We delayed last week’s shooting of the Social Web TV by a day, so that we could discuss Thursday evening’s Activity Streams Meetup. The episode is now up, and it’s practically bursting at the seams with open Social Web goodness. Chris Messina, David Recordon, Joseph Smarr and I are all on hand to discuss lots of recent news, doing mashups right, and the Activity Streams Meetup. Check it out:
The Real McCrea
John McCrea on the exponential wiring up of humanity
Tag Archives: joseph smarr
Live Blogging from the Portable Contacts Summit
The much-anticipated Portable Contacts Summit has kicked off, with folks from companies large and small and representatives of various open-spec communities. Joseph Smarr of Plaxo is leading the opening session and is going through a bunch of demos of working code.
Some quotes:
“The Portable Contacts train has left the station, and it’s a bullet train.”
“I’ve got more demos than I have Firefox tabs.”
“One good pipe deserves another.”
Joseph is demoing the power of having technical alignment between Portable Contacts and OpenSocial RESTFul APIs. What that means is that any site that is OpenSocial compliant will be Portable Contacts compliant — without having to do any additional work!
Folks in attendance include people who work at Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Plaxo, Six Apart, Seesmic, JanRain, Skydeck, ShopIt, Current.TV, Interscope Records, and more. Today’s event is hosted by MySpace.
12:00 Joseph demoing interop between Plaxo and MySpace.
12:05 Now a demo of JanRain’s myOpenID with support for Portable Contacts
12:07 Now on to Google, another instance of compliance via OpenSocial RESTful APIs
12:08 iGoogle, GMail, and Orkut (all leveraging the same backend)
12:09 Brian Ellin of JanRain about to do a demo of an end-user application
12:11 Brain implemented Portable Contacts last night in Ruby
lunch break
1:00 About to resume. Saw amazing discussions over lunch. I won’t name names, but some would be shocked by the various pairings of competitors breaking bread together
1:15 Joseph leading a deep dive on the spec. Lots of questions, discussion.
1:30 Lots of great questions and discussion about OAuth and XRDS-Simple
3:00 Wow! Just barely made it all the way through the spec. Impressive. Everyone is fried.
3:30 Unconference phase now, but really informal; organically forming conversation circles.
4:15 About to do the next steps and wrap up
Kevin Marks, of Google, is doing a nice job live tweeting the event. He’s @kevinmarks on Twitter.
UPDATE:
Great posts from the team at ShopIt and from data portability maven Daniela Barbosa.
And another fine post from the godfather of open, Marc Canter.
Here are a few photos so far:
Live from the PortableContacts Hackathon
Inspired by the great energy at the PortableContacts Hackathon. About 15 folks, passionate about fleshing out the open-spec building blocks and putting them into action. I think they’ll be some great demos tomorrow at the PortableContacts Summit!
Thanks to David Recordon and Six Apart for hosting and to Joseph Smarr of Plaxo for leading the event.
David has a nice writeup on the Hackathon at O’Reilly Radar.
A Big Bang for the Social Web
It’s certainly a big week, what with the Hadron Collider finally coming on line, raising existential risk questions for the planet, as physicists attempt to recreate the conditions immediately after the Big Bang that gave birth to our universe. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, developers are attempting to give birth to a truly open Social Web, by stitching together for the first time the open spec building blocks: OpenID, XRDS-Simple, OAuth, and PortableContacts.
You can participate yourself at the PortableContacts Hackathon this evening, hosted by SixApart. Or you can get the quick overview in this video podcast I did with Plaxo’s Joseph Smarr.
Announcing “Episode IV: A New Hope”
Are you ready for another episode of The Social Web TV? What better way to end the week? Well, it’s here, “Episode IV: A New Hope“. We welcome a new panelist, Chris Messina, and discuss the growing set of open spec building blocks for the Social Web, including microformats, OpenID, and OAuth.
An Historic Week for the Social Web
Wow, what an historic week for the opening up of the Social Web! MySpace confirmed that they will become an implementer of OpenID. Facebook shared their passion for bring social to all of the Web, and shared some details on Facebook Connect at the second annual F8 developer conference. And up at OSCON, David Recordon announced the formation of the Open Web Foundation.
David, Joseph Smarr, and I share our perspective in the highest energy episode so far of our Internet show, The Social Web TV.
My Big Prediction for 2008: A Mid-Year Check-In
Will 2008 be the year in which we shift from the “walled garden” model of social networking to a more open and Internet-oriented approach of the “Social Web”?
