July 10th, 2007
Marc Canter to Ning: help social networks open-up
TechCrunch reports that Ning, the web service that lets anybody start their own social network (see my previous coverage), has a received a series C round of investment ($44 million) which values the company at $214 million. The additional funds will be used to build out Ning’s infastructure, and help continue to market the service in order to attract users over the long term. So essentially it will help them scale and remain in the game while they wait to turn a profit.
However, in the context of the battle between the one-stop-shop social networks — MySpace, Facebook, Bebo etc — and commodity niche social networks which services like Ning, PeopleAggreggator, and ElggSpaces enable, Marc Canter has other ideas of how Ning should spend its money.
In an open letter to the company’s founders, Canter writes:
I know the majority of your cash will be used for new features, infrastructure and hanging in for the long haul - but ‘just a little bit’ could be earmarked to helping to establish open standards for social networking.
Establishing open standards for social networks has been a long time mission of Canter’s, and I had the privilege of hearing an early version of his vision when we met in 2004. He argues — and has put his money where his mouth is — that standards need to exist to allow users to freely own and move their network data, such as content (posts, links, media etc) as well as their relationship data.
… one thing we know for sure - users want to control their own data. And they want to move freely between systems. So here’s what I’d like to propose Ning support. Help us create a data structure and support the OpenID2 Attribute Exchange to facilitate the movement (in both directions) of entire social neworks.
However, the idea of supporting a standard which makes it easier for users to leave a service, as it weakens lock-in, isn’t something which will come too naturally to many vendors. Even though I’ve called for social networks to open up in order to make it easier to manage various accounts as a means to combat social network fatigue — will any of the big players really be willing support a way for members to leave the service, taking their network with them?
I could be wrong, and I hope I am. But in the meantime, I challenge Canter to state the business case for doing so.
Steve O'Hear is a London-based consultant, educator, and journalist, focussing on the Internet and all aspects of digital technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
