Scripting News: Facebook and Twitter, OpenID (Scripting News)
Sameer
· 10 months ago
How this actually works will decide how much of a threat this is to Twitter. If FB, somehow insists that links added to status updates show within or summarize through Facebook as opposed to a direct link to the source site, its more of an attempt to go after both Twitter and Friendfeed.
AAfter Search
· 10 months ago
I have not seen anywhere that Facebook will be allowing applications running outside their platform to access/update user status via the API [via simple CURL etc.] just like Twitter API does. The following link says, the API is not ready for testing. Before we celebrate the Facebook's openness, I will wait couple of days. http://forum.developers.facebook.com/viewtopic....
Also, you are right, not everyone should be allowed to use "open" in front of anything when they are not really open. For example the "open search" from A9 / Amazon is anything but open, and its API is so unreliable.
dave
· 10 months ago
In the event description they explain it as being about user experience, but they only talk about companies being part of the design process. What if I work on an open source project, I'm not part of a company. What if I'm a user who's very technical (I am, btw) -- why do I have to request an invite to be part of something that's "open" -- and who gets to say who can be part of it? Open is not something you do in degrees, you either are or aren't.
Chris Messina
· 10 months ago
Hey Dave, thanks for the post.
Wanted to address the confusion that you mentioned about the OpenID Design Workshop.
The event is not a closed event per se, but we are creating the event to strongly favor the participation of folks with design, user experience, usability, a/b testing and similar skills. The OpenID community has historically lacked participation and coordination among people with these skills, and it's high time that we remedied that situation by creating a dedicated space for them to do what they do, and facilitating the transfer of their knowledge back to the community at large.
Therefore, given our limited space, we're asking that people strongly consider what they can contribute to a purely DESIGN conversation before attending. All of the results of our work will be published and summarized after the fact.
To your question about representing open source project, personally I will be presenting the work that I've done on the DiSo Project (an open source project which maintains the OpenID plugin for WordPress -- for which I've done most of the design) and we're reaching out to Aza Raskin from Mozilla to see if he can make it. If you've implemented OpenID in an open source project and have done a great deal of innovative work on the desire of the sign in process, then I believe that you could contribute something to the event.
I also definitely appreciate your concerns about open protocol development happening transparently. Design, however, is of a slightly different nature than source code. Design is inherently subjective — but should nonetheless be informed by statistics and quantifiable metrics. We are looking to bring together designers to share their experiences, expertise and research in areas that relate to OpenID, but there will be opportunities to focus on code and protocols later.
Indeed, given this conversation, it would seem that a follow up workshop on "Implementing OpenID for Developers" would be a good idea. We'll definitely take that into consideration!
malatmals
· 10 months ago
I realize OpenID has been getting beat up a little over UX and some focus is needed to push through that.
Still might be a good idea to have a subset of seats reserved for journalists/bloggers and "anyone" - some of them could spread the word much faster than a UX expert. And when you get into the realm of design you don't weed people out - you actually increase the audience because, unfortunately, everyone is a designer.
Randy Holloway
· 10 months ago
Dave- when you worked on XML-RPC and SOAP didn't you participate in meetings where the public was not invited? You can't build anything with a mob. "Open" standards and protocols are always developed by smaller groups that are representative of broader interests, and then shared out more broadly to gain feedback and incorporate that in subsequent iterations. How is the work being done on OpenID any different?
dave
· 10 months ago
XML-RPC was done in two weeks, and before the one meeting we had, I posted a public announcement on scripting.com and mailed it out through DaveNet asking if anyone wanted to work with me on the project. The only person who responded was Bob Atkinson at Microsoft. That's how the meeting was organized.
With SOAP, I never went to a meeting that was not open to anyone who wanted to be there. However there were meetings that were private that I was not even aware of until after they happened. After a few of those I just withdrew, I didn't think the process had a future.
