[OpenID] myspace, facebook questioned on openid

[Meng Weng Wong]

On Aug 6, 2007, at 9:47 AM, Elliot Onn wrote:

> Great post. Via Slashdot, an article on the need to open up these  
> social networks.
>
> http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/08/open_social_net
>

Seth Goldstein said: http://blog.sethgoldstein.com/2007/07/31/closed- 
is-the-new-open/

The Jedi knights respond: http://barcamp.org/SocialNetworkDevCamp

Given the situation, I expect the federation of social networks will  
look a lot like the federation of IM systems.


Wired said:
> We were able to recreate maybe 90 percent of Facebook's  
> functionality, but not the most important part -- a way to link  
> people and declare the nature of the relationship.

As Wired said, even if you have XFN you still need to spider it.  But  
a number of reputation-type services are coming online to do exactly  
that!  I believe that traversal of very large graphs will be a solved  
problem in 10 years, just as search was solved in the last 10.  (Full  
disclosure: my company Karmasphere is in that space, and I know of at  
least two others who are having a go.)

Anyway, after dinner with a few pals last week my crystal ball  
produced the following TrendMap graphic:

http://mengwong.com/misc/trendmap-2007.html

(Apologies for the enormous font sizes, but I built the image with  
Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 rule in mind....)

How many years away do you think SNS federation will be?  Is our  
prediction too early, too late?