I’m still trying to get my head around Facebook’s moves to become the king of identity online. Hell, if Leo Laporte couldn’t quite figure it out on yesterday’s taping of This Week in Google, then I’m not capable. But here’s where I am. Help me advance this….
I think my problem is this: I want the exact opposite of what Facebook did. I want the Bizarro Facebook. Instead of Facebook controlling my identity, I want to be able to control and publish and set access to and rules for the use of my identity online, allowing Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, anyone access to it under my terms.
When I tweeted that, ad man Rishad Tobaccowala tweeted: “you are right. What we want closed (our data) they want open. What we want open (create and transfer) they want closed.” He then added: “When it is so easy to “like” is it really like? A profusion of “liking” will soon be like… Noise.” Agree.
My identity already exists online. It is my name, my email address(s), my URL(s) (for my blog, work, etc.), my Twitter account, my Flickr, my YouTube, my reputation culled from various services, and more. It is distributed. I have control over most of that.
What’s needed versus the present? Three things, I think:
* Organization. As Google organized our information, the war here is to organize us.
* Verification. No one, I hope, wants to verify as passports do. But Facebook has a leg ahead of everyone else on nearly verified identity simply because of how its service works: fake identities tend to be ejected from the bloodstream because they are irrelevant and irritating; Facebook is about real identities and real relationships and the one feeds the other.
* Connections. That, I think, is what Mark Zuckerberg means when he talks about making things social, about the social graph. He wants to link us to each other and information and that enhances our identities (what do I like and do and think….).
Fine. But I don’t think Facebook approached that opportunity asking first, “What can we do for the world of users online,” and second, “How can Facebook benefit?” If Facebook adds value, I have no objection to it benefiting, just as I believe Google should benefit by organizing our information and creating platforms; it’s what makes that benefit sustainable. But Facebook clearly asked the questions in the wrong order: It figured out what would benefit it most and then we get a few dividends: we get to tell our friends what we like and find out what our friends like.
But in the process, Facebook controls our identities with no relationship to our true identities online - that list above from email addresses to blogs to photos. Indeed, I’d argue that Facebook separates us from our trueidentities, for that is in Facebook’s favor; it gives Facebook control.
Far better and more experienced minds than mine are trying to get their heads around this. Dave Winer likes the idea of liking but also won’t put all his eggs into Zuck’s basket and so he suggests:
So perhaps there’s a compromise? Let me implement my own Like feature and have it connect up to Facebook through a feed. And let it connect up to Facebook’s competitors just as easily. I’m sure the smart guys at Facebook could figure out how to do this, perhaps they already have? I’m willing to do a little extra work to keep the web independent of any one company.
Right. Don’t all the identity standards and structures already exist openly. This is what irked Kevin Marks, who has done a great deal of work on identity, much of it while he was at Google. When he complained about this false openness last night, I said and he retweeted, “Open Graph is open as in ‘open your underwear drawer.’”
But as Swom_Network tweeted as I was tweeting about all this today, “Yep. but who is to do it?”
That’s really the question. Openness and standards are wonderful but if they don’t add up to applications that accomplish things, then we only open the door for companies to step in and seize the opportunity. Perhaps that’s inevitable. And I can live with that.
But we, the people, aren’t going to build these new applications and systems then we at least need to hold those who do to a set of principles, which means we need to have a set of principles to point to (and I’ll point to mine again).
Facebook’s Open Graph, I think, does not give us full control over our data and identities; it is not built to open standards; if it were, I’d be able to do what I want to do because others could build competing applications atop those standards. Then I’d be able to publish my identity on my own or through Facebook or through Acme ID Inc. and anyone could come along and verify my identity and publish that and developers would be able to come along and offer services based on that identity. But that works only if it is built to standards and principles, if it’s distributed and open. Open Graph is not.
As Dave Winer also says in his post, this is about more than identifying us. This structure leads to identifying places, sites, data, information. We will add a tremendously valuable layer of data atop the world - what we look at, what we like, what our friends like…. That is the wisdom of the crowd. Who owns that wisdom? No one but us. If you add value to it, you can extract that value (that’s what search engines do). But if you own the crowd’s wisdom then isn’t the crowd screwed?
Or that’s what I think I think. What do you think?
: MOMENTS LATER: As soon as I tweeted this, I saw that Rick Klau, a good guy at Google, is the new PM on Google Profiles and he suggested talking about it. I’ll think out loud first:
Google could build the open system I hope for … could. It has profile. It has the stuff around ID Kevin Marks showed me when I visited the company. It has lots of knowledge about our distributed identities.
What it doesn’t have is that close link to an almost verified identity. Sure, I can go and build a Google Profile page. But the problem with that is that it doesn’t really interact with the world the way my Facebook page does, so it lacks the opportunities for verification through relationships, right?
What could Google do about that? It could create a value-added service to verify identities (as Twitter has begun to do with the famous) but we’d find value in that only if others used it to some good end: if we could use it to publish comments on sites or make transactions. Is that enough?
Maybe Google can create the algorithmic authority (and identity) Clay Shirky dreams of: rather than verifying manually, it gives our identities a score and that increases our value in other transactions.
I still don’t know what to think.
Cross posted at Buzzmachine.com
Photo by Andrew Feinberg
Hal Vandeleigh says:
God, can't you techies write articles without citing Tweets as sources of information?
Keith Dennis says:
Jeff,
Excellent points and like yourself I’m still trying to get my mind around FB’s latest move. In response to your parting thought…
“Maybe Google can create the algorithmic authority (and identity) Clay Shirky dreams of: rather than verifying manually, it gives our identities a score and that increases our value in other transactions.”
