Krishwords

We are dreaming about decentralized social networks, where we can take our data and friends to wherever we go. Some of us are even wondering if Facebook and other social networks will take the necessary first step. But the venture capitalist Fred Wilson says that if people leave Facebook for its walled garden, it won’t make a dent on them. He also explains why

I wish it were so, but most of Facebook’s traditional users (like my two daughters) don’t care that their data is locked up in Facebook. I’ll show them my Facebook running in Netvibes when they wake up this morning and they’ll say “that’s nice dad but why would you want to do that?”.I don’t see a Facebook rebellion happening anytime soon. The Techcrunch 50,000 might leave when they realize that they can do most, if not everything, that they do in Facebook on the web on a platform they control. But that won’t make a dent in Facebook’s core audience.

In a way, Fred is right. Facebook’s core audience doesn’t care about walled gardens. They don’t care if they cannot take their data and friends to another network. Sounds familar? This is what happened when Microsoft was establishing their “monopoly” in the market. People didn’t care whether they were getting sucked into proprietary formats. People didn’t care about the vendor lock-in with Microsoft. Eventually, people did start caring about it. People wanted to take their documents and media files to use with other software and/or devices. Once a new technology matures, and the honeymoon period is over, people started worrying whether their friends and/or relatives, without a copy of Microsoft word, will be able to open the document they just sent to them. They started worrying about whether a video they produced will show properly on their friend’s computer or other media device. A realization, albeit a bit slowly, came, about the dangers of getting struck to a proprietary technology. The non-techcrunch Joes started realizing that their documents and media means nothing to folks without Microsoft applications. They started asking for open standards. Governments all over the world started implementing open standards and, in some cases, open source software. I expect a similar realization on the social networking scene too. We should not wait for the arrival of such a realization before we start building open standards based, vendor lock-in free, social networks. It is very important that there is an open standards based platform available when people start wanting to have open social networks. The future of social networking is going to be open because, sooner than later, people will realize that they want to live in a democracy rather than a monarchy or under a dictator.

Update: Wired has an article where they call for opening up of social networks.

Tags: socialnetworks, socialnetworks, open standards, openstandards, microformats, facebook