Will Open Source Social Networks Eventually Replace Facebook?
Monday, May 24, 2010 at 09:03AM
When Facebook launched their Open Graph API last month they thought they had revolutionized their platform. They certainly did not expect some of its own users to organize international boycotts like Quit Facebook Day or petitions by some of the largest grassroots organizations like MoveOn and the ACLU. But Facebook crossed a privacy line again and has infuriated some of its most passionate users.
Has Facebook angered its base so much, that its user base could fizzle out in the next year as more people and nonprofits demand control of their own social data and look to other platforms? In March, Facebook had more traffic than Google in the US. Also what impact does Facebook’s new privacy policies have on nonprofits and their constituents?
“Facebook is really good at handling stuff like this-- they've gone through a privacy coup before,” said Clay Johnson, Director of Sunlight Labs for the Sunlight Foundation. “I think Facebook has been having a negotiation with the public for where the right space lies between the ability to share data and the need for people to protect their privacy. This negotiation is being done through innovation rather than dialog-- probably the only way it can happen. It'll sort itself out soon enough. But Facebook's too baked into everywhere for it to go away or for a user revolt to be practically useful.”
Jon Pincus who co-chairs the Computer, Freedom and Privacy Conference, says that that there's a need for a social graph that's not tied to a particular website or corporation. Frogloop explored this concept last fall when we discussed “Is your Nonprofit too Social Media Dependent?” 
What is the Portable Social Graph?
“The "social graph" is, basically, your data about who you are, and who is connected to you - who your friends are. A portable social graph would be one that you can take with you, wherever you are - so the friends that are connected with you on one network are also connected with you on another. It's the holy grail of social network connectivity - you are connected to who you are connected to, no matter what site you are on”, said Michelle Murrain of Open Issue.
Portability's one approach; another is to put the social graph under an individual's control from the beginning which Diaspora, a new open source social network being built by a few NYU college students is attempting. In the past couple of weeks, these college students have raised over $100K, mainly in response to the revolt against Facebook’s privacy policy.
“Judging by the reaction Diaspora received at their plans to let people control their own privacy while empowering them with a social graph, I’d say there is definitely a need for the technology and convenience of it,” said Danielle Brigida, who runs social media for the National Wildlife Federation. “I’m interested to see what they will do with it next. From a nonprofit perspective how we can use that information (that our constituents want us to have) to better serve the communities and the world.”
Others are not fans of projects like Diaspora because they think you can achieve similar results through email. “Ultimately, building a service that allows people to share content with their friends in an easy, secure way with content that you can control sounds, to me, a lot like email. So if you want a good, portable, distributed social graph... open up your address book,” said Johnson.
The Impact of Facebook’s New Privacy Policies on Nonprofits and their Constituents
Nonprofits and political campaigns should certainly be aware of the issues, said Pincus. “With the latest changes, it's very easy for campaign supporters to inadvertently reveal information about their activities and interests, and some situations that can put them at risk. So it may well be important to provide basic educational information for volunteers and supporters.”
http://reclaimprivacy.org is one utility that constituents can check out.
“In terms of tactics, again, it really comes down to awareness is important. Putting a "like" button on your web page is a great opportunity to get some viral awareness on Facebook ... but what percentage of the people you're trying to reach out to will be concerned by the ramifications of having this information shared with Facebook and their partners and advertisers? The answer's likely to be different for different organizations,” said Pincus.
How do you feel about Facebook’s new privacy policies? Do you think nonprofits and their constituents would benefit from a portable social graph?
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- Social Network ROI Calculator: Frogloop
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Reader Comments (5)
there. It might fizzle out, but I think that there may be a zeitgeist shift
going on and I am hopeful for that. Nice write up, Allyson. I blogged about
Diaspora and covered some other activity in the Facebook-alternative space
(i.e. Elgg, OneSocialWeb, etc.) for Idealware a week or two ago (I just
added a link to your post there):
http://idealware.org/blog/pining-alternative-facebook-will-it-be-diaspora
Diaspora is over $188K now. Those kids are gonna build some awesome software
this summer, or they are going to be hanging out in a chalet in the French
Alps. Maybe both. Hard to say.
think alike) and summarily dismissed any chances of Diaspora or an open
source alternative gaining enough momentum in my post on this. My take is
that we have big corporations (Facebook, Google, Yahoo, MS) all investing
heavily in this space, and our best option is to wind up with a leader that
is "less evil" than Facebook. Accordingly, my two cents on the topic is:
http://www.idealware.org/blog/how-google-can-kick-facebooks-butt
I thought that this post might inspire some of my friends to challenge my
blatant corporate toadying here, but nary a comment... ;-)
I have been ruminating on this for weeks as we get prepared for our Privacy online event next week (see http://www.nten.org/events/webinar/2010/06/03/evolution-privacy-and-social-web). Honestly, my take is that it's YOUR privacy, not Facebook's. Quite frankly, I'm not sure they owe you anything beyond the right to adjust your privacy settings. And if they don't provide privacy settings you like, you can leave.
Or put another way - privacy is not a right, it's a responsibility.
I do hope that some alternative models enter the scene, because the privacy issue is far from settled, and I think that competition on this key area will create some better outcomes. And here's an update fro RWW on the latest Facebook take on privacy settings:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_rolls_back_some_key_privacy_changes.php
How's that for some mid-week pot stirring?
We need to be more circumspect as organizations about letting Facebook be our network--as an organizer the problem I have with it is that I can't get information back out. Facebook owns those relationships, I don't. That is all a long way from what I understand the Identity People to be talking about. I don't want you to be able to take information back from me, I want to gather as much information as I can and use it to understand my base.
As an individual, I want control over how much you know about me. I want to decide who has my address and who has my phone number and who knows when my birthday is. As an organization, I want to aggregate that information for all kinds of perfectly legitimate reasons and a handful of less legit ones. A little bit of automated personalization on your birthday and a little bit of asking the database roughly how many of my active readers or members or users are college age.
And then there's Facebook is in the middle and they don't really know what they want (besides the obvious). So they built something that intuitively suited and drew a lot of users in part because it was consistent with what the identity folks already know about what we want as individuals. And they have advertisers who want to access that information in some form.
I think that a lot of what was so shocking to people about Facebook's latest antics was that we were all kind of using Facebook as our identity broker without really considering who Facebook is.
Diaspora was well positioned (lucky? smart? both?) to take good financial advantage of the privacy hubub, but as Jon Stahl mentioned in a recent listserv exchange - it's vaporware. Anyway, what works about Facebook is the monolith. Everyone is there. Balkanize it and you'd lose a lot of what makes it kind of great: the fact that your cousins, all your past interns and most of your sixth grade class are loosely assembled in one place. I'm not sure how diaspora would bring them back together.
Identi.ca is more interesting to me, not because people are using it (almost no one I know is) but because it is there as a foil for twitter. It works *a lot* like twitter. A lot a lot. And it is not vaporware. Which means that twitter has to stay on their toes. They can't act as unilaterally as Facebook precisely because people do have someplace to go. (Then there's the fact that Twitter is so much more simple and it is hard to imagine what kind of Zuckerie they could even cook up.)
Lastly, though, the buried story in all of this is how Facebook tolerates dissent, whether it's criticism of them or of governments. I've been following this mostly out of the corner of my eye, through Jillian York's spotlight, but it is interesting stuff:
http://jilliancyork.com/2010/05/19/facebook-deactivations-no-appeals/
My ten cents.