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May 20 2009
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Images from Day 2 of IIW

The Internet Identity Workshop is such a special event. Heavy hitters from Facebook, Google, MySpace, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Plaxo, and more, all rolling up their sleeves on the most interesting problems of the emergent Social Web!

Here, with little commentary, my images from Day 2 of the event…

Luke Shepard of Facebook and George Fletcher of AOL led a multi-faceted session on the issues of being an OpenID Relying Party:

Session on OpenID RP Lessons Learned

Session on OpenID RP Lessons Learned

Angus Logan of Microsoft led a great session on a more scalable approach to letting developers register for API keys:

Angus Logan of Microsoft

Session on API Sign Ups

Session on API Sign Ups

From a highly productive session on Activity Streams:

Activity Streams

The afternoon demo session:

Demo

Demo

Two towering figures in the space: Joseph Smarr of Plaxo and Luke Shepard of Facebook. These guys are pushing the envelope, fighting the good fight, showing what’s possible with OpenID (as a Relying Party), and helping the whole industry work through the issues.

Joseph Smarr and Luke Shepard

Joseph Smarr and Luke Shepard

Here’s to another great IIW!

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May 18 2009
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From Day One of the Internet Identity Workshop

The past six months have flown by, and it is once again time for the semi-annual Internet Identity Workshop (IIW). I’ll post impressions and photos here from time to time throughout the day.

The "Real McCrea"

I had the honor of joining David Recordon and Chris Messina for an opening session on main stage, covering OpenID and other technologies of the Social Web. Here’s the presentation we used to structure our chat. It was almost the “Social Web TV” live!

On stage with Chris Messina and David Redordon

Here’s the view from the stage:

View from the stage

The second session was on Information Cards, led by Reed Drummond:

Reed Drummond on Information Cards

The last of the morning sessions is Doc Searls on Vendor Relationship Management (VRM), which turns CRM on its head. Great stuff. You can’t and shouldn’t “own your customer”. Doc asks, “What’s another word for owning a human being?”

Doc Searls on VRM

Doc Searls on VRM

After lunch, we reconvened, this time in a three ring circle. About to begin the scheduling of the “unconference”.

IIW Opening Circle

IIW Opening Circle

Here are the key concepts behind the “unconference” model:

Principles of Open Space

Some of the afternoon sessions:

Some of the afternoon sessions

In the thick of it: Sitting with Luke Shepard of Facebook (big news of today, as they became the largest OpenID Relying Party). Folks around us include Angus Logan of Microsoft and Dirk Balfanz and Breno de Medieros from Google.

In the thick of it

Sessions in Rooms E, F, and G:

Breakout rooms E, F, and G

And here’s my post on Day Two.

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May 12 2009
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Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang and the “Five Eras of the Social Web”

On this week’ episode of The Social Web TV, Joseph Smarr and I welcomed special guest, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester, for a discussion based his recent report, The Future of the Social Web in Five Eras. I think this is one of our best episodes, putting the Social Web in the context of mainstream adoption and implications for major brands.

This w

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Apr 30 2009
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The Social Web TV: from the Facebook Open Streams Launch

Monday evening was historic, and the crew from The Social Web TV were there to participate and to record this epic moment in the evolution of the Internet. This special “highlights” episode is not to be missed. See: Mark Zuckerberg kick it off, with a great explanation of the strategic importance of open and interoperability; Dave Morin explaining the Open Streams API; Chris Messina on the Activity Streams open project that Facebook is contributing to; Joseph Smarr and I launching the Plaxo integration of Facebook Connect with support for the Open Stream API; Luke Shepard and David Recordon on Facebook’s announcement of upcoming support for OpenID, and more!

Apr 28 2009
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Photos from the “Birth of the Social Web” at Facebook This Evening

Wow! I am damn near speechless after an amazing evening at the Facebook “Technology Tasting,” for the launch of the new Open Stream API and the announcement that Facebook will soon be an OpenID Relying Party. Today really marks the birth of the Social Web. If you’d like to know my coherent thoughts, at least on the Plaxo integration I was involved in, see my official post on the Plaxo blog:

At Plaxo, we believe we’re on the cusp of a major transformation – the biggest change to the Internet since the birth of the Web 15 years ago – as the Web goes social, and the Social Web goes open. For that dream to be realized, we need to address the pain currently associated with using multiple social websites. We need true interoperability and true data portability, with users in control.

Today, together with our friends at Facebook, we are excited to deliver on that promise, with the roll out of an integration of Facebook Connect that demonstrates an unprecedented level of interoperability between two social networks (while preserving fine-grained control of privacy).

