The Next Web

Google opens up their contacts, who follows?

Written on March 6, 2008 – 1:21 pm
Chris Obdam, Internet entrepreneur

As of today Google offers a API to sync with your Google contacts. In the quest for the Holy Dataportability Grail, the syncing of contacts through out different ‘contact’ services is the next big thing. Everybody owns several buddy- or contact lists. Keeping them in sync is hell, even when your using Plaxo or a Plaxo-like service.

Google’s API lets you read all of your contacts and use them in another application. The changes made in that application can be written back in you Google contact list. The API is part of Google’s Data API project and uses AtomPub as a format.

With opening up their contact information Google is the first of Internet biggest to create a portable contact list. For social networks, their user base are their capital so the question is whether social networks wil create contact list portability? Probably, opening up will be inevitable since portability is the future. When you can take of your contact list from one service to another, the only reason for using a social network will be what kind of functionality they offer. At the moment you pick a network because of the fact that all of your friends are on it. They next battle will begin when contact portability is widely excepted.

Of course Google’s Contact API is no portability standard yet, is doesn’t help you switch from GMail to Yahoo Mail. But it’s a start.Lots of people are working on syncing services for your contacts, a standard will only arise in the near future. More on contact list portability at the DiSo Project.

I hope you like that post!

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data portability, diso, google, Google Data API

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Wordpress too complicated to be THE next social network

Written on January 2, 2008 – 6:59 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

“Could open-source blogging platform WordPress serve as your next social networking profile?”. With that question, Anne Zelenka started a post on GigaOM that created a fairly big buzz in the blogosphere (143 comments and trackback plus 541 diggs). She wrote about DiSO, a project that by using OpenID as an identifier and Wordpress as publishing platform wants to “build a social network with its skin inside out.” With some sophisticated blogroll-related plugins, bloggers would be able to build a social networking place that’s customizable to the max, since it’s their own place. It’s an idea by Chris Messina, co-founder of Citizen Agency.

It sounds like a great idea, especially now everybody seems to look for ways to connect their abundance of social services. Remember what Marc Canter said in Paris on Le Web 3: ‘We ALL want social systems that DO connect with other social systems.

However, Zelenka added a critical remark in her post, stating that not everybody wants one place to present their digital identity. Some people prefer several places to present themselves in different ways for different audiences.

I believe that DiSO might get popular, but I doubt whether it will get picked up on a massive scale. It seems like a nice tool for the geeky crowd out there. The ones that actually care about their on-line identity and think outside the borders of their group of friends and acquaintances. Who already have a well-styled and written personal blog. For them it’s a nice extra.

For the large audience however, it’s just a little too complicated. Yet for them, there are also interesting blog tools emerging. Tools that make blogging more accessible and look better than the old-fashioned Blogger.com design. Have a look at Blogonize for example. It’s basically an AJAXified blogging platform that makes it easier for users to create ‘one heck of a blog’ and thus might stimulate a huge crowd to finally start blogging.

Tumblr also fits perfectly into the trend. Ok, it’s not 100% blogging, but it sure looks like it. They say that when blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks. It’s another easy way for users to easily share what they create and find on the web, in a gorgeous way.

So yes, blogging will get more popular for the normal users, since it’s a way for them to present themselves in a more personal way. But the process of installing a blog on a server and activating plugins is just a little too much to ask from them. Or will the guys from DiSo find a more accessible way to create the so-wanted personal social networkingtool?

Tip: Read this inspiring article by Hugh MacLeod in which he explains why he prefers blogging over social networks.

blog, blogger.com, blogonize, diso, online identity, publishing, social networks, wordpress

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