Joseph Smarr

Implementing Open Social Web

support on your site

Joseph SmarrChief Platform Architect, Plaxo

Future of Web Apps Workshop, Miami, 2/28/2008

Joseph Smarr

Agenda

1. The emerging Social Web 2. Building blocks for an Open Social Web

URLs as identifiers OpenID OAuth Microformats FOAF MicroID Social Graph API OpenSocial RSS / Atom Friends-list portability

3. Control and privacy issues 4. A clear vision for the (near) future 5. Q & A / Discussion

Joseph Smarr

1. The emerging Social Web

“Who you know” is becoming important for a large and rapidly growing number of apps…

…but finding who you know on a new site is still too hard

Current social networks are a glimmer of things to come when the web itself becomes social…

…and the building blocks for an open social web are already emerging and converging

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2. Building blocks for an open social web

URLs as identifiers OpenID OAuth Microformats FOAF MicroID Social Graph API OpenSocial RSS / Atom Friends-list portability

What it does

Why you should use it

How it works

Who is using it

Where to learn more

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URLs as identifiers

WhatProvides additional (safer) ways to identify

yourself and find people you know from other sites

WhyConsolidate your identity (blogs, social

network profiles, etc.)Make it easier to find people you knowAvoid spam (URL has no inherent capabilities)

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URLs as identifiers

How Maintain lookup via profile / blog URL in addition to

mailto:email or aim:screenname (xmpp:, skype:, …) Let users maintain as many identifiers as they want Verify identifiers using OpenID, rel=me (more later) Can use hashed identifiers for lookup (and MicroID)

Who Plaxo, Pownce, Digg, …

Where http://epeus.blogspot.com/2008/01/urls-are-people-too.html

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URLs as identifiers

Some of my identifiersmailto:joseph@plaxo.comhttp://josephsmarr.comhttp://twitter.com/jsmarraim:josephsmarr=josephsmarr

Plaxo:

Pownce:

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OpenID

WhatProtocol for proving you own a URLProviders and consumers (“relying party”)

WhyLower friction to sign up / sign in (no

password, simple reg)Enable trusted cross-site mashupsConduit for data transfer (attribute exchange)

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OpenID

How Consumer and provider exchange shared secret Consumer redirects to provider to log in Provider logs user in and asks if they trust RP Provider redirects to consumer with assertion Consumer keeps mapping of OpenID(s) user id

Who Providers: Yahoo, AOL, Blogger, LiveJournal, MyOpenID, … Consumers: Plaxo, Ma.gnolia, Blogger, O’reilly, … Libraries available in most popular languages

Where OpenID.net Internet Identity Workshop http://www.plaxo.com/api/openid_recipe

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OAuth

What Standard protocol for browser-based authorization to

grant access to protected resources via token Evolution of auth from flickr, yahoo, Google, etc.

Why Let users access and share private info without taking

passwords, scraping, or writing custom auth code Quickly gaining momentum as the de facto standard

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OAuth

How Consumer and provider exchange app key and secret Consumer redirects to provider to ask for authorization Provider logs user in and asks to grant permission Provider redirects to consumer with token Consumer exchanges token for permanent token Consumer passes token to API calls (or via auth header) Plays well with OpenID (draft AX extension)

Who Support planned by Google, Yahoo, AOL, Plaxo, Twitter, others Some library support, still under rapid development

Where OAuth.net / oauth google-group Internet Identity Workshop

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Microformats

What Light-weight semantic markup that can be embedded

directly in HTML to make info machine-readable hCard: contact info hResume: job history, etc. XFN: links to friends, me-links

Why Share and consume data from profile pages without

needing a separate API Very low overhead to produce Assert linkages between online identities

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joseph.myplaxo.com: to humans

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joseph.myplaxo.com: view source

<div> … <h1>Joseph Smarr</h1> <img src="http://images.plaxo.com/fetch_image?path=4294967299_0_418762113" />

…</div>

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joseph.myplaxo.com: view source

<div class="vcard"> … <h1 class="fn">Joseph Smarr</h1> <img class="photo" src="http://images.plaxo.com/fetch_image?path=4294967299_0_418762113" />

…</div>

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BEGIN:VCARDVERSION:3.0PRODID:-//kaply.com//Operator 0.8//ENSOURCE:http://joseph.myplaxo.com/UID:plaxo-4294967299-0NAME:Joseph Smarr's Public Profile - Powered by PlaxoN;CHARSET=UTF-8:Smarr;Joseph;;;ORG;CHARSET=UTF-8:Plaxo, Inc.FN;CHARSET=UTF-8:Joseph SmarrTITLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:Joseph posted a blog entryBDAY:0000-02-14PHOTO;VALUE=uri:http://images.plaxo.com/fetch_image?path=4294967299_0_418762113URL:http://joseph.myplaxo.comURL:aim:goim?screenname=josephsmarrURL:skype:jsmarr?callURL:http://joseph.myplaxo.com/EMAIL:joseph@plaxo.comEMAIL:jsmarr@plaxo.comADR;CHARSET=UTF-8;TYPE=work:;;;;;;TEL;TYPE=work:650-254-5406 TEL;TYPE=cell:858-442-2353 TEL;TYPE=fax:650-254-1435NOTE;CHARSET=UTF-8:As part of my ongoing work to help open up the social web, we've just released a full implementation of the new OpenSocial APIs in Plaxo Pulse! Exciting times are ahead!END:VCARD

joseph.myplaxo.com: to computers

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Microformats

How Standard CSS class names for common pieces of data Embedded in DOM structure of web page (only maintain one

copy, rich copy/paste, etc.) Parse with tidy/xpath (soon: use Social Graph API) Plug-ins available to view / use microformats (operator, tails) Can “subscribe” to URL check for updates, pull them down

