Joseph Smarr gave this talk at O'Reilly's Open Source Conference (OSCON) in July 2011 on his experiences and predictions about working towards a user-centric, open social web.

1. Fighting for the Future
of the Social Web
Selling Out and Opening Up
Joseph Smarr
Member of Technical Staff, Google
Portland, OR – July 26th, 2011
http://profiles.google.com/jsmarr
http://twitter.com/jsmarr
http://josephsmarr.com

2. A bit about me…
 Software Engineer at Google since 2010
- Worked a lot on Google+ (esp. circles & sharing)
- Also worked on Webfinger, Portable Contacts, Social Graph API, Buzz APIs
 Former CTO of Plaxo (and first employee, joined 2002)
 Long-time advocate and early adopter of Open Social Web
- Bill of rights (opensocialweb.org)
- Plaxo as early mainstream OpenID relying party
- OpenID / OAuth hybrid spec
- Portable Contacts spec
- Former board member, OpenID Foundation
- Former board member, OpenSocial Foundation

3. The obligatory disclaimer:
These are my personal views, not Google’s!

4. Is the social web actually opening up?
Is open web tech getting more useful & user-friendly?
Have open web proponents “sold out” to big companies?
Hint: “yes and no…”

5. But first…a brief reminder:

7. Why we fight: Trying new
things should be easier!

8. Why we fight: Trying new
things should be easier!

9. Why we fight: Users should
control their own data!

10. Why we fight: Innovation
leads to awesomeness!

11. When will we have won?
 Users can try new services without having to
“start over” or leave their friends & data behind.
 Users can connect across services that don’t
know of each other (or like each other).
 Developers can thrive in a “social web
ecosystem” and quickly find success.
 The social web is vibrant, innovative, and not
owned by anyone (i.e. just like the web itself).

12. So…how are we doing so far?

14. OpenID: As mainstream as
Lady Gaga?

15. A nice “give and take,” even
with the big guys.

16. Random collection of “socia
arly all support OpenID and/or OA
(or are out of business)
OAuth-based APIs are now the
norm.

17. OpenIDSampleStore.com
Best practices and sample

18. Sounds great! So…where’s the problem?

19. So near and yet so far…

20. So near and yet so far…

21. So near and yet so far…

22. How do I sign in with my
Yahoo! account here?

23. Sign-up forms stubbornly
refuse to die.

24. Hmm, which account did I use
last time?

25. Fresh companies bring fresh
ideas.

26. code.google.com/apis/identitytoolkit
Google is making account UI

27. The future: Re-building
OpenID on top of OAuth 2.

28. PortableContacts.net
Why are contact APIs like
snowflakes?

29. We fixed password-scraping,
but not much else.

30. Open protocols only work if
businesses let them!

31. What happened to “bridging

35. The technology is ahead of
the market.

36. Have we “sold out”?

37. Fixing “If the big guys don’t

38. Facebook became a champion
of OAuth.

39. Will Google+ be more than

40. Circles are “federation-

42. Reminder: The social web is

43. Is the social web actually opening up?
Is open web tech getting more useful & user-friendly?
Have open web proponents “sold out” to big companies?

44. Is the social web actually opening up?
Answer:
Is open web tech getting more useful & user-friendly?
We’re making solid progress.
But we all need to keep pushing.
Have open web proponents “sold out” to big companies?
The future is still ours to
build.

45. If you want an open future,
do something about it.