[governance] open standard for "facebook crowd" interactions

[McTim]

Norbert,

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 3:58 PM, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:

<snip>

> But let's assume that I'm mistaken and APIs exist for everything that
> I'd want...
>
>> > I have no idea what would be a suitable forum for effectively
>> > addressing this topic.
>>
>> It has already been addressed IMO,
>
> If the only way in which it has been partly addressed is by
> unilateral actions of Facebook Inc. which the company takes
> because these actions are expected to further their business
> interests, then I am not satisfied about that kind of internet
> governance which puts all this power mostly into the hands of
> a single company and to some extent into the hands of the
> government of the country where the company is headquartered.
>
>> If you want to interact with FB, you are free to do so, if not, then
>> don't (and build your own thing).
>
> Suppose someone invested a lot of effort into building something
> which meeting similar communication needs as FB, but with better
> privacy properties. Network effects would likely cause this new
> thing to be very unattractive to potential early adopters because
> "everyone is on Facebook" unless sufficiently rich APIs are
> available to effectively integrate the users of facebook.com
> with the users of the new site into a single social network.
>
> Even if we assume that suitable APIs for doing this exist *now*,
> in the absence of any effective governance mechanism

Can you specify what governance mechanism you would like to see?

that takes
> adequately into account also stakeholder interests which may
> conflict with those of Facebook Inc. and the perceived interest
> of the U.S. government, the company is not in any way obligated
> to play along -- and the risk that they possibly wouldn't is
> probably enough to prevent anyone from making the above-mentioned
> investment.

But new social network pop up nearly everyday.

Both FB and Google are building entire ecosystems.  Both are built on
showing you adverts.  But both thrive by building tools so that others
can play with those tools and build new stuff.

How would you like to regulate these ecosystems?

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel
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