The Open Web - Is it Really What We Think it is? - Stay N Alive

The Open Web – Is it Really What We Think it is?

Posted on by jessestay

OneWebDayYesterday was OneWebDay, a day to celebrate the open web and bring more awareness to technologies. I just wrote about one thing Google is doing to make the web more open, something I strongly support.  I want to touch on something Facebook is doing which I don’t think is being fully appreciated.  And it’s not what you think it is.  First, I want you to watch this video – it’s Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote from Facebook’s F8 conference for developers last year.  Don’t read on until you see it or you may not understand what I’m trying to get at here.

In the video, Mark Zuckerberg states that Facebook’s mission is in “giving people the power to share in order to make the world more open and connected place.”   I want you to give that some thought. We’ve always talked about the open web being the opening up of content so everyone has access to it.  That’s the essence of the web. It has no borders or boundaries, and has no controls over it.  That is how it was built and how it should be.  The web is about linking documents to each other, and indexing those documents so they are easily accessible and retrievable by those that want to find it.  The traditional open web is about the power to receive.

Enter the social web.  Now we have all these social networks – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Orkut, Hi5, LinkedIn, and many others all striving to redefine the web, each in their own way.  In the end each of these networks is giving a layer to the web which connects people instead of documents and in the end brings people together.  At the same time we’re indexing people, and from those people comes relevancy and documents which others can share with one-another.  Many argue that this method of indexing is even more accurate, because it is spread from person-to-person, and it’s real-time.

There’s one problem with the social web in terms of openness.  People don’t want their lives exposed.  They just want the documents they prefer to share with the world exposed.  In the end, because we’re dealing with people, there still needs to be some bounds of privacy, yet people should still have the control to make what they want open, open. Without these controls, there is no freedom, as people are required to completely expose their lives to reveal even a bit of content with the rest of the world.

This is why I think on the Social Web, “Open” is defined much differently.  I think Facebook sees this. In a social environment, the role of technology should be in making relationships more open, making the ability to share more open, not necessarily the documents people are sharing themselves. In a Social Web “Open” is about how “Open” you are to enabling your users to make the decision whether they want to make their documents public or not, and fully enabling them to do so if they want to.  The thing is, a Social ecosystem is not “Open” if it doesn’t give users the freedom to keep those documents private if they want to as well.

Facebook takes this new layer of “Open” to another level though. As of last year they have been branching out of their walls, enabling other websites to take these tools, giving each website the control to extend this level of control to their own users.  Now websites can take the existing social graphs of users and enable those users to automatically share what they want with their friends, respecting the privacy controls of those friends.  I should note that Google Friend Connect is doing similar things in that realm (albeit with less privacy controls, IMO making it a less “open” or “free” ecosystem to allow users full control of that data).

I think what we may be defining as a “Walled Garden” or “closed ecosystem” may indeed be the actual definition of “Open” on the social web.  Remember, it’s about opening up the control of the user to share all, some, or none of the content they want to share.  The more “Open” a system is to doing this, the more open users are to share data, the more open it is to having their friends see that data, and the more open it is to allowing others search for that data, while at the same time being open to letting the users that want to control that data keep it under closed wall.  The web has lacked this ability until recently.  In a true “Open” Social Ecosystem, if data is not available via search and other means, it is the fault of the users, not the network itself.  Data that is available to the web is the responsibility of the users, not the responsibility of the network itself. I think Facebook is the closest to this definition of “Open” out there right now.  I think that’s why they have over 300 million users and are still growing.

On the Social Web, “Open” is about the power to give.

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2489" title="I <3 the web." src="http://staynalive.local/files/2009/09/3929246011_9776c72b28_o.png" alt="I

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18 thoughts on “The Open Web – Is it Really What We Think it is?”

  1. What you seem to be describing is not Open – Open is the opposite of Closed.
    Methinks you need a new, better word – perhaps “Controlled” or “Safe” or as you started with “Connected”, but not “Open” – it's just being a buzzword here.

    Reply

  2. Imma, but the process of enabling information to be free *is* open. It's
    definitely not closed. In a social environment it's the actions that should
    be open – it's the freedom to share that defines openness, not the content
    itself.

    Reply

  5. […] Media By Mark Essel | Published: September 24, 2009 I had just read an article by Jesse Stay(Open Web – Is it Really What We Think it is?) and like all great posts it got me thinking about how large organizations outside of our control […]

    Reply

  6. Heyo Jesse, you've inspired a morning post and here's the gist of it:
    My definition for Open social media:
    1) I can share documents by posting them to select friends (email), or everyone (my website)
    2) my personal connected social graph is portable so no business “owns” my network
    3) the pipes are transparent to me, I should be able to contact people through many different subsystems with a simple status message
    4) the hubs of communication are decentralized/federated (search can be propagated like status messages, I wrote a little about this on my blog)

    Right now businesses like facebook are providing a turnpike (with tolls) to help me get from point a to point b. But they shouldn't own all the destinations, on ramps and off ramps. They should should work on making it a beautiful ride that I choose to take.