Good idea but it doesn’t need to be Google who does this? Why not leverage BF’s social-grid to build verified identities that the user’s control!? We can do this now.
Keith
Alex Schleber says:
Excellent probing post. I especially liked Rishad's 1st tweet, thanks for surfacing that.
One of the problems I see is that Facebook just isn't all that helpful for information consumption. They've borrowed Friendfeed's inbound stream metaphor from circa 2008, without all of that granular filtering and sophisticated search operators genius stuff...
That's what we really need much more than a stream of Likes that's mostly only good for marketers: We need per user/per group filtering and surfacing, as well as good curation tools. Facebook currently is a black hole as far as my status updates are concerned. Even worse than Twitter.
We want to build information "tar balls" that curates stuff that belongs together. Right now I can't even search my own FB updates.
It is ironic that I still use Friendfeed for Twitter archiving (Buzz MAY become the replacement). And of course, the current state of mind of most people on Facebook is nowhere near ready for a high-rate flow like on Twitter.
That alone may be one of the downfalls of "Open" Graph: Will your FB friends freak out when you pass through a lot of Likes/Checkins/etc.? I am already greatly censoring myself and pass on only 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 tweets to Facebook.
As for Google, unfortunately their weak Buzz debut showed that they are just not that clear on what it takes to advance things in social media.
They clearly have the engineering talent, but do they have the "verve" to truly move the ball forward?
Some more thoughts on that here:
http://businessmindhacks.com/post/can-smart-filtering-save-us-and-google-buzz
Simon Taylor says:
What if Google verified against Facebook, twitter and wherever else and allowed all that to be transferable. ie, and Aggregate point for all the existing networks to verify against each other. Score them, put algorithms in place, and tweak it until it works, and is accepted.
I think that's what Keith was saying above, but I felt the need to re-articulate it, to help understand it. *Shared*
Paul Worsham says:
People use these services in different ways, at different times in their lives... even by the minute. My mobile Facebook and Twitter use is different from browser-based interactions. The easy-to-use service or collection of integrated services that gets the "real-time" organization of *us* right, across all the modes I need, will win it for me.
Adam Smith says:
Great post Jeff. I agree with lots of this. Just posted my thoughts http://insanemission.com/2010/04/open-graph-jeff-jarvis-fred-wilson-response/
Not sure about having Google, or any other private company, control my identity though. Ideally would be an open source service where we'd control who we share each bit of content with.
Also, figuring out how to structure an identity management system thats simple enough for people to use, given the complexity and always shifting social graph is a huge task. Not to mention the UI.
Mark Essel says:
You hit on the disconnect between what we want, and who's going to do it. Businesses that are profit motivated will gladly handle identity (Facebook). Open standards that allow us to register our identity are subject to a lack of innovation, but stuff like Oauth 2.0 and OpenID are looking hopeful.
You know there's an organization out there that already handles our identity, it's called the US government, and we have birth certificates and social security cards and numbers. Is this a place where they can provide a great public service? I'm usually for a leaner and meaner gov but this may be an opportunity.
Henry Story says:
Mark, foaf+ssl uses the same technology - but in a decentralised and much more flexible way - than what the government would have to use. There is nothing wrong of course with having banks, governments, and others being identity providers (neither with FB being a provider too for that matter). But don't expect the government to vouch for your current girlfriend, friends, twitter account, preferred color, etc.... A government issues certificate may at most say that you are a citizen of a country, and a few other very carefully selected facts. Same with banks. It's up to you to build your reputation and speak with YOUR voice on things that matter to you.
To do this one has to be able to have control over one's own identity. One can then, IF one wants to, link these identities together. What we are aiming for is that you can be your own identity provider, store your photos on your web site in your home, and have friends family and other see what you choose them to see.
A few diagrams here help make this clearer:
http://esw.w3.org/Foaf%2Bssl/FAQ#How_does_this_improve_over_X.509_or_GPG_Certificates.3F
MikePearsonNZ says:
Goverment can provide an important link between the legal concept of identity and the ability to take your life online. Look at I.govt.nz for an example; eventually any New Zealander renewing their passport will get the option to prove their identity online to 3rd parties, such as banks, to open a new account online. The service also has the concept of verifying attributes without revealing everything eg this person is a 35yo male.
Kaliya Hamlin - Identity Woman says:
HeY Jeff,
This is a great piece articulating the issues at hand with the Facebook moves.
The community focused on user-centric identity has been pondering most of them and making progress on understanding the problem and exploring potential solutions. I invite you to the Internet Identity Workshop our 10th one is happening May 17-19 in Mountain view. You and all your readers concerned about the development of an open identity layer of the web to support us organizing ourselves - using open standards that no one company are welcome to join us. http://www.internetidentityworkshop.com
There is a community of companies looking at the development in the next year of a network of personal data stores and open standards for peer-to-peer friending outside any one "social network" there are also efforts to create people to business connections - "Vendor Relationship Management" tools for people to explicitly share information with companies they are doing business with.
Lots of great stuff is happening to make open alternatives to Facebook real. I hope you can join in their development.
AlastairC says:
A social networking service has been suggested before, for totally different reasons (the inaccessibility of CAPTCHA):
http://juicystudio.com/article/accessibility-of-captcha.php#socialnetwork
The problem I see is that there isn't enough benefit to a company to get it rolling.
Alex Schleber says:
Really? You guys moderated/censored my 7 paragraph, thoughtful comment, presumably b/c it contained 1 link, to completely relevant content I might add?
That's just wild.