Let’s get something straight: in my last post, I didn’t say that Facebook was evil.
Careful readers would understand that I said that funneling all user authentication (and thus the storage of all identities) through a single provider would be evil. I don’t care who that provider might be — but centralizing so much control — the fate of our collective digital existences! — in the hands of a single entity just can not be permitted.
That said, I do want to say some nice things about the open things that Facebook launched at F8, because as an advocate of the open web, there are some important lessons to be had that we’d do well to learn from.
- Simplicity: I have to admit that Facebook impressed me with how simple they’ve made it to integrate with their platform, and how clear the value proposition is. From launching OAuth 2.0 (rather aggressively, since the standards process hasn’t even completed yet!) to removing the 24-hour caching policy, Facebook made considerable changes to their developer platform to ease adoption, integration, and promote implementation. This sets the bar for how easy (ideally) technologies like OpenID and ActivityStreams need to become.
- Avoiding NIH (mostly): In particular, Facebook dispensed with their own proprietary authorization protocol and went with the emerging industry standard (OAuth 2.0). I hope that this move reduces complexity and friction for developers implementing secure protocols, increasing the number of available high quality OAuth libraries, and leads to fewer new developers needing to figure out signatures and crypto when sometimes even the experts get these things wrong. By standardizing on OAuth, we’re within range of dispensing with passwords once and for all (…okay, not quite).
- Giving credit: I also think that Facebook deserves credit for giving credit to projects like Dublin Core, link-rel canonical, Microformats, and RDFa in their design of the Open Graph Protocol. I’ve seen many other efforts that start from scratch when plenty of other initiatives already exist simply because they’re unawares or don’t do their homework (one of which is the OpenLike effort!). I’m not sure I agree with the parts that Facebook extracted from these efforts, but as David Recordon said, we can fight over “where the quotes and angle-brackets should go“, but at the end of the day, they still shipped something that net-net increases the amount of machine-readable data on the web. And if they’re sincere in their efforts, this is just the beginning of what may emerge as a much wider definition of how more parties can both contribute to — and benefit from — the protocol.
- Open licensing: Now that I’ve been involved in this area for a longer period of time, I’ve learned a simple truth: it’s hard to give things away, especially if you want other people to use them, even moreso when some of those potential users are competitors. But, that’s why the Open Web Foundation was created, and why David and I are board members. After setting up foundations over and over again, we decided that it needed to be easier to do! Now all the hard work of the Open Web Foundation’s legal committee is starting to pay off, and I am quite satisfied that Facebook has validated this effort. We’re still so early in the process that it’s not entirely clear how to make use of the Open Web Foundation’s agreement, but surely this will motivate us to find our own Creative Commons-like approach to proclaiming support for open web licensing on individual projects.
So, while I still have my reservations about Facebook’s master plan, they did do a number of things right — not everything — but I’m tough customer to please. When it comes to the identity stuff, I’m definitely non-plussed, but that’s where my ideology and their business needs collide — and I get it.
What this means is that we all need to show more hustle out on the field and get serious. With Facebook’s Hail Mary at F8, we just got set back a touchdown, and a field goal just ain’t gunna cut it.
9 Comments
Great to see this dialog, and the contributions of fine folks like yourself and David Recordon.
I’m interested in your thoughts of the actual implementation of the Open Graph protocol. I think the work done on microformats over 5 or more years demonstrates that where the angle brackets and quotes go is not a trivial issue, nor simply a minor quibble.
It’s a shame that here’s *yet another* way to markup up semantics (but at a page level, not a more granular level). With Microformats having widespread publisher and consumer support, RDFa continuing to gain adherents and HTML5 microdata, we’ve now essentially got several competing technologies al of which aim to do largely the same thing.
I say forget about FB’s intentions. If Facebook could actually “take over the Internet” like some people are saying, it would be immediately broken up like Network Solutions. But that won’t happen. Facebook needs the Internet, the Internet doesn’t need Facebook.
