The Open Social Stack

There are many sides of this new wave of Social Adoption, and one of the most important in my mind is the technical side of Social Adoption. I like to understand how sites work, and this interest has led me to the Open Social Stack. Web 2.0 brought us a step closer to an interactive experience on the web, and Social Networking which was build on Web 2.0 services is taking us another step closer to that richer experience. However, the architecture and design of most Social Networking sites is different enough that sharing data, contacts and even passwords is not even considered, but with the introduction of this new Open Stack and it's many Open Components, we see a surge of social aggregators like Friendfeed and Plaxo who are pulling data in from multiple sources allowing us consume our many streams into one large stream.

The outlining and refining of the Social Web "Open Stack" is something that Joseph Smarr and John McCrea have started in an effort to bring these disparate Social Web entities together. The components in this Open Stack allow sites to share passwords, data and resources in a open manner that works for everyone. The stack is made up of 5 different technologies all of which are open and none of which is controlled by a single company. The five different Open Stack components are OpenID, XRDS-Simple, OAuth, Portable Contacts, and OpenSocial.

Another positive development is that Joseph and John are not trying to identify a spec and ram it down the throats for all Social enterprises, instead they are discussing the spec and looking for input on improving the spec. This openness is great and will help to improve how we handle data and communications between sites. In an effort to spread awareness and improve this Open Stack, John McCrea organized an Open Stack meetup in San Francisco last week and Videotaped some of the segments. Here is John's opening keynote from the Open Stack meetup

 Open Stack Meetup ..... 

Here are links to more Open Stack videos ...

• Open Stack Meetup - part 2
• Open Stack Meetup - part 3
• Open Stack Meetup - part 4
• Open Stack Meetup - part 5
• Open Stack Meetup - part 8

and here are a three different points of view from those who attended ....

• Marc Canters view of the Open Stack Meetup
• An Introduction to the Open Stack from the Yahoo Network
• Ben Werdmuller's thoughts on the Open Stack Meetup

Technorati Tags: Open Web,Open Stack,OpenID,OAuth