How to build the Open Mesh
Emerce eDay 08
Copyright © 2008
My name is Marc….
•Happy to be back in Holland
•Our platform is called PeopleAggregator
•I’ve written this book “How to build the Open Mesh”
•And I’m here to talk about the future
Copyright © 2008
My backyard fence
Copyright © 2008
Children are our eyes into the future
•DJ Mimi’s first experience
•Just walked up to the turntables and took over
Copyright © 2008
Integrate my family life
Copyright © 2008
Two constituents for this treatise
•Practitioners build systems, portals, web sites, applications, dashboards, web services•Creating their own solution
•Want to be a compatible puzzle piece in the mesh
•Marketers need to describe what’s going on•Educate, facilitate conversations, proselytize
•Digitize their brand, market their product or services
•Form alliances, find revenue streams
Copyright © 2008
Chaos of a distributed nature
•Battle of the behemoths
•Constantly changing world
•All software is about people, needs social features
•Where’s the business model?
•With each new trend, comes another upset applecart
•Many many ecosystems, in each region
Copyright © 2008
Open is the New Black
•Do you think MySpace would have opened up – if Facebook didn’t do it first?
•Who would have thought that Microsoft would open up – or produce Live Mesh?
•Y! OS is actually very well architected, now they just have to execute!
•Google needs the web to stay open
Copyright © 2008
Act pragmatic, but dream like a visionary
Copyright © 2008
All of life is a compromise
•Who’d have thought we’d be this far along?
•Proprietary formats versus Open standards
•Centralized versus Distributed
•Keeping up with the Joneses
•BigCos versus small Independents
Copyright © 2008
Copyright © 2008
We’ll be living in a distributed world
•Widgets, OpenSocial and Facebook apps
•International, not just English
•Everything is in the Cloud
•Long Tail publishing and sales
•Work at Home, virtual offices, outsourcing
•Global economy
Copyright © 2008
Copyright © 2008
Everything is a URL in the Cloud
•A Person is a URL (domain address)
•A Group is a URL (http://ABC.com/abc)
•A Conversation is a URL
•A Media item is a URL
•An Event is a URL
•A Post (of every kind) is a URL
•Meta-data and structured content make things smart
Copyright © 2008
Two-way APIs are key
•Take data out as easy as put it back in
Copyright © 2008
Access controls and privacy
•What if I don’t WANT to be part of the mesh?
•Control who sees:•My profile
•My social graph
•My content
•What I am doing
•Where I am
•Establish trust
Copyright © 2008
Copyright © 2008
Open Standards are our Infrastructure
• RSS = subscription format• Atom = subscription and publishing
protocols• XMPP = real-time transport• OpenID = who I am• oAuth = who gets access to what I have• OpenSocial = lots of social functions• Portable Contacts = accessing contact lists• Microformats = reviews, ID, events,
friends, place• FOAF = rdf schema
Copyright © 2008
Copyright © 2008
Our Infrastructure
•Pipes, wiring and clouds for all to use
•Redundant – rely upon no one vendor
•Underlying ID layer
•Show Context and State
•Shared Knowledge Bases
Copyright © 2008
Look for common, and standardize
• LiveWeb = real-time communication
(Converse, Presence, Microblogging, Streaming):• Twitter, Meebo, IM, Vid Conf, VoIP, Seesmic, Qik
• Watch = your friends and content sources (Activities, Subscriptions):
• Newsfeed, FriendFeed, RSS Readers• Express = yourself via text, media, links
(Publish, Upload, Comment, Rate, Bookmark, Review):
• blog, podcast and vlogging tools, IPTV channels• Media Gallery = your media stored ‘somewhere’
(Upload, Share, Tag):• Flickr, YouTube, Photobucket, Picassa, blip.tv,
Metacafe
Copyright © 2008
What every social app needs
Copyright © 2008
Must display
•Who’s here now and what they’re doing
•Comments and Ratings in this place
•The Content of this place and My Content
•The Activities of this place and My Activities
•My Profile
•My Social Graph
•My Media
Copyright © 2008
Open: Source, Data, Standards, Ideas
•Open Source: make it your own
•Open Data: use the data yourself
•Open Standards: agreeing to work together
•Open Ideas: give it away and benefit in many ways
Copyright © 2008
NEA
•Nobody owns it
•Everybody can use it
•Anyone can improve it
•We stand on the shoulders of others
Doc SearlsDave Weinberger
Doug Engelbart and Mimi
Copyright © 2008
Work with others, form alliances
•We need to show that open can benefit vendors – as well as end-users
•Alliances of non-overlapping agendi
•Competition means something different – when we live in the shadows of behemoths
•We must live off the crumbs they leave behind, while keeping our heads up high
Copyright © 2008
Figuring out how it’ll unfold
•Pure chaos
•We’ll be explaining and translating for years to come
•No one set of standards or approach
•Lots of different kinds of platforms
•Early adopters will lead the way
•Adhere to our principles:•“Bill of Rights for Users of Social Media”
Copyright © 2008
My back yard fence
Copyright © 2008
The Open Mesh Architecture
Copyright © 2008
#1 – ID, Persona, Groups, Social Graphs
•It’s all about me, the decentralized me•And my Friends•And the Groups I’m a member of•And the Personas which I go under•ID Hub - your own underlying ID layer•Utilize:
Personal
Contacts logo here
Copyright © 2008
Copyright © 2008
•When all Content is in the Cloud
•Paid, Free and YOUR stuff - too
#2 – Persistent Ubiquitous Content
Copyright © 2008
•By adding meta-data (tags and info) with content, it makes it smarter
•By storing this content on shared public servers with two-way APIs we can bake this stuff into our apps and services
•The “Our Data Server” effort is an example of this idea
•Just think “semantic web”
#3 – Structured Content
Copyright © 2008
Collective “We” is constantly evolving
• Buzzword du jours:
•Social Networking
•Citizen Journalism
•Shared Galleries
• Crowdsourcing
• UGC
• Twittering
• IPTV channels
• Narrowcast shows
•That’s why we need to invite our friends into new services
•Cause we want to try out these new things
•Be part of the Community Commons
Copyright © 2008
We can all be web celebs
•Share your profile, social graph, content•Be part of a shared social graph
•Voice your opinion; post, comment, rate
•Try out new services, move your data around
•Participate in Groups, Communities, Social Media apps, Message boards, Conversations
• Folks like Robert Scoble, Jason Calacanis
• Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Leo LaPorte
Copyright © 2008
So I’m proposing….
