Can I Be Your Friend?
4 min read
It looks like Ning has got some new friends -- I first saw the news at everybody's favorite home for digital whispers, and Marc Andreessen confirmed it on his blog.
Marc Canter has something to say about it, and Diego Doval responds.
Although the exchange started with news of Ning's newfound booty, Marc Canter brings the conversation back to an important place: the relative openness of social networks. My comment on Marc's post pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter:
Hello, Marc,
While I agree that it would be *great* to see Ning do the right thing, they will only do the "right thing" if it aligns with their business plan '۠the open standards you describe (like OpenID 2.0's attribute exchange) will become increasingly important in how people use the web, and companies that don't use them will become increasingly irrelevant.
As innovation within open source communities fuel the type of data portability/identity portability many of us have described (along with functions currently absent in Ning, etc,) the real question investors will be asking is, what have I bought for my 44 Mill?
What I find most interesting, however, is this excerpt of Diego's response to a comment I left on his blog.
RE: "I will look in more detail at the OpenID AX stuff and get back on that (I need to think about namespace and privacy issues)"
Both of these issues feel like red herrings at best. OpenID is designed to give the end user control over their private data, and what data gets shared with what sites. Every site (like Ning) that involves membership already has at least a rudimentary means of dealing with both privacy and "namespace issues" (think about what happens when you try and join a site with a username that is already taken). The means of addressing namespace issues would be a pretty good AP Computer Science project, but really shouldn't be cited as an obstacle by a company with a newfound 44Mil in the kitty.
I also enjoyed the links that explained how Ning is open -- seen here, here, here, and here. While I think it's great that Ning is offering to support these forays into what it calls "openness," these docs don't really lend themselves to the non-technical user. For example, most people don't know what FOAF is, and these instructions really lay a firm welcome mat for the non-technical:
To achieve this, you need to have your own copy of the code (which you can request from developer (at) ning (dot) com) and then make a few changes that will enable this functionality.
Some familiarity with the structure of the code for the Social Network is recommended to follow this example, but even if you're just starting it shouldn't be hard to follow these instructions and get this functionality going.
There are two things you'll need to do to add FOAF feeds for network members:
1. Create the feed action in the Profile module 2. Expose the feed, ie Link to it from the Members page of the network as well as each Member's individual profile.
Ready?
You betcha.
Any user for whom these instructions make sense already has a broader array of tools available to them. Developers will reap a greater return (and have access to more functionality) putting development hours into a truly open platform like Drupal or Plone than into a closed service like Ning.
OpenID lays the groundwork for a unified identity on the web. Open standards allow for data portability. Most end users who think about these things want them to Just Work (ie, people don't want to create a new username and password on every site they join, and they want content they create on one site to follow them to "their" space). This level of innovation is currently taking place within open source communities, and at a much lower cost than 44 million. Remaining closed -- or placing artificial barriers in the way of openness -- might attract investors, but it won't retain users (On the other hand, perhaps attracting investors is the goal). The main question I see waiting to be answered is which of the current content silos on the web -- the Nings, the Facebooks, the MySpaces, the Second Life's (yeah, that's right, I said it) -- will become the Web 2.0 equivalent of AOL.
