Keynote: Our Online Identity (DrupalCon DC 2009 notes)

Keynote: Our Online Identity
Chris Messina

Social Web, Cloud computing, and its discontents

Our Online Identies, My Online Identity, I am Mine, I am You

Web 2.0: WTF?

• "Build applications that harnes network effects -- to get better, the more people use them." (O'Reilly)

Rules

• The perpetual beta becomes a process for engaging customers
• Share and share-alike, reuse, provide APIs
• Ignore distinction between client and server
• Open and standards win
• Lock-in comes from data accrual, owning a namespace, non-standard formats

World doesn't really operate on version numbers.

Does Open Source Matter?

• Not like it used to.
• it's more about data...

Technology is becoming humanized. Humans are bcoming technologized.

Before blow-ups and big buy-outs, we (geeks) were outliers using little unknown sites and gadgets -- . Now, those who don't, are becoming the outliers...

We are becoming cyborganic.

Summary

• Identify
  •  online services I use help defines [part of] my identity
  • social graph also helps define: you somewhat the aggregate of your friends
  • (false) dichotomy between online and offline world is going away
  • Online Social Networks are moving away from "handles" to Real Names -- this is significant
• Friends
• Social Web
• Open, Social Stack
• Privacy and Property
• Cloud Computing

#hashtags: low-cost way to add to a service without changing underlying premise

Activity Streams

• enhance way to utilize social web

Twitter usage has been hockey-stick growth, whereas blogging doesn't work as well, now that so many folk are online -- now not enough time to write and write and read and read.

We're addicted to our friends, not the computer. When the computer lets us get access to our frineds, we look like we're addicted to the computer. -- danah boyd

moving away from banal senseless befriending behavior to more pointed attention. Activity streams allow and necessitate this.

How do you get your service into the FriendFeed list? RSS/Atom only way, right now, but these feed types are not enough to model richness that web offers.

Creating an extension to atom that allows for more expressiveness:

• Weblog Entry
• Note
• Photo
• Video
• Bookmark

Move out of Facebook and FriendFeed, but allow for rich activity streams

Open, Social Stack

In Drupal, Activity module coming along..

The Stack, (human readably) : Identity, Friends, Feed

The Blimp diagram: Identity contains Discovery contains Authorization

Private and Public data: your Streams, Friends, Profile have some parts needing auth, some not

Facebook gives pretty robust control over what you show to who, with assumption that options make users feel safer and more in control

Performative Identity

People, companies, and organizations are discovering that there is value in openness.

Legality of sharing user information? All bets are off.

People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them—like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on—to other services and grant those services access to those people's information. These two positions are at odds with each other.

Mark Zuckerberg, On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information

Terms of service; changes freak people out.

Walled gardens are going away.

Licensing and "property"

• copyrights, trademarks, patents: protect creators

Ownership, but ability to expose to rest of the world

• express where you store your data...

Government

• How to bring transparency to gov't?
  • current situation is result of lack
  • we (geeks) know more about transparency than most others
• Open Source Government
  • Transparent and modifiable government
• OpenID in Government
  • Trust and transparency make open source work

Work on stuff that matters!

• Work on something that matter more to you than money.
• Create more value than you capture.
• Take the long view.