Becoming Part of the Social Web

As my colleagues Jason Kinner and Rich Friedman (and many others) have pointed out, last week’s announcements by MySpace and Facebook to open up their user’s identity, friends and privacy to any website is a major step toward a Social Web. Now any website can start to offer socially aware applications, like putting a Facebook user’s profile picture on that user’s webpage, or listing friends to buy a gift for.

We are very excited because it gets website business owners thinking about the possibility of a more social website. And if enough websites start doing that, then a Social Web really starts to form. This is exactly the scenario we mapped out at the Passariello’s pizza parlor a year ago when we first started talking about this.

Website business owners will start to ask the same questions we were asking:

  • If some of my users are on Facebook and some are on MySpace, how do I hook them together?
  • What about my website users who don’t use a Social Network? Can they benefit?
  • Can I offer my own mini social network for my users that hooks into the bigger social networks?
  • How do I develop social applications that take advantage of all these social networks?
  • Do I really want to give the big social networks my data that my users trust me with?
  • Can I learn more about my users by understanding their social interactions better?
  • Can I retain the context of the social interactions that have to do with my business?

For websites to really become part of the Social Web, they need their own Social Application Server. One that is open, one that works with their own infrastructure seamlessly, one that connects with Facebook and MySpace and Open Social, one that lets them build their own social graph for their website users, one that helps them understand the context of the social interactions their users are making.

Today, Ringside Networks is the first company that is building this. We have a chance of being an important piece of creating the Social Web. We look forward to helping you become part of the Social Web as well.

Comments

J Conroy said…
really enjoying your stuff Bob. Trackback from CMSWire.com
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/towards-the-social-web-ringside-seats-for-the-social-big-bang-002656.php
May 13, 2008 at 11:55 AM
Mark Little said…
Hey Bob, great to catch up with you and the gang last week. I still think Social Broker (http://blog.perfectspace.com/2006/12/29/are-you-a-social-broker/) or Social Fabric is easier on the eyes (and mind) than Social Application Server ;-)
May 13, 2008 at 12:06 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ringside Winding Down

A year ago, a group of us met in a pizza parlor to discuss how we could bring the social web to every website and business. In January, we launched Ringside Networks with seed funding from Matrix Partners, one of the best VC firms in the country. By the end of March we released into open source an initial beta of our Social Application Server – a very ambitious project. We got some very positive reviews on our approach, our implementation and the need in the marketplace for every website to become social. We were ready for our Series A round of funding, and in late May we received a number of term sheet offers from the very best VC firms. As we were about to finalize our funding, one of the biggest non-evil Internet companies asked if we would have interest in being acquired instead. After a lot of thought and debate, we decided that the larger company would enable us to get our technology to market sooner and with more impact. The story sounds almost too good to be true. And it w
Read more

Facebook Open Sources Platform

I just got a call from Ami Vora of Facebook, who has corrected me on following the advice of this other article - http://ostatic.com/163756-blog/cpalss-whats-thatss#rss . Apparently the CPAL only applies to open sourcing the files that are changed. So if a class is extended, or the database access logic is put into an API call, then that gets open sourced under the CPAL as well. Facebook’s use of the CPAL open source license is a step in the right direction. We love the fact that the community is required to donate changes back to the open source project. This is the reason we use the LGPL at Ringside. The downside of the CPAL is the requirement to give attribution. This means a little Facebook badge comes up on all websites that use the Facebook software. This makes sense from a Facebook perspective because it helps them to build their brand in return for donating their software. On the other hand, if every open source project required this, then there would be nothing on web p
Read more

CRM Version 6 – This time for Races

Image
I’ve been lucky to use CRM in various ways over the past 35 years. The RunSignUp implementation is the 6 th major implementation of CRM I’ve been involved with over the years. From the beginning, RunSignUp has implemented many of the key concepts of CRM so that races can maximize customer satisfaction and retention and lower costs of customer support – all with the goal of engaging their various communities to maximize the impact of their race. Right now, we are consolidating our various features of Participant Management, Marketing Automation, and central consolidated database to bring a comprehensive set of CRM benefits to races. It might be interesting to see my personal journey and compare how CRM has matured over the years. 1.      1987 - Digital Equipment Sales Tracking. I did a side project to help the District Sales Manager and her 50+ sales people do a better job of tracking their prospects and sales. This was back in the days of Act!, which was built on PC’s,
Read more