User:Dusan Barok/Open sourcing the social graph

Short introduction to the question of open sourcing the social graph

(general structure and notes with an open end)

*** import/export fb/google conflict ***
In November 2010 Google introduced a technical change that blocks its e-mail users from importing their address book 
in one click to their Facebook account.
Google's refusal of giving Facebook access to these data was prompted by Facebook's refusal to reciprocate. 
  [Users have to transfer their contact list from one platform to another manually via their local hard drive.] 
It comes as no surprise that two leading internet companies are protecting their users' contact/friend lists.

*** rivals ***
2010 was a landmark for Facebook: the movie, the man of the year, the most visited site on the internet.
Their 'Like' button has spread rapidly across the internet, and lately discussion engines followed.
With 600+ billion users in stock, Zuckerberg aims for the clear target: dominate the web.
As well as Google, his enterprise largely depends on the revenue from behavioral advertising, fed by the user-generated data,
which is their biggest asset. Their competitive advantage.
  [In 2009, advertisement amounted to 97 percent of Google’s revenue; 
  while Facebook drawn 1/2 of total revenues from direct marketing and contextual advertising, and another 1/3 from global brands ads.
  http://investor.google.com/financial/2009/tables.html
  http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/03/02/facebook-made-up-to-700-million-in-2009-on-track-towards-1-1-billion-in-2010/]
 
The revenue is generated by the wide range of developers and web-based industry plugged in and depending on these centralised resources.
Facebook and Google compete for being the dominant supplier of civilisation's data sets to industries, which are being developed around them.
It was necessary for them to develop the methods for delivering these data.

*** social graph ***
In May 2007, Zuckerberg introduced "Facebook Platform [with which] any developer worldwide can build full social applications 
on top of the social graph, inside of Facebook."
  [http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=3102]
In August 2007, internet entrepreneur Brad Fitzpatrick (LiveJournal creator) published a proposal to make "the social graph a community asset, 
utilizing the data from all the different sites, but not depending on any company or organization as 'the' central graph owner."
His plan worked out, although two fundamental conditions were not met:
  "a. Establish a non-profit and open source software (with copyrights held by the non-profit) which collects, merges, 
      and redistributes the graphs from all other social network sites into one global aggregated graph. 
      This is then made available to other sites (or users) via both public APIs (for small/casual users) 
      and downloadable data dumps, with an update stream / APIs, to get iterative updates to the graph (for larger users)
   b. While the non-profit's servers and databases will initially be centralized, ensure that the design is such 
      that others can run their own instances, sharing data with each other. Think 'git', not 'svn'. 
      Then whose APIs/servers you use is up to you, as a site owner. Or run your own instance."
    [http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/]
Fitzpatrick was hired by Google, which proudly launched its Social Graph API in January 2008, giving public the access to its graph, 
although collected and hosted on Google's servers.
In a response, Facebook introduced their Graph API in April 2010.
While both APIs employ the open source standards for data structure and authorisation (XFN, FOAF, OAuth)
the access to data sets is limited.
Facebook allows third parties to access user's data only upon the temporary approval by the user unless the user defaulted them to public;
Google provides only "publicly declared connections".
  [http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/#auth]
  [http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/]
  [API data example: https://graph.facebook.com/me/friends]
  [API data example: https://socialgraph.googleapis.com/lookup?q=http://twitter.com/dusanson&edo=1&edi=1&fme=1&pretty=1]

***social commerce***
Google was not very successful with its social applications: development of Google Wave was suspended, 
and OpenSocial protocol did not receive the expected attention.
Facebook owns much richer and larger social graph, and it was a question of time when will it start to monetise it. 
  [nov 2010: gmail 176m users, fb 550m]
After widgets embedded at product webpages mentioning friends who liked the product,
recently it launched 'Sponsored Stories Ad Unit' program, which basically uses the users to advertise the products.
First, personalisation of online services in last decade allowed the direct marketing to bloom - 
users ('YOU') produced and consumed their own identities,
now with the social networks (and social graph) there comes a new dish: 'friends'.  
  [http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/02/features/social-networks-drive-commerce?page=all]

***privacy***
Privacy's flip side: being used by companies as an argument to keep the social graph gated.

***open sourcing the graph?***
Companies use the privacy argument to protect their competitive advantage - to set the rules over access to graph. 
Question: What implications would have making the social graph the public domain?