    Reply

  7. Mark, I don't view it that way. Facebook is enabling you to bring their
    social graph to your brand. They're not owning your brand – they're just
    handling and organizing the social graph for you. Even in that case you can
    still own the social graph and Facebook enables you to expand your own
    social graph by automatically importing theirs. They're not trying to own
    it in any way. Out of all the networks Facebook is trying to make this easy
    for you – Facebook is all about the freedom to share wherever and whenever
    you want your users to share and giving them full control over that
    experience. They aren't trying to own it – they're trying to empower it.

    Reply

  8. Mark, I don't view it that way. Facebook is enabling you to bring their
    social graph to your brand. They're not owning your brand – they're just
    handling and organizing the social graph for you. Even in that case you can
    still own the social graph and Facebook enables you to expand your own
    social graph by automatically importing theirs. They're not trying to own
    it in any way. Out of all the networks Facebook is trying to make this easy
    for you – Facebook is all about the freedom to share wherever and whenever
    you want your users to share and giving them full control over that
    experience. They aren't trying to own it – they're trying to empower it.

    Reply

  9. Mark, I don't view it that way. Facebook is enabling you to bring their
    social graph to your brand. They're not owning your brand – they're just
    handling and organizing the social graph for you. Even in that case you can
    still own the social graph and Facebook enables you to expand your own
    social graph by automatically importing theirs. They're not trying to own
    it in any way. Out of all the networks Facebook is trying to make this easy
    for you – Facebook is all about the freedom to share wherever and whenever
    you want your users to share and giving them full control over that
    experience. They aren't trying to own it – they're trying to empower it.

    Reply

  10. Hmm, It sure does sound that way from Mark's video. They have an enlightened approach to social ownership and I think they are trying to move towards data portability and social graph mobility. It actually makes their brand stronger if we use our facebook social graph to seed other networks. They become the goto network hub. Great conversing with you on this topic, it's near and dear to many of our hearts since the acquisition of friendfeed. Here are the links (The Democracy of Attention, an Economy of Minds & Open Social Media of the People, by the People, for the People) to posts I mentioned earlier and today's blog post (inspired by you 😀)

    Hope it's ok to share links here (Chris Guillebeau for one prefers links only in our name for comments on his posts and I completely respect that).

    Reply

  11. Mark, share away. I believe Facebook is all about portability. They just
    have the strength to give you control that you don't have elsewhere. I don't
    think there's anything wrong with supporting and strengthening a brand that
    wants to do that. I'm all for anything that empowers me, the user, and me,
    the developer to help each user be empowered.

    Reply

  12. Thanks man!
    The greatest businesses will maintain their popularity by always giving the user the choice to walk away without penalty. Businesses without hooks if only Apple and AT&T believed in this type of vision.

    Reply

  13. Hmm, It sure does sound that way from Mark's video. They have an enlightened approach to social ownership and I think they are trying to move towards data portability and social graph mobility. It actually makes their brand stronger if we use our facebook social graph to seed other networks. They become the goto network hub. Great conversing with you on this topic, it's near and dear to many of our hearts since the acquisition of friendfeed. Here are the links (The Democracy of Attention, an Economy of Minds & Open Social Media of the People, by the People, for the People) to posts I mentioned earlier and today's blog post (inspired by you 😀)

    Hope it's ok to share links here (Chris Guillebeau for one prefers links only in our name for comments on his posts and I completely respect that).

    Reply

  14. Mark, share away. I believe Facebook is all about portability. They just
    have the strength to give you control that you don't have elsewhere. I don't
    think there's anything wrong with supporting and strengthening a brand that
    wants to do that. I'm all for anything that empowers me, the user, and me,
    the developer to help each user be empowered.

    Reply

  15. Thanks man!
    The greatest businesses will maintain their popularity by always giving the user the choice to walk away without penalty. Businesses without hooks if only Apple and AT&T believed in this type of vision.

    Reply

  24. Mark, share away. I believe Facebook is all about portability. They just
    have the strength to give you control that you don't have elsewhere. I don't
    think there's anything wrong with supporting and strengthening a brand that
    wants to do that. I'm all for anything that empowers me, the user, and me,
    the developer to help each user be empowered.

    Reply

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