The issue for me is that FB is a closed silo and will continue to be closed….the “open” graph is not open….you have to be a member of FB to use it….so its not “open”……I come from a time where “Open” had a meaning that was not bent and shaped by companies….For me “Open” means that no company “Owns” either end the process….In the case the the FB Graph…..(Note I m calling it the FB graph as this is what it is…..) FB owns the entier process….Its interesting to note how times have changed in my opinion for the worse….At one time Microsoft attempted to do the same thing that FB is attempting to do….and then developers and the tech “community” were up in arms….Why would we allow a company like MS take control of our identities and the internet ? Well then we said that we would not allow this and it did not happen…..I think that some the reason that FB has been able to continue to push their attempt to close off the internet is that when journalist write about or repeat the FB pr line, their is not context given….If the current coverage of the FB Closed Graph included the “Facts” concerning FB’s total lack of respect for member privacy as well as for third party developers, I think that the outcome and perspectives would be very different……As for the developers inside and outside of FB that are building and extending FB’s attempt to close off the internet….you are all complicit, and as a developer myself….I know that all of you know the implications of what you are doing….Mark Zuckerberg cannot close off and pollute the internet without the participation of developers……You can pretend you set silently at your computers writing code without understanding the very real implications of what you are doing….but we all know that this is not true…Developers have always been the vanguard of an open internet and we need to continue with this fight……….As developers we have allowed a company with the track record of zealous tyrannical dictator to steal a “standard” that should be owned by the internet community at large…There is no magic in what the litter dictator is proposing…..A group of developers could and should create a truly open graph so that any one can create and consume the data….The sad and horrible fact is that instead of doing this the very developers that have been entrusted to keep the internet open have created the tools that will be used to close it off….
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Thanks for elaborating your analysis of Facebook’s Open Graph protocol and chastening those who were so quick to spread the word you had called out Facebook as “evil.” It was a nice rhetorical flourish to describe the deleterious effects of consolidating user authentication. I liked @StevenHodson thoughts on the misappropriation of “Evil” http://bit.ly/cVWI5b
As evangelists for on Open Web and Linked Data enthusiasts, I wonder if we might agree that one of the most revolutionary aspects of both Chirp and f8 was that each highlighted the growing recognition of the import of metadata.
I suspect Facebook’s Open Graph implementation will spur a cascade of interest in the exceptional values to be gleaned from implementing Linked Data schema within more open contexts and galvanize further investments in the early practical application of Tim Berners-Lee’s 1999 vision of a Semantic Web.
Chris, thanks for taking the time for this writeup. Facebook’s announcement caught me off-guard last week, and it will affect a couple of my projects, at least a little. While I sort of hate to admit it, it’s nice to have you do a little of the thinking here because I don’t have time to parse it all yet. You have the cred and the trust, Facebook, not so much for me.
It wasn’t a Hail Mary, it was a blowout
Hi Chris,
This is a very good follow up post. There have been plenty of discussion regarding privacy and openness around Facebook “Like” button and their Open Graph.
There are a number of challenges around creating meaning in our social interaction on the web, beside privacy and openness. One problem is that there is not much data on the semantics. The only semantic data repository that I can find online is freebase. Even this is not enough to provide meaningful semantics on the social relationship online.
The next issue is about meta data abuse. OpenGraph let us specify almost anything in its meta tag. People may abuse the meta tag to increase exposure to their website by specifying false information.
Putting the privacy and openness issues aside, I personally feel excited that major player in the industry like Facebook, Twitter and Google has invested a lot of effort in making the web more semantically meaningful. The next exciting challenge is about the web more semantically meaningful.
Hope we can get some of your thoughts around semantic web. Cheers
(Sorry to come back so late afterwards: I’m going through all this one more time, to make sense of it all.)
I’m surpised by your final sport analogy: if anything, there isn’t two teams, and they shouldn’t be fighting. This certainly isn’t a zero-sum game, and the best way to express it is by considering O’Reilly’s criterion: do they create more value than what they capture? I’m stll struggling with the details, but I believe we have reached a point where it has become beneficial for Facebook to support external full-authentification (i.e. considerng non-members as part of the social graph) — and that your victory can only come by proving that to them.
@Bertil: I agree that it’s not a zero-sum game, but that’s not true of everyone in the space. People act like they’re in it to “win” — and they define “win” by “crushing” their opponents.
I’m more interested in the establishment of a league of different teams all playing against one another, but playing by established rules that don’t preclude new entrants from showing up. That’s why I used the [American] football analogy — if there is a “Team Open”, and Facebook is simply one of the other players on the field that we’re playing against (all of us having something to sell), then their announcements at F8 were significant and very hard to ignore. And, they really demonstrated that open can’t just be open, but that it also needs to be simple, and easy to adopt.
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