That was certainly my prediction in a December, 2007 post, entitled Why I Love Facebook and a Prediction for 2008. What I said then:
Mark Zuckerberg and team have built a really great experimental testbed that shows us what can happen when you mash up applications and the “social graph.” When you bring who-you-know to a web application, it gets turbocharged and transformed. It’s so exciting to watch Facebook’s innovation, from the News Feed, to the F8 platform play, and now to the bold (albeit controversial) Beacon initiative.
But what happens as these ideas get turned into capabilities of the web itself, thanks to a combination of community efforts and commercial efforts like Google’s OpenSocial? Here’s my prediction: in 2008, we will see the true beginnings of the “Social Web,” as open and vibrant as when the first incarnation of the Web that emerged in 1994 and 1995.
In Internet time, that prediction was ages ago. Things have been happening so rapidly that I confess I missed the literal halfway mark. But before the month of July is finished, I thought I should take stock of my prediction and see whether I am likely to be proven correct (or whether I need to begin hoping for a year-end miracle).
So, what has transpired since my prediction? Here are some of the major milestones on the road from last year to the Social Web:
– January 3: “Scoblegate” kicks off the debate over who owns your friends list
– January 8: Google, Facebook, and Plaxo joined the Data Portability Working Group
– January 17: Yahoo! gave support to OpenID, a “massive win for the project”
– February 1: Google launches Brad Fitzpatrick’s Social Graph API
– March 5: Google launches Contacts Data address book API
– March 19: The Economist makes opening the Social Web a mainstream topic
– March 25: Microsoft launches the Live Contacts address book API with Facebook
– April 15: Facebook totally “gets” the Social Web; becomes an “aggregator”
– April 24: Joseph Smarr articulates a comprehensive vision for the Social Web
– May 8: MySpace announces “Data Availability,” kicking off an “open” wave”
– May 9: Facebook announces “Facebook Connect,” saying “watch this space”
– May 12: Google launches “Friend Connect,” to “socially-enable” any website
– May 15: Joseph Smarr discusses Portable Contacts initiative publicly
– June 4: Yahoo! launches their address book API
– June 11: A “Social Graph Provider” was spotted in the wild
– June 26: MySpace ships Data Availability
– July 11: Joseph, David, and I launch Episode 1 of “The Social Web TV”
From my perspective in the middle of all of this is that the pace is picking up. I think all of the major players are now racing to “out-open” each other. Why? Because we’ve all see this movie before, and we know how it ends. And nobody wants to end up as the Compuserve or Prodigy of the 21st Century.
So, I’m cautiously optimistic that my prediction for 2008 will come true. In fact, I think the next few weeks will give us all a reason to believe. Stay tuned.
Also, if I missed anything on my list that you think is an important milestone, please let me know in the comments. Thanks!
Announcing Episode 1 of The Social Web TV
We just uploaded Episode 1, “Time to Get Pushy.” Check it out!
Looking Forward: Taking it to the Streets
It’s official. I’m launching a “tv” show, along with Joseph Smarr, David Recordon, and Chris Messina. It will be called, “The Social Web.” (TV!)
The first episode is going to air a week from tomorrow.
Yep. There’s a lot still to work out, but I hope you tune in. Our goal is to help mainstream Internet users feel connected to the mission of opening up th social web.
You can check out the pilot here.
Oh, yeah. And please leave comments suggesting topics or guests you’d like ti see!
“Whose Social Graph?” Panel at Supernova
Rockin’ panel at Supernova.
A screenshot from a blogpost by David Recordon has set off a verbal firestorm.
Getting down and dirty now on why Facebook disabled Google’s Friend Connect. Dave Morin, who is a very capable spokesperson, is getting peppered with lots of questions. Sepcifically, the audience wants an answer to Google’s Kevin Marks’ question, “What can we do to get this feature re-enabled? How did we violate the TOS?” Dave has made clear that “representatives” from the two companies are talking, seeking a resolution. (Interpretation: lawyers.) Dave has had to defer on one more pointed question with, “Unfortunately, I have to defer on legal questions.”
Best panel of Supernova, so far. Great moderation by Tantek, who engaged the panelists and the audience. And Kevin, Joseph, and Dave represented their companies and their positions really well. Despite some controversy, it is clear that there is genuine intent to open up and enable interoperability — under the control of the user.
UPDATE: A thorough writeup by CNET’s Dan Farber is now up.
The Real McCrea 