The Real McCrea

OAuth, the “valet key for the Web,” has just rolled out a “Non-Assertion Covenant and Author’s Contribution License,” which should accelerate adoption of this important open-spec building block, especially by risk-averse large companies. In short, the new license, which according to one of the specs authors, Eran Hammer-LaHav, has been signed by AOL, Citizen Agency, Google, Ma.gnolia, Pownce, Six Apart, Twitter, Wesabe, Yahoo!, and the individual contributors, makes clear that the various contributors to the spec will not sue the companies or individuals who roll out implementations of the spec into shipping products and services.

This is great news for the opening up of the Social Web, and should pave the way for other projects under development, such as Portable Contacts.

Those interested in the details will find them here:

This specification is made available under the OAuth Non-Assertion Covenant and Author’s Contribution License For OAuth Specification 1.0 available at http://oauth.net/license/core/1.0. Copyrights are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution –ShareAlike 3.0 license available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0.

Here’s some good coverage from David Chartier at ars technica.

We (Joseph Smarr, David Recordon, Chris Messina, and I) discussed this news and did a deep dive on OAuth on this week’s episode of The Social Web TV, which will air tomorrow.

A little over a year ago, I was just a guy heading up marketing for an online address book company seeking to reinvent itself. Plaxo was not yet a player in the super-hot world of social networking, and I was a VP of Marketing trying to figure out the rapidly evolving world of social media. So, what did I do? I started blogging.

At first, I wasn’t sure of my voice or how to do it right. Over time, I figured out what sort of topics were well suited to my perspective (and which ones I should pass on). More than a few times, I felt a conflict between being a marketer with information “under embargo” and being a blogger who wanted to clue my audience in.

Looking back over the past year, as I prepare to head out on vacation, I am really excited to see how my traffic has risen over time. Sure, it’s a Bigfoot press conference post that’s causing the radical surge of the last day or so (thanks, TechCrunch!), but that’s okay. Social media is a boiling cauldron, a magical potion that transforms everything it touches. And, yes, I know total traffic is really tiny. But I focus on whether I am growing it!

Should Chief Marketing Officers plunge as deeply into social media as I have — or is it better to delegate “community” efforts to others? It probably depends on a variety of factors, but I can say for sure that I have enjoyed my own swim in this pool, and am happy to share that the water is warm. So if you are sitting on the sidelines, now is a good time to come on in.

And to everyone who has been a part of taking me from “a tree falling in the forest” to a contributor to the global social media conversation, I say, “Thank you!” Let’s take this to the next level together.

Sea of cameras awaiting the event, including big players, like CNN

Two fellers from Georgia who claim to have found the creature

The feeding frenzy to get the two new photos released at the press conference

Well, I can hardly believe that I was able to make it into the “press only” press conference today at a hotel in Palo Alto. The big guys were there, with their trucks, satellite dishes, and honkin’ big cameras. The woman at the door asked me who I was with, so I said, “I’m a blogger” and handed her a business card that has a photo of me on it. She handed me a press kit, asked me to sign some waiver, and welcomed me. I entered a room that would soon swell to several hundred people, ranging from top-tier press to bloggers, including Jason Kincaid from TechCrunch, to random locals and a guy in a Bigfoot costume.

The wifi coverage in the room sucked, so I live tweeted via my Treo. For those who missed ’em, here are my tweets:

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I’ve made it into the lobby of the hotel in Palo Alto where the Bigfoot press conference is happening in 30 minutes

I am in the room where the Bigfoot press conference will be. Sweet!

a sea of cameras including CNN

the room is filling up at the Bigfoot press conference

a guy in a Bigfoot costume is here with a sign that says “We hide for a reason.”

it has begun

long slow preamble

tom biscardi likes to say his own name

“getting pictures from these guys is like pulling teeth from a baby”

biscardi says the boys have turned over the body to him

talking about an autopsy to be done next week

“it’s not a human or an ape”

17 minutes and no meat

why not contact the authorities? “I wanna protect the species”

“we were afraid of them and not armed”

“oh you’re talking about the Bigfoots”

how much money do you expect to make? “As much as possible.”

dna results of three samples. one messed up. one human. on possum. oh, brother

one guy is holding up the new photo showing a closeup of the dead creature’s mouth with tongue hanging out

we are told that we will each get a new photo and the dna test results. big whoop.

the other guy is about to talk

he’ showing us a photo of one walking away

and it’s over

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I have to say it was a terrible disappointment, and a complete disaster of a press conference. And I’m not talking about the idiot charlatans on the stage, but the performance of the media in attendance. They all sat through 30 minutes of inconsistent lies with zero new evidence, and no one held their feet to the fire. Advice to the big guys, if you’re going to send your camera crew, also send reporters who will ask tough questions.

I regret that I did not ask the fellers from Georgia my burning question, “Do you eat any Bigfoot meat, and how did it taste?”

Oh, and I just found this link to video of the conference.

Okay. I think I really need to start my vacation; eager to get past this summer news cycle!

It’s Friday morning, time to announce another episode of The Social Web TV! This week is another high-energy on-location show, shot yesterday up in San Francisco at the MySpace “Lunch 2.0” event. Episode 6 features our first-ever special guest, Allen Hurff, SVP of Engineering for MySpace — and our first-ever surprise guest, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. Here’s Episode 6.

More signs of trouble in the mainstream media business…

OMG. I hadn’t seen this interview until a few minutes ago. Fox interviews the guy at the center of the Bigfoot story. Must-see tv, especially where the guy makes reference to the lack of fangs (“He’s no meat eater”) and where he talks about the issues of the frost-free freezer. How many mainstream media outlets will converge on the press conference tomorrow? The Real McCrea will be there, covering the circus for you.

I am pleased to announce Episode 5 of The Social Web TV, where we focus on an important missing building block of the Social Web — Portable Contacts.