Monday, August 20, 2007

social-network-portability on Google Groups

There is a fantastic discussion going on over at social-network-portability group. The group was started by Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordon who published "Thoughts on the Social Graph" on Fitzpatrick's web site, August 18, 2007. In a nutshell, Fitzpatrick and Recordon seek to establish the meta graph-of-graphs for social networking as a "community asset" (i.e., not owned by anyone and in the public domain). They put it to the group to figure out how to do that (although Fitzpatrick has already started with a prototype).

The most active topic is "On Centralisation vs De-Centralisation," including separate threads. But there are clear sub-themes running as well: identity, privacy, property, and language protocol. I detected a coincidental cross-current of the property issue on Tim O'Reilly's blog today. But it seems to me that the "Thoughts..." starts with the assumption that cooperating parties are going to do the right things - "assumes" not "takes for granted." At least, it is assumed that this thing is going to be developed one way or the other and the key is to seize the moral high ground by taking charge of the discussion of how, exactly.

Social Network Portability is "A Good Thing."

No comments: