Your social network relationships have become a kind of data which can be carried and peeped.
[+] social networks will become personal profile centers
So far we have seen social network sites' plans to open up their users' profiles, such as Facebook Connect, MySpace Data Availability and Google Friend Connect. One common idea behind all these plans is to allow users to decide which websites they can bring their profiles to. We can call it "portability of personal profiles."
Users of Facebook and MySpace can decide if they want to carry their personal data - name, phone number and address - and social network profiles - friend list or user group - with them to other websites. For example, you may access your Facebook friends from other websites you are using, of course with your authorization.
Through this strategy of opening up, social network is moving towards its next stage to play the role of personal profile center. Quite a few online users prefer to store their personal profiles in one central place, so that they will not need to fill in the same data repeatedly no matter where they go, and moreover, they only need to make changes to their profiles at one place - data at other websites will all be automatically updated. As such, we can see the value of such personal profile centers.
One thing calling for our attention is that, the idea of "portable profile" may not be a new one, but what is portable this time is your "relationship". In the past, your data or your tracks online do not include your social network relationships, which now become a kind of data that can be carried about and, of course, peeped.
[+] Personal profiles become tangible
You may have no idea about what websites your friends regularly visit, not to mention when they do. With the portability of personal profiles, you, when browsing some small website, may unexpectedly find your friends there, too. It is because you both are Facebook users and you carry your personal social network profiles with you to this site.
The society is thus turning into a gigantic tangible net where you may bump into someone you know at some corner. The impact of this development on people's social life is yet to be understood, but this is the first time we are able to transform our social relationships into tangible data, which can be stored in one place, carried about and, maybe, traded?
Social network websites, as places where personal profiles are stored, will have to bear social and even legal responsibility more than before. Who is after all the legal owner of the profiles - the users or the social network websites? Do social network sites merely provide data hosting service? What kind of responsibility they may have if the data gets stolen by hackers/ Can the government intervene in the management of personal profiles for the sake of social security?
In addition to legal aspects, there are business aspects, too. Thanks to the rapid flow of news content on the Internet, traditional media have almost got wiped out by portals. Now with open platforms and open user profiles, we see personal profiles flow rapidly on the Internet, and we wonder which traditional industries will be clawed down this time.
[+] Standard of personal profile portability
There is no standard so far for portable personal profiles. At least MySpace, Facebook and Google use three different methods. Users are bound to meet difficulties if they want to carry their profiles to another social network websites. Such portability benefits competitors, which will not be allowed.
However, if the ownership of these profiles belongs to users, there is no reason to obstruct the free and convenient flow of personal profiles among major social network websites? In this case, there may be a reason for the government to step in to break down the barrier set up by competing websites. Such intervention has a precedent in the telecommunications industry - telephone number portability, which allows users to carry their telephone numbers with them when switching service providers.
Furthermore, we can see this issue at as high as the national level. Imagine a scenario in which American companies such as MySpace and Facebook providing services in other countries. These American companies may accumulate an enormous amount of personal data and social network profiles of the citizens of another country. In that case, who owns these profiles? Is the government of that country entitled to intervene in the usage and management of these profiles?
It is possible that the data exchange standard for personal profile portability may become an international issue because a country may want to prevent foreign companies from controlling the profiles of its citizens. In the case of terrestrial TV standards, the result was that we have three standards: American, European and Japanese. So far the government seems to be slow in response because it sort of lags behind the fast development of technology.
Openness is an intrinsic feature of the Internet, and after a decade, we see a new exciting development of openness - open platforms and open user profiles related to social network. Business competition happens very fast, and it may take us another decade to manage to solve the legal and international issues it has incurred.
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Prev : Openness, where is it going to take us? (4)
- Today in History
Openness, where is it going to take us? (5) - 2008/12/07
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VoIP Gives out the First Cry - 2003/12/07
Users become more dependent on them for their central data storage.