• The “Our Data Server” effort
• Our Data will be a simple service that stores and aggregates one’s social graph in a public place and allows fans to sign up, rate, leave comments, etc.
• Our Data will be used by Celebs to ‘invite’ their social graph into new services
• NOT controlled by a particular platform
• Early example of how the open mesh can evolve and prosper
Copyright © 2008
•The real-time is becoming infrastructure for persistent conversations, on-going communication and a real-time transport
•IM, micro-blogging, video confs, streaming
•Presence, context, fun
•XMPP is a standard in place to unite the LiveWeb together
#4 – Live Web
Copyright © 2008
•Tools + Community + Commerce fosters new kinds of creativity and control
•Normalize disparate data from multiple sites
•Reach out to your peers for Help from within the Tool
•Share assets and buy/sell in a marketplace
•Pricing can adjust to context and time
#5 – New kinds of Tools
Copyright © 2008
•Dashboard + modules
•ID baked in
•4 Inter-changeable tools (multi-vendor):
•Standard UI toolbox ‘components’
•Customizable environments
•Tied into CMS, LiveWeb and web services
#6 – Reusable User Interface objects
•Gallery
•Express• Watch
• LiveWeb client
Copyright © 2008
•Standard Social Networking verbs
•Two-way APIs, Activity feeds
•Constructs like Events, Places and People
•Persistent, re-entrant Conversations
#7 – Infrastructure
•Send a Message
•ADD as a Friend
•Synchronize
•Bookmark
• Join or Create Group
• Comment or Rate
• Tag or Categorize
• Follow, Subscribe to
Copyright © 2008
#8 – Underlying Constructs
• People: ID Hub, profile pages (public/private), aggregated Social Graphs, privacy controls
• Media items, Content Posts, Permalinks• Messages, Persistent Conversations• Events, Places and Items• Groups, Entities, Collections and Directories• Tags and Categories• Lots of kinds of Pages, with any kind of module• Widgets: both going out and coming in• External Accounts: synchronize, point to, update
Copyright © 2008
Copyright © 2008
•Everybody has to make a living, so we need APIs and infrastructure to monetize
•Buying and selling all sorts of things
•Matching user profiles to……
•Auctions, Listings, Transactions
•Monetize our attention
•VRM – vendor relationship marketing
#9 – Marketplace
Copyright © 2008
•Identity oriented
•Content oriented
•Leverage real-time transport
•Mesh architecture
•Microcontent publish/subscribe
•Route posts to your preferred tool
•Master list of destinations and services
#10 – Standards
Copyright © 2008
Data Sharing Summits
Copyright © 2008
How can we all contribute to help build?
•Each platform should mesh with all the other meshed platforms (eco-systems)
•The chaos of multiple markets, dimensions and platforms necessitates the open mesh
•We’re all the glue between the colliding BigCo tectonic plates
•This strategy plays well around the world•Each personal mesh will mesh into all
other meshes, have their own knowledge base(s)
Copyright © 2008
Conclusion
•Compelling User experiences is what it’s all about
•Our Data is for web celebs
•Underlying ID layers is where to connect to
•Persistent Conversations will arise
•Social features will be in all software
•The Cloud, persistent and structured content will enable new experiences
Copyright © 2008
PeopleAggregator is the reference design
•Source code available•Free to non-profits and government
agencies•Enterprise license available (with support)•Also available via a ‘PayAsYouGo’ license
•Starting at $2,500•No support
•We also offer SaaS packages•Can move to a license deal at any time
•Consulting, custom work available
Copyright © 2008
BBM is an International company