Hope this helps clear things up.
dave
· 10 months ago
XML-RPC was done in two weeks, and before the one meeting we had, I posted a public announcement on scripting.com and mailed it out through DaveNet asking if anyone wanted to work with me on the project. The only person who responded was Bob Atkinson at Microsoft. That's how the meeting was organized.
With SOAP, I never went to a meeting that was not open to anyone who wanted to be there. However there were meetings that were private that I was not even aware of until after they happened. After a few of those I just withdrew, I didn't think the process had a future.
Hope this helps clear things up.
Wes
· 10 months ago
Concept-wise ... Identity (mine) & Open (shared/ours) -somebody/something has to give ... "OpenID" should be about defining "privacy" in view of "user generated content" (the "mine" & "ours" thing needs full transparency), IMHo ...
Marc Canter
· 10 months ago
What I think should happen is that two events be held - sort of like how we did BOTH a Data Sharing Summit Workshop (which is where Portable Contacts was first floated) and a larger, more general Data Sharing Summit.
The larger event should be run by Kaliya with a clear agenda rather than pure anarchy unconference style, while the smaller (currently planned event) should do what you're planning on doing anyway.
Hold the larger event a week after the smaller one - please.
Bertil
· 10 months ago
Then you need to refuse to attend any meeting that is not fully on-line, because many people who would be interested about this just don't live in California, already have a hard time with their day job, and can't afford to fly for that. Moreover, you need to demand that anyone can sit in front the SocialWebTV cameras and drop the blog format in favor of wikis.
Open is neither well defined, nor a goal in itself: the goal is to make something that doesn't suck, and that no private interest controls against the interested party. If OpenID refuses Facebook help, at least around design, they solution will be even harder to understand right now, and won't be adopted. Hearing a major player out, on their terms, might help understand their goals and assets first — and I don't think all participants will hide the fact that Dave Morin used the opportunity to explain his world domination plan; as much as I'd love to see Chris Messina dive in the shark tank in a tuxedo, it's far more likely to exclude for excess of gibberish than lack of chairs.
Open is about what you can do with it *afterwards*, not the PG-rating of the sausage-making meeting.
dave
· 10 months ago
I don't completely disagree -- but the reason they do the private meetings sometimes has nothing to do with making the end result better, sometimes it has the opposite effect.
I think there are people who had something to do with OpenID who have a right to be there to see what's happening to it (I'm not one of them, btw) who weren't invited and wouldn't be if they asked. Now that makes it a little harder to decide if you like it, doesn't it?
Probably the only way to be sure there aren't any bombs or boobytraps in there is to have it be completely open to anyone who wants to participate. I know this often means nothing gets done, that's why it's so important to get a strong foundation built early-on when not so many people are interested, before it becomes a political and economic hot potato like identity is now (has basically always been).
OpenID may come out of that room as a different thing that it was before it went in. Remember there are companies, like Twitter, who are deploying now. And some, like Yahoo, have already deployed. Do you think Facebook is going to watch out to make sure their investment is protected, that they changes they make won't break them?
And what about the investment of small developers no one has ever heard of? Who at that table is going to watch out for them?
And finally, what about the users! It's not just about the companies. Of course they think it is. :-)
Bertil
· 10 months ago
I'm not sure your concerns have the same impact if, instead of quoting: "Because we want to keep it small and focused, the event is invite-only." you replace it by: "The event is not a closed event per se, but we are creating the event to strongly favor the participation of folks with design, user experience, usability, a/b testing and similar skills."
dave
· 10 months ago
Now to be fair, I did link to the piece I was quoting -- which is enough to inform anyone who cares of their rationale for keeping it invite-only. That's the point of quoting and linking -- to provide the relevant info and backup. If only reporters would do that regularly, we'd be less hurt by all the out-of-context quoting that goes on.
Bertil
· 10 months ago
How many people use your RSS feed, would have seen the extract you selected update, but didn't make the effort to read Messina's comment or read what you linked at? I agree with you that linking is necessary — but it is not enough.
dave
· 10 months ago
Okay I understand your concern, but you're not my editor, I don't have one. So let's move on. :-)
BTW, if you look at my RSS feed you'll see it has a <comments> link for each post, so if people have a good aggregator there's no problem getting from the post to the comments.
