(2007-08-18) Fitzpatrick Social Graph

Brad Fitzpatrick on the Social Graph Problem (Open Social Networking Model). Establish a non-profit and open source software (with copyrights held by the non-profit) which collects, merges, and redistributes the graphs from all other social network sites into one global aggregated graph. Since he recently left Live Journal/SixApart for Google, this could get interesting (actually, even at SixApart he probably could have gotten some good leverage, but maybe he wasn't find that possible).

Update: Dave Winer doesn't think his vision is realistic, and has a PodCast about it. His written summary ends with: However, a network that, from Day One, allows users of other networks to participate, and allows developers to access user's data, with the user's permission, but without permission from the network, may become the www of open identity systems. As much as it is considered politically incorrect in the tech world to say this, don't bet on OpenID being that network. You would have gotten roasted in 1991 for saying OpenDoc wasn't the future, but it wasn't. For the same reasons OpenID isn't.

Dare Obasanjo [has](http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/08/19/TheProblemsFacedByAUnifiedSocial Graph.aspx) his own objections. Bill De Hora paints him with the GroupWare brush (saying that worrying about granular permissions for Overlapping Scopes Of Collaboration is unrealistic), and also discounts the Semantic Web mentality (for similar reasons).

James Tauber pulls together some of his old related pieces.

Aug15: Adina Levin thinks the cure might be worse than the disease. Brad Fitzpatrick is acting as the Robert Moses of social networks, someday we will need social network Jane Jacobs. (SpamWars, Friction Free)