[+] An ignored project of opening user profiles
A few days before the 512 earthquake in Sichuang, China, MySpace announced its plan of MySpace Data Availability, which was to open its users' profiles. A few days later, Facebook follow suit by launching Facebook Connect. The two companies, after the phase of opening their platforms for one year, have entered a new stage of open user profiles. Their plans were supposed to arouse extensive attention, yet they didn't draw too much attention of the press because it was overwhelmed by earthquake news.
What is open user profile? It is about allowing users the freedom to carry their social network profiles to other websites. One simple example: you can post your photo from your MySpace album on your Yahoo Messenger. Users are able to do so if Yahoo Messenger links to MySpace platform.
Such openness breaks the barriers between websites even further. As far as small- and medium-sized websites are concerned, open platform is about social network websites inviting them in to develop applications, while open user profile is about opening user profiles for them to do applications from the outside. The former is a centralized system with a social network website at its core, and the latter concerns exchange among websites on relatively equal terms.
What has been opened includes not only user registration data (e.g. names and addresses), blogs and photos but also users' friend lists - so that you can see if your MySpace friends log on the same website. Users can carry not only static data but also living relationships. The Internet has got to a point where the rules of the game have been constantly overwritten.
[+] Why open user profile?
Some people may think that these social network websites must have gone crazy to unconditionally open millions of their user profiles, and most important of all, the social network of users, they have accumulated for years. It is within users' discretion if they want their profiles open and to be accessed from other websites, yet should social network websites allow their users such an option that makes their user profiles available to other websites?
From the viewpoint of users, many of them have been fed up with filling personal registration data repeatedly. Web 2.0 websites in particular would ask you to provide loads of information of interests, hobbies and things, upload photos and most annoyingly, set up friend lists and invite your friends to join. Users may think: why can't I just use my MySpace friend list?
To streamline user registration process, small- and medium-sized Web 2.0 websites even encourage you to use the same ID you use to log on bigger websites. They, on one hand, access big social network websites' open platforms and develop small widgets to be embedded in big websites; on the other hand, they link to these social network websites' open profile plans so that users can carry their profiles with them.
It looks like small- and medium-sized Web 2.0 websites are getting more dependent on big social network websites. Indeed, the trend of opening up - both the platform and user profiles - has been pushing smaller Web 2.0 websites to lean on bigger social network websites. Smaller websites will find it harder to survive and get more attached to large social network websites which control the valuable and critical asset of user profiles.
[+] Demand for central storage of personal data
So, don't social network websites worry about small- and medium-sized websites stealing the data? Firstly, Westerners have high respect to users' privacy and it is a serious issue to access personal data without the owner's permission. Yet, even if the small- and medium-sized websites don't steal but just access and use the data normally, users may at the end turn to stick to them instead of the social network websites where they are from. Are these big websites not concerned?
The core of social network websites has been users' profiles and social relationships. Look at the illustration below that shows the four layers of the concept of social network websites. We can say that it is feasible for website operators to have third parties develop applications for them as long as they have good control of the core. As a matter of fact, users prefer to store their data in one single place, so social network websites will be taking up the role of data centers.
Imagine there is one place on the Internet where it is safe for you to store all your personal data. You can user your own discretion to access this data from other websites to save the effort to repeatedly fill in the same data, and when you move house, you only need to change your contact address once at this once place and the data at other websites will be automatically updated. Such convenience is beyond understanding in the Web 1.0 era.
No small- and medium-sized websites will be able to steal user profiles from big social network websites, and the significance of social network websites will not be reduced whatsoever. In fact, as social network websites are opening their user profiles to more other websites, their users become more dependent on them for their central data storage. The more you open, the better chance you have in the competition - this is the true meaning of online openness.
At the same time, what problems there will be when social network websites are becoming a personal data platform?
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Prev : Openness, where is it going to take us? (3)
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- Today in History
Openness, where is it going to take us? (4) - 2008/11/30
How Did Tablet PC End up in Failure - 2003/11/30
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