Bertil
· 10 months ago
What readers hande that? I've tried many, and none would, except fav.or.it (that lacks other featuers): it is the only one?
I'm asking because I think this is a key issue that needs to be adressed in the current twitter/Facebook/Friendfeed debate (where Disqus should be included). It doesn't seem to have been handled that well by the most commonly used feed-readers, and the proportion of comments read suffers from it — hence a strong feeling among the many who weren't able to attrack a large audience around their blog early that they voice don't count.
stevegillmor
· 10 months ago
nope, Marc. neither meeting should be closed. the closed one will poison the tree.
shokk
· 10 months ago
I like the idea of OpenID, but I'm wary of hosting it on servers where your identity can be wiped from the servers arbitrarily by the owners of that service because they don't like your name or your content. I prefer hosting my own OpenID. I will not use Facebook, or Yahoo, or any other OpenID services but my own. http://www.shokk.com/blog/articles/2009/01/25/h...
I propose that if you host your own OpenID that you also host it for your friends. Let's keep it open and federated. After all, these services are just going to associate an OpenID URL with your existing profile, so why not make it your own URL, or one hosted by someone you know.
Chris Messina
· 10 months ago
I host my own OpenID on my blog: factoryjoe.com. That said, there are many more people who will choose to delegate or use an OpenID provided by someone else, just as they do with their email and their credit cards.
It's not a binary decision: what works for some folks may not work for others, but the technology should support the emergence of an ecosystem of solutions.
shokk
· 10 months ago
OpenID with the centralized services will definitely be for the masses, and that's fine for them. It's not like I host my own mail servers, even though that would be the best way of avoiding those centralized services. To each their own, but independence is always best when possible.
Billy Halsey
· 10 months ago
I agree with you entirely, Dave. There's no such thing as closed meetings about open protocols, even if the purpose of the closed meeting is to "keep it small and focused." Whatever Facebook and OpenID are up to, I have a feeling it's sure to be profitable for them--at the expense of open computing and open networked society.
All Comments
http://forum.developers.facebook.com/viewtopic....
Also, you are right, not everyone should be allowed to use "open" in front of anything when they are not really open. For example the "open search" from A9 / Amazon is anything but open, and its API is so unreliable.
Wanted to address the confusion that you mentioned about the OpenID Design Workshop.
The event is not a closed event per se, but we are creating the event to strongly favor the participation of folks with design, user experience, usability, a/b testing and similar skills. The OpenID community has historically lacked participation and coordination among people with these skills, and it's high time that we remedied that situation by creating a dedicated space for them to do what they do, and facilitating the transfer of their knowledge back to the community at large.
Therefore, given our limited space, we're asking that people strongly consider what they can contribute to a purely DESIGN conversation before attending. All of the results of our work will be published and summarized after the fact.
To your question about representing open source project, personally I will be presenting the work that I've done on the DiSo Project (an open source project which maintains the OpenID plugin for WordPress -- for which I've done most of the design) and we're reaching out to Aza Raskin from Mozilla to see if he can make it. If you've implemented OpenID in an open source project and have done a great deal of innovative work on the desire of the sign in process, then I believe that you could contribute something to the event.
I also definitely appreciate your concerns about open protocol development happening transparently. Design, however, is of a slightly different nature than source code. Design is inherently subjective — but should nonetheless be informed by statistics and quantifiable metrics. We are looking to bring together designers to share their experiences, expertise and research in areas that relate to OpenID, but there will be opportunities to focus on code and protocols later.
Indeed, given this conversation, it would seem that a follow up workshop on "Implementing OpenID for Developers" would be a good idea. We'll definitely take that into consideration!
