I am a strong proponent of letting users access their local piece of the social graph at services all over the web. Clearly, Plaxo sees a market opportunity to become a major “social graph provider,” and this integration with Google Friend Connect is a good sign of progress in that effort. It is especially cool to see the “virtuous cycle” features of the integration; feeds of content flow back into Pulse from the Friend Connect site, enabling social discovery. In many ways, this looks like the beginning of the “Social Web.”

I’m currentyl in Washington, D.C. for the Graphing Social Patterns East conference, and will be speaking on a panel this afternoon on the Privacy and Data Portability. Facebook’s Dave Morin will be on it, so today’s news on Google Friend Connect should make for some interesting discussion.

Reactions coming in now. Nice post by David Recordon.

In another part of its bold “Open Strategy”, Yahoo today announced public availability of its Address Book API. Plaxo, always first to embrace a new open technology, is already live with support, along with another major contact-aware service provider, LinkedIn.

This is an important step in the opening up of the Social Web. A few months ago, the only way to help a user import their contacts into a social web app was to ask them for their webmail username and password. Clearly, that’s a bad idea, but in the absence of address book APIs, it at least worked. Now, the Big Three all have contacts APIs: Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! each have come out with APIs that give users secure access to their address books.

I sat down with Joseph Smarr of Plaxo to get the inside scoop. My interview is here:

And here’s coverage from TechCrunch’s Mark Hendrickson and from CNET’s Stephen Shankland.

[Disclaimer/reminder: I work for Plaxo, a company covered in this post.]

I’m back from two days at the Google IO developer conference in San Francisco. Lots of great sessions in the “hallway track,” with plenty of productive discussions around moving the ball forward on open standards for the Social Web. Great chats with David Recordon, Chris Messina, and many other luminaries. And, not surprisingly, I also attended the talk by Joseph Smarr of Plaxo. It was standing room only, and Joseph did a tour-de-force presentation that explained all the key building blocks and how they fit together. He even teased the crowd with a little insight into an interesting project that’s creating an open spec for secure exchange of address book and friends list data. Listen for it toward the end of the clip above. His talk got a great round of applause, as well as some nice tweets.

Here are a few of my pics from his animated speech. Is it me, or does he look like a young Bill Gates conducting a symphony orchestra?

Update:

Joseph’s put his presentation up over at his blog.

According to Facebook’s blog, the popular social utility just added a bunch of new feeds to its recently launched “import feature”. Product manager Peter X. Deng writes:

A few weeks ago, we told you about the new ability to import stories into your Mini-Feed from other sites. Since then, we’ve been working on increasing the number of sites that work with this feature. We’re happy to report that now, you can import activity from YouTube, StumbleUpon, Hulu, Pandora, Last.fm, and Google Reader in addition to Flickr, Picasa, Digg, Yelp and del.icio.us.

Facebook is clearly seeing value in the “aggregator” market opportunity pioneered by Plaxo [reminder/disclaimer: I head up marketing there], with their “Pulse” offfering, and popularized with the early adopter crowd by FriendFeed. I’m a big believer that Aggregators will play a vital role in the emerging ecosystem of the Social Web, giving users a convenient way to stay on top of what their friends and family are doing at a large and growing list of socially-enabled sites. Aggregators will perform the vital function of “social discovery” in the virtuous cycle of the Social Web, visualized below:

In his coverage of this news, Mashable’s Adam Ostrow points out the parallel with what Plaxo and Comcast are talking about:

The Hulu integration is a pretty cool idea also that was hinted at earlier in the week – now your Facebook friends will know what TV shows you’re watching on the video service – similar to what Comcast appears to have in mind with its Plaxo acquisition.

Other early coverage and analysis by VentureBeats MG Siegler with a piece entitled, “Facebook triples the number of services you can import into your feed — moving in on FriendFeed?“.

It is really great to see how the topic of data portability and opening up of the Social Web has come to the forefront, as if a revolution were fomenting. I welcome back to the blogosphere, Dare Obasanjo, with a cogent assessment of the recent announcements from Google, Facebook, and MySpace. And I was totally jazzed by tonight’s (as always) irreverent post by Dave “500 Hats” McClure, focused on the *real issue* of the portability of one’s true local piece of the social graph, that short list of people I really know and care about.

This all follows in the wake of a riveting Gillmor Gang of Friday morning, in which Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Steve Gillmor, Marc Canter, Chris Saad, and others beat each other up over the (important) nuances around who owns what data and what can/should be portable to where.

As my readers know, I am a staunch and perhaps extreme supporter of the notions behind the Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web, co-authored by Plaxo’s Joseph Smarr, Marc Canter, Michael Arrington, and Robert Scoble.

But you may not know that I am really keenly interested in the real-world realtionships, not the early adopter, blogger-follow-blogger version of the Social Web. I was juiced to see Dave McClure say in such colorful language what he was looking for:

what I DO WANT:

popup the MOST RELEVANT 5-10 peeps who meet certain key criteria

use an intelligent combination of shared interests & messaging frequency to figure out who these “TOP” friends are (for the given context)
let me select 1-3 of them to invite & checkout an awesome [video game | baby stroller | new book | really good pr0n] i just found

In many ways, that is exactly what I and the rest of the team at Plaxo [disclosure/reminder: I head up marketing there] have been focused on the past year with Pulse. We are *not* trying to create another place for you to meet friends-of-friends or business-connections-of-business-connections. Indeed, we are keen on unlocking the value of making “social media” a shared experience for you and your family, real friends, and tight connections in business (such as your co-workers). And it is that “local piece of your true social graph” that we want to set free (under your control).

