FriendsListPortability

Presented by jsmarr

• oauth, microformats, openid
• privacy issues... portioning friends connections

• the problem: too hard to stay on top of what the people i know are doing online
  • siloed data, social apps don't know who i know automatically, little control over who i can share data with, have to recreate friends on every site with social features
  • "massively underdeployed social graphs"
  • if friction is too high for super geeks, imagine the friction for regular folks! there's no flow...

• • we lack a technical and user control model to make this happen

• the fallout: missing content from friends... (what about the overload?)... social apps desperate to get even PART of your social graph (re-implementing gmail scrapers, building facebook-only apps)... sometimes i'm too easy to find... especially by email address! (yikes!).... sometimes i'm too hard to find on sites (can't look up friends by other attributes besides email)

• the vision: "facebook-like" platform for the Open Web.
  • friends list == people you know from any of the sites you use
  • user ids == email/urls or other identifiers by which you know people
  • social apps == running anywhere with the same richness (apps running in iDPs?)
• activity streams and profile badges exist in other social networks
• managing relationships across sites... fine grained control?
  • try new services, meet someone new, social app developers outsource "who you know"
  • allows for niche site development... hard to sustain without portable social graph

• the building blocks
  • who am i? openid, rel-me
    • identifiers: mailto link, url, account url, IM link, xri
    • role: managing my set of identifiers (which identifiers to reveal to whom?; which identifiers can i be found at per app?)
  • who are my friends? XFN, FOAF
    • friends list == set of identifiers that I know; need portable list of these identifiers, often via authorized requests
  • who do I know? gating with OAuth, 6A RUS
  • how can i use my data? opensocial, foaf, xfn, vcard
    • proposal: social sites should provide a persistent url to your friends list; url can contain OAuth token for private data... lists all identifiers you know... allows export via raw identifiers or hashed identifiers (what about writing to the list)
    • allow sites to match known identifiers against the "people i know"
    • find all people i already know on new site
    • add new site as a source of friends list data (be able to subscribe to friends list so when new people sign up, you'll be notified)

• clarity on roles and responsibilities
  • user: manage your identifiers
  • social apps: provide access to shareable friends list, let users control how they're findable, provide lookup for findable identifiers
  • shouldn't leak any new information in this approach (i.e. foaf)
  • built on existing tech: openid, oauth, xfn, microid, URIs
  • bridges lookup by email address vs URL --> transitioning

• room for everyone to win
  • social networks become more relevant as they extend their reach
  • social apps are easier to build -- outsourcing the social graph (better friends list == more compelling app)
  • users can find each other better, more efficiently share content

• next steps
  • clarify/propose basic steps for interop
  • get early adopters to implement it
  • watch for early results (usage, privacy)

Demo of Online Identity Consolidator

• what's the business model? what's the economic incentive?