Still might be a good idea to have a subset of seats reserved for journalists/bloggers and "anyone" - some of them could spread the word much faster than a UX expert. And when you get into the realm of design you don't weed people out - you actually increase the audience because, unfortunately, everyone is a designer.
public announcement on scripting.com and mailed it out through DaveNet
asking if anyone wanted to work with me on the project. The only person who
responded was Bob Atkinson at Microsoft. That's how the meeting was
organized.
With SOAP, I never went to a meeting that was not open to anyone who wanted
to be there. However there were meetings that were private that I was not
even aware of until after they happened. After a few of those I just
withdrew, I didn't think the process had a future.
Hope this helps clear things up.
public announcement on scripting.com and mailed it out through DaveNet
asking if anyone wanted to work with me on the project. The only person who
responded was Bob Atkinson at Microsoft. That's how the meeting was
organized.
With SOAP, I never went to a meeting that was not open to anyone who wanted
to be there. However there were meetings that were private that I was not
even aware of until after they happened. After a few of those I just
withdrew, I didn't think the process had a future.
Hope this helps clear things up.
The larger event should be run by Kaliya with a clear agenda rather than pure anarchy unconference style, while the smaller (currently planned event) should do what you're planning on doing anyway.
Hold the larger event a week after the smaller one - please.
Open is neither well defined, nor a goal in itself: the goal is to make something that doesn't suck, and that no private interest controls against the interested party. If OpenID refuses Facebook help, at least around design, they solution will be even harder to understand right now, and won't be adopted. Hearing a major player out, on their terms, might help understand their goals and assets first — and I don't think all participants will hide the fact that Dave Morin used the opportunity to explain his world domination plan; as much as I'd love to see Chris Messina dive in the shark tank in a tuxedo, it's far more likely to exclude for excess of gibberish than lack of chairs.
Open is about what you can do with it *afterwards*, not the PG-rating of the sausage-making meeting.
sometimes has nothing to do with making the end result better, sometimes it
has the opposite effect.
I think there are people who had something to do with OpenID who have a
right to be there to see what's happening to it (I'm not one of them, btw)
who weren't invited and wouldn't be if they asked. Now that makes it a
little harder to decide if you like it, doesn't it?
Probably the only way to be sure there aren't any bombs or boobytraps in
there is to have it be completely open to anyone who wants to participate. I
know this often means nothing gets done, that's why it's so important to get
a strong foundation built early-on when not so many people are interested,
before it becomes a political and economic hot potato like identity is now
(has basically always been).
OpenID may come out of that room as a different thing that it was before it
went in. Remember there are companies, like Twitter, who are deploying now.
And some, like Yahoo, have already deployed. Do you think Facebook is going
to watch out to make sure their investment is protected, that they changes
they make won't break them?
And what about the investment of small developers no one has ever heard of?
Who at that table is going to watch out for them?
And finally, what about the users! It's not just about the companies. Of
course they think it is. :-)
"Because we want to keep it small and focused, the event is invite-only."
you replace it by:
"The event is not a closed event per se, but we are creating the
event to strongly favor the participation of folks with design, user
experience, usability, a/b testing and similar skills."
So let's move on. :-)
BTW, if you look at my RSS feed you'll see it has a <comments> link for each
post, so if people have a good aggregator there's no problem getting from
the post to the comments.
fav.or.it (that lacks other featuers): it is the only one?
I'm asking because I think this is a key issue that needs to be
adressed in the current twitter/Facebook/Friendfeed debate (where Disqus
should be included). It doesn't seem to have been handled that well by
the most commonly used feed-readers, and the proportion of comments
read suffers from it — hence a strong feeling among the many who weren't able
to attrack a large audience around their blog early that they voice don't count.
http://www.shokk.com/blog/articles/2009/01/25/h...
I propose that if you host your own OpenID that you also host it for your friends. Let's keep it open and federated. After all, these services are just going to associate an OpenID URL with your existing profile, so why not make it your own URL, or one hosted by someone you know.
It's not a binary decision: what works for some folks may not work for others, but the technology should support the emergence of an ecosystem of solutions.