And, also note Dave’s brilliant spin on viral: instead of focusing on “let me invite you to yet another service,” there is a key twist, which is to focus on the content. At Plaxo, we call this “super-sharing,” the notion of being able to share a collection of photos, a link, a video, a poll, or just about anything with absolutely anyone — regardless of whether they are a member of the service or not! We’re three-quarters of the way toward that vision, and it is a much more compelling way of interesting non-members in a social media service.

In my view, we enter a really exciting time, as all of the social networks and big Internet companies are racing to out-open each other. In such a flat world of the Social Web, where will real value be created? For sure, it will come from which provider has the most genuine, well-articulated (family vs. friend vs. business), and portable social graph.

In other words, I welcome the open competition of the coming “social graph wars.” Who will win? A billion mainstream Internet users all over the planet!

P.S. I agree with Marc Canter that Microsoft is making some great moves with regard to data portability:

It’s GREAT to see Dare Obasanjo blogging again! He groks the three vaporware announcements and analyzes it in his own unique grok-ed-ness. This dude rocks. His homeboy Angus Logan also rocks and made it clear at DSS2 that MICROSOFT is the only platform that enables one to TAKE THEIR DATA with them! Right on to Dare and Angus and Inder - and their boos Mr. Treadwell! Way to act contrarian dudes!

[Caption: Dave Morin of Facebook at Google's CampFire One event, to the right of David Recordon of OpenID fame]

The biggest surprise in Google’s announcement of Friend Connect was Facebook’s participation as a “social graph provider.”

As a participant in and survivor of “Scoblegate,” I know all too well what a big deal it would be for Facebook to allow portability of their social graph to Google’s visionary project to socially-enable the long-tail of the Web.

At Monday’s CampFire One event on the Google campus, I was excited to see Dave Morin, who heads up the Platform at Facebook. Were they really participating in Google Friend Connect? Man, I knew this was big, but that would make it something HUGE!

Today, we all learned from Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, that Facebook has decided to *not* participate in this exciting opportunity. In an official Facebook blogpost Facebook reveals their heartburn over privacy issues and violation of various Facebook terms and conditions. So, they blocked Google’s Friend Connect application. Wow!

Could it really be true? At Plaxo (disclaimer/reminder: I head up marketing there), we believe that Google’s Friend Connect represents an enormous opportunity for the social networks participating as Social Graph Providers. As they light up the long tail of the Social Web, we want our users to be able to fully leverage their investment in creating a truly useful, fully-articulated social graph within Plaxo Pulse, categorizing their real-world relationships as family, friend, or business. We want our users to be able to take their local piece of the social graph with them, wherever they go across the Social Web. And we are confident that Google’s Friend Connect is a great vehicle for making that a reality.

Is it really possible that Facebook will cede this market opportunity to us? As a business person, I sure hope so!

But as a citizen of the Web, I hope not. Openess and competition leads to innovation and more choices.

I can hardly wait to see how this all plays out! Here’s the latest on the drama, again from TechCrunch.

And Dave, I’m not really trying to harsh on you or Facebook here. I do believe you guys are working on opening up, and am keen to hear the details when you’re ready. (And I hope you’re not reading all this from your vacation in Hawaii. Aloha.)

And if you’re thirsting for more, here’s a link to a video Robert Scoble shot at the Google CampFire One event. He interviews me before it all gets going, but if you make it to the end, you can see Dave Morin arrive and give his props to Scoble.

This is a big day for the Social Web. Plaxo, my employer, and one of the strongest advocates for opening up the Social Web has some big news. Announcing that they’ve reached a definitive agreement to be acquired by Comcast. The vision is big, and it’s all goodness for the open Social Web story and how it can go mainstream in a big way. Great stuff.

Well, another “big week” is off with a bang! Google has just announced its Friend Connect project along with Plaxo [reminder/disclaimer: I head up marketing there], who is announcing they’re becoming a “social graph provider” in support of the initiative.

Dan Farber of CNET interviewed me and has a nice writeup on Google Friend Connect and how it compares with last week’s announcements from MySpace and Facebook. Here’s an excerpt:

John McCrea, vice president of marketing at Plaxo, said that Google’s Friend Connect is “flipping the model,” from walled gardens to a more open Social Web.

“Instead of widgetizing apps and bolting them on to some corporation’s proprietary social graph, why not widgetize the social graph and socially-enable any website or web page?

That’s a big, bold vision that Plaxo is 100% aligned with. As to Facebook and MySpace, it is certainly great to read the rhetoric they are now putting forth. The meme of data portability, open Social Web, and Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web has certainly caught on!

Alas, the devil is in the details, and we haven’t seen any details (yet) from Facebook, just a Friday blog post signaling intent. Might be great, and we hope it is, but it’s not clear what the actual substance will be. With regard to MySpace, the rhetoric is over-the-top goodness, including a declaration of the end of the era of walled gardens. Alas, the details, as they currently exist, for their “Data Availability” effort fall far short of the vision many of us share for users having ownership of their data, control over who can see it, and freedom to take it with them, wherever they go across the Social Web. In the MySpace “Data Availability” model, the user can take their data for a walk anytime they want or to any place they want, but the data remains on a tether. There is no notion of copy, move, or sync. Participating sites must agree to have MySpace serve the data live in their page. That’s a half-step wrapped in a beautiful flag of openness.”

There is also a great story in the Washington Post, by Peter Whoriskey. I had a great a chat with Peter, and here’s an excerpt from his piece:

At the same time, Web businesses have begun to create standards for social site interactions on the Web — OpenId, OpenAuth, OpenSocial — that has further enabled users to move easily, and socially, from one Web site to another.

Such changes seem likely to alter the nature of the big social sites, people in the industry said, as the social aspects they are known for become accessible across the Web.

“The real question for a Facebook or a MySpace is: Is it best to think of them as a place like Studio 54 — a place where everyone wants to get in because all their friends are in — or is it more like some kind of utility?” said John McCrea, vice president of marketing for Plaxo, a company that maintains relationship information for 20 million members. “This is the evolution of the walled garden to the social Web.”

So, as the sun rises on Silicon Valley, I think it is the dawn of a new era. Very exciting.

We’re now updating our Social Web ecosystem chart to show where we think Friend Connect fits in:

For a more detailed explanation, I refer you to my post on the Plaxo blog.

My head is spinning. I can hardly keep up. In the latest news, according to Dave Morin at Facebook, is the announcement of Facebook Connect:

“Facebook Connect is the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to “connect” their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site. This will now enable third party websites to implement and offer even more features of Facebook Platform off of Facebook – similar to features available to third party applications today on Facebook.”

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch writes:

“Facebook connect is Facebook’s first honest attempt to allow access to Facebook user data outside of Facebook itself. The company is describing it as giving third party applications access to much of the same data as Facebook applications have today. We’ll know more in a couple of weeks when it formally launches.”

Like MySpace’s announcement of yesterday, the general spirit sounds great and totally aligned with the data portability and open Social Web memes. But, of course, the devil may be in the details. Eager to connect with Dave to learn more and see what this means for sites like Plaxo Pulse.

This sure sounds great:

“These are just a few steps Facebook is taking to make the vision of data portability a reality for users worldwide. We believe the next evolution of data portability is about much more than data. It’s about giving users the ability to take their identity and friends with them around the Web, while being able to trust that their information is always up to date and always protected by their privacy settings.”

Caroline McCarthy of CNET has a nice writeup with some insight into the backstory:

One Facebook insider, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said to CNET News.com that the project had been in the works for quite some time, and said the announcement wasn’t issued as a response to MySpace’s “Data Availability” project.

Update:

David Recordon of SixApart and the OpenID Foundation has an insightful writeup on the actual details of yesterday’s MySpace announcement:

“After this announcement I had the pleasure of speaking with a reporter who was on the briefing call. He explained that MySpace said that due to their terms of service the participating sites (e.g. Twitter) would not be allowed to cache or store any of the profile information. In my mind this led to the Data Availability API being structured in one of two ways: 1) on each page load Twitter makes a request to MySpace fetching the protected profile information via OAuth to then display on their site or 2) Twitter includes JavaScript which the browser then uses to fill in the corresponding profile information when it renders the page. Either case is not an example of data portability no matter how you define the term!”

Indeed, the devil is in the details.

I can hardly believe what’s happening these days. The biggest companies are all racing to out-open each other. And while some moves are more PR-ware than genuine embrace of open standards, user control, and data portability, there is something really significant going on here.

Just read an interesting piece about Nokia by Anders Bylund over at Ars Technica. Apparently, Nokia is fully acknowledging the sea change the Internet is having on the mobile space:

During Nokia’s annual shareholder meeting yesterday, CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo seemed to change the direction of the entire company. “Our goal is to act less like a traditional manufacturer, and more like an internet company,” Kallasvuo told his shareholders. “Companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft are not our traditional competitors, but they are major forces that must be reckoned with. Make no mistake: We are taking on these challenges seriously and aggressively.”

Of course, Nokia has an amazing track record of corporate re-invention, getting it’s start in life as a paper mill!

Earlier this week, we saw a bold move by Sprint, Comcast, Google, TimeWarner, Intel and others to pool resources (billions of dollars) to roll out high-speed wireless services across the country.

Yesterday, MySpace said it would open up access to profile data, and declared the end of the era of walled gardens!

And in recent days, I’ve been in numerous discussions with various large companies, and in every case, I have been blown away by the strength of their embrace of “open.” Why is this happening? It’s because the Internet is now the central shaper of corporate strategy for almost any business related to information, data, or media. And when the Internet is central, traditional strategies for lock-in are doomed to fail. Market advantage now must be created in other ways.

The result? 2008 will be an historic year.