But here, for posterity, let me share some visual impressions of this historic event, via some photos I snapped from my front row seat at the action. 🙂

Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

Dave Morin
Dave Morin, Facebook

Chris Messina
Chris Messina, Vidoop, OpenID Foundation, Citizen Space, and DiSo Project

Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble, blogger, early adopter and Jason Kincaid, TechCrunch
(be sure to check out Jason’s video of the event)

Joseph Smarr

Joseph Smarr
Joseph Smarr, Plaxo, OpenID Foundation, OpenSocial Foundation

Luke Shepard
Luke Shepard, Facebook and OpenID Foundation

David Recordon
David Recordon, Six Apart and OpenID Foundation

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Apr 27 2009
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Facebook Launches its “Open Stream API,” Supporting the Emerging Activity Stream Spec

Getting the week off to a bright start, Facebook this morning unveiled a new “Open Stream API,” which gives developers off-site access to the core experience of Facebook. As TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld points out, this is a big deal:

This is a big deal. It potentially puts Facebook side by side with Twitter in all of these desktop and mobile client applications where a lot of the real-time conversation is happening and lets it compete head-to-head with Twitter. Whichever conversation stream is more interesting will prevail.

It’s also a big deal in terms of Facebook supporting open standards. Rather than develop their own proprietary Activity Stream API, Facebook embraced the emerging Activity Streams open spec:

To enable developers to access the stream, we’ve built the Facebook Open Stream API to include the emerging Activity Streams standard. Over the last several months, we’ve been collaborating with the community, hosting meetups at Facebook headquarters, and speaking at industry events about Activity Streams and the open stack. We think that working alongside our peers to create an open standard for accessing and consuming streams is the future. We’ll continue to make contributions to the standards community and related technologies and are happy to be one of the first companies to implement Activity Streams at scale.

This is awesome news. Props to my friends over at Facebook!

Apr 25 2009
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The Social Web TV on the OAuth Security Vulnerability

The Social Web TV crew shot a special episode yesterday on the Google campus, where folks from the OAuth community convened to discuss changes to the spec to address the recently-discovered security vulnerability. Chris Messina, Joseph Smarr, and I welcomed special guest, Eran Hammer from Yahoo! and one of the leaders of the OAuth community, to help us get the story straight. If this topic interests you, also check out an excellent piece by Marshal Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb, entitled, How the OAuth Security Battle Was Won, Open Web Style

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Apr 20 2009
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An Awesome Social Web Foo Camp

Back in the office after an awesome Social Web Foo Camp on the O’Reilly Media campus in Sebastopol. The event came off perfectly, with great people, fantastic weather, and flawless logistics. Thanks to the O’Reilly team and to David Recordon, Dave Morin, and Scott Kveton for organizing and hosting such a great event. Conversations at Foo are covered under “frieND”-A, so I didn’t live-blog or take notes. But I did take a few photos, and thought I would share them to provide a window into the nature of this very special gathering. We have made so much progress toward an open and interoperable Social Web since the first Social Foo Camp, last February, and this event did nothing to dampen my optimism for the coming months.

Setting up tents

Dinner on the lawn

Opening Ceremony

Opening Ceremony

Opening Ceremony

Lobby

Tent city

Social OS?

Privacy?

Reflection of the world

Death Star

Sunday chillin'

Closing ceremony

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Apr 10 2009
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New Episode of The Social Web TV: “We’re back, with Open Stack bingo!”

After a post-SXSW hiatus, The Social Web TV is back with a roar, as Joseph and I declare MySpace winner of the industry’s “Open Stack Bingo”!

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Apr 10 2009
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Surviving & Thriving in the Online Identity Wars: Joseph Smarr at Web 2.0 Expo

Joseph Smarr at Web 2.0 Expo Joseph Smarr at Web 2.0 Expo Joseph Smarr at Web 2.0 Expo Joseph Smarr at Web 2.0 Expo

At the recent Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Joseph Smarr, Plaxo’s Chief Platform Architect, took the stage with an all-new presentation, entitled “Surviving (and Thriving in) the Online Identity Wars”. As usual, he rocked it! Alas, the talk was scheduled for 8:30 in the morning, which meant that even if you were at the conference, you might still have missed it. So, this post is for everyone around the world who wished they could have been there.

Putting this into perspective: A year ago at Web 2.0 Expo, Joseph introduced the concepts of a “Social Web ecosystem” (with Identity Providers, Social Graph Providers, and Webwide Aggregators), fueling a “virtuous cycle” of social content/site discovery. And six months ago, at Web 2.0 Expo in New York, Joseph coined the term “Open Stack,” to refer to the combination of OpenID, OAuth, Portable Contacts, XRD, and OpenSocial, asserting that this collection of “small parts, loosely joined” is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

In this new talk, Joseph gives guidance to sites on how to survive and thrive in the sea change of the opening up of the Social Web. I recommend everyone check out his specific “do’s” and “don’ts”…

Video of the talk (part one)

Video of the talk (part two)

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