I was pondering how Facebook could really answer it’s critics in a profound way that would really up-level the social fabric of the internet while also satisfying those that want ultimate control over their data. The basic premise of the solution would be to allow any node in the Open Graph to be redirected to a 3rd party developers server. From that point on, Facebook would then treat that node just as if they were a developer that current gets access to Facebook users.
For example, my URL is currently:
http://graph.facebook.com/2410418
If I could easily go to my account and specify a new location for that data, for example, maybe I would put it at:
Which, for the sake of argument, resolves to much the same information about me, the Sam Pullara node in the graph. Similarly you could ask for metadata about what other things are available. Since it is a REST API you could mix and match those links to point to different endpoints. Some of them might point to a new Flickr Open Graph API endpoint that responds with my photos that are available to the caller. Another might point back at Facebook for my social graph. While a 3rd could point at a web service (say a new output format for Y! Pipes) that combines my posts on Facebook with my RSS feed and my Twitter feed in order to populate the ‘posts’ endpoint. Using these endpoints Facebook could construct the same set of views they have today on the graph but without being the ultimate authority for the data itself. Plus, as they would have to call your APIs with the authentication of the viewing part, privacy is under your complete control as well. For performance reasons, you could still have caching and asynchronous notification systems. Perhaps with some special sauce for websocket you could even allow them to reference the client browser rather than another server for ultimate end user control.
It would be theoretically possible to implement this now without Facebook’s involvement but without them as one of the providers I don’t think you could really get the adoption that would make this truly revolutionary.
@
Glue has already implemented this by using the FB OpenGraph Protocol but the data objects “liked” are stored in their own servers and not in Facebook. Also I think Google are trying to do something similar with rel=me claims on my Google Profile.
Now if we can only get Facebook to ask you what a user likes rather than their own database.
To be perfectly frank, I don't think most real people understand these issues. Does a normal human understand what it means when you say that something should be stored on the server of your choosing and not on Facebook? I think not. I appreciate the Diaspora and other efforts, but think they need a strong centralized brand around them for it to make sense to people. Also, I think privacy in general is changing online, the emergence of http://www.dirtyphonebook.com and other similar sites is proof positive of that. Privacy is undergoing a redefinition as young folks are learning that sharing data online is normal. I don't see any real way around shifting these attitudes and changing this societal trend. It would certainly be nice if Facebook cared more about security though. The incident in the last week or so where people were able to check out private messages is more troubling to me than this other privacy stuff. Just my opinion.
I actually agree. If 99% of the people still used Facebook to manage all their data that would be fine as an outcome. The remaining 1% could be hosted on Diaspora and still get access to the other 99% of the users.
Love this idea Sam! It will be interesting to see how how FB will respond in the next couple of days. I also like the NYU/Diaspora thing but share the view elsewhere that at this point it's a bit overhyped