Who Lots of side produce them Some sites consume: dopplr, satisfaction, plaxo, … Open-source parsers, technorati proxy parser Planned support in Firefox 3

Where Microformats.org

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FOAF (“Friend-of-a-Friend”)

What RDF spec for representing profile and friends-list info

Why Easy way to make social graph data portable Single file format for who I am and who I know Data can be distributed across the web and joined together

How Look for FOAF files and parse them Can produce FOAF files for users and link to them from profiles

Who LiveJournal, Hi5, Plaxo, PeopleAggregator, …

Where foaf-project.org

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MicroID What

Hash of two identifiers to verify linkage / ownership Why

Validate that a user owns a given profile page, or that two identifiers represent the same person

Broadcast validated linkages without leaking raw information How

uri+uri:algo:hash, e.g. mailto+http:sha1:sha1(sha1(“mailto:joseph@plaxo.com”) + sha1(“http://joseph.myplaxo.com”)) =

mailto+http:sha1:a70039016279cc5a7839e47fad2f8d597080a3a4

Verify by computing hash and comparing Publish in head of pages: <meta name=“microid” content=“…” />

Who ClaimID, Last.fm, Ma.gnolia, Wikitravel, Plaxo, …

Where MicroID.org

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Social Graph API

What API to access public social data (XFN, FOAF, …) Open-source library for canonicalizing profile URLs

Why Quickly lookup public info for users

build meta-profiles, find out what sites they use How

Google already crawls the web parse it and make data available via JSON API

Can add fme=1 to get transitive closure of me-links Can get back-links (who links to me?) Only uses data in public web crawl

Who Google (Brad Fitzpatrick), Plaxo, … Intended to be copied by others

Where http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/ http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/

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Me on the web

http://josephsmarr.com

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Social Graph API

What API to access public social data (XFN, FOAF, …) Open-source library for canonicalizing profile URLs

Why Quickly lookup public info for users

build meta-profiles, find out what sites they use How

Google already crawls the web parse it and make data available via JSON API

Can add fme=1 to get transitive closure of me-links Can get back-links (who links to me?) Only uses data in public web crawl

Who Google (Brad Fitzpatrick), Plaxo, … Intended to be copied by others

Where http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/ http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/

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OpenSocial

What API spec for building “social gadgets” that live inside social

networks and have access to profile, friends, and activity stream Open-source “shindig” project for turning any site into an

OpenSocial “container” Will be supported by most major social networking sites

Why Write-once, run everywhere more distribution, less code Containers: network effects of developers across all OpenSocial

sites don’t need to build a custom API and woo developers

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OpenSocial

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OpenSocial

How JavaScript + HTML, lives in iframe,

callback-style for accessing social data Gadgets can live in profile box or full canvas page Generating activity goes into sites’ activity stream Support for custom extensions to data, surfaces Planned support for server-to-server REST APIs

Who MySpace, Orkut, Hi5, Bebo, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Ning, SixApart, … Developers: Slide, RockYou, Flixster, iLike, Shelfari, … Spec is at 0.7 now; still work in progress Planned rollout in Q1/Q2 for many sites

Where http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial OpenSocial hackathons

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RSS / Atom

What Standard formats for syndicating user activity

(not just for blogs!) Why

Publish activity from your site so it shows up elsewhere drives awareness and attention back to you

Subscribe to user activity from other sites richer profiles How

Publish: list most recent activities with title, description, etc. Subscribe: periodically poll for updates; check for new items RSS feeds can be private (obscure URL, OAuth, …)

Who Tons of publishers, feed readers, Pulse, SixApart Action Stream

Where Google for RSS or Atom

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Friends-list portability

What Recipe for finding who you know on a new site based on your

existing relationships User-centric, distributed approach to building and consuming social

applications (“facebook-like platform for the web”) Why

Lower friction to finding friends, drive engagement and retention Social networks become a platform where relationships are

leveraged instead of a dead-end; syndicate social app activity back

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Friends-list portability

How Let users maintain list of discoverable identifiers Provide users with API access to their current friends list

(can be protected, e.g. by OAuth) Provide lookup API to find local members by identifiers Users can pull in existing identifiers from one site and look up

who they know on your site with the discovery API Can be run persistently in the background notified when new

people join the site or you meet new people who use it Who

Most sites support pieces of this need to move to open standards (possible but hacky today)

Plaxo planning to release technology to make this easier Where

http://blog.plaxo.com/archives/2007/12/a_practical_vis.html

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3. Control and privacy issues

Private vs. public infoPortable != public

Who owns your data?Address book vs. social network?Social contracts vs. technical restrictions

Discoverability (how findable am I?) Maintaining multiple personas

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4. A clear vision for the (near) future

A user-centric Social Web with durable, portable identity Social apps are easier to build and sccle because technology and

user data are both readily available Social apps can remain on independent web sites and/or as

embedded gadgets in social networks Users can control which sites have access to their data

Don’t need to start from scratch each time Relationships become richer and more durable

Users will start to delegate responsibility for maintaining aspects of their social graph (business, family, etc.)

Users will maintain multiple personas (professional, personal) that stitch together info from multiple sites

Activity from social apps will be syndicated across other sites and drive attention and discovery back

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4. A clear vision for the (near) future

We’ve seen this movie before… The pie is about to get a lot bigger

room for everyone to win

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5. Q & A / Discussion