The Future of APIs

(02/29/2008)

4:40

Down with the lights, up with the presentations.

Friday February 29, 2008 4:40

4:41

Webappcharts winners are being announced. 1 Gmail, 2 Flickr, 3 Twitter, 4 Facebook, 5 Ravelry, 6 Wordpress

Friday February 29, 2008 4:41

4:42

Introducing Kevin.. apparently the organizers have known him for ages. It's a love fest.

Friday February 29, 2008 4:42

4:44

Enter Kevin. Let's talk about the cloud.

Friday February 29, 2008 4:44

4:45

This is going to be all about Open Social, XFN, etc.. should be interesting.

Friday February 29, 2008 4:45

4:45

Explaining how "The Cloud" is so transparent that the "younger generation" doesn't even see it.

Friday February 29, 2008 4:45

4:48

Email is dying for younger users. We've covered this before. Messaging is totally different for the younger set who've grown up with the web.

Friday February 29, 2008 4:48

4:48

"kids only use email to talk to 'The Man'"

Friday February 29, 2008 4:48

4:49

People are using URLs to identify themselves more than they use email addresses for same. Apt observation.

Friday February 29, 2008 4:49

4:49

"Some of these documents are just like people" "The links between the documents are relationships"

Friday February 29, 2008 4:49

4:50

XFN defines that, and I believe Kevin is about to talk on how Google's Open Social takes that further.

Friday February 29, 2008 4:50

4:50

"Extracting the people part of the web from the document part of the web"

Friday February 29, 2008 4:50

4:51

XFN and FOAF describe relationships. XFN inside the document itslef, FOAF as an external doc.

Friday February 29, 2008 4:51

4:51

Cartoon : "I've got more friend networks than friends"

Friday February 29, 2008 4:51

4:53

Cartoon : XKCD internet map

Friday February 29, 2008 4:53

4:53

Connecting people across distributed social networks is the goal.

Friday February 29, 2008 4:53

4:55

using the map as a metaphor.. you work with the social web in one country, and the API takes it to where people are

Friday February 29, 2008 4:55

4:55

Open Social : People, Friends, Data, Actions in context.

Friday February 29, 2008 4:55

4:56

They collected the common things across sites.. Age, sex, location, books, movies, urls, etc..

Friday February 29, 2008 4:56

4:56

Rather than take everything, they took what was common between sites. PRobably will revisit this several times to unify the data

Friday February 29, 2008 4:56

4:58

discussing how this can be used in applications.. very basic so far.

Friday February 29, 2008 4:58

4:59

Discussing the abstraction of data ownership

Friday February 29, 2008 4:59

4:59

Slide : Activities - Things people do in your app

Friday February 29, 2008 4:59

5:01

having a single data store makes it easy to retrieve bits about your friends and your network.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:01

5:01

Why would you do this?

Friday February 29, 2008 5:01

5:02

Asks : Who has written a registration bit for a web app?
hands raised.

Did you enjoy it?

Exactly.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:02

5:02

You're saving the user the task, and saving yourself the chore of signing up..
similar to the advantge of openID

Friday February 29, 2008 5:02

5:02

Another point, scaling.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:02

5:04

Open Social allows you to write an app with no persistent data store, using the API as your data warehouse

Friday February 29, 2008 5:04

5:05

Or, you can be the container, rather than the user of the container.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:05

5:06

It's all about using the app in multiple contexts, and having the access to a wide range of data.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:06

5:07

Now we're on to how to capture the essence of human interactions and relationships. It's complicated.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:07

5:07

If you've ever broken up with someone via Facebook, you know what he's talking about. Yikes.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:07

5:08

hey! It's Brad Fitzpatrick on the slide.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:08

5:08

Shows a flowchart of realtionships in Pride and Prejudice. Wow. There is no "enemy of" in XFN

Friday February 29, 2008 5:08

5:09

"you don't want to promote dissention on the web"

Friday February 29, 2008 5:09

5:09

"initially dislikes then falls in love with"

Friday February 29, 2008 5:09

5:10

hah, that's the ultimate definition of social relationship in humans. How do you describe all these in data?

Friday February 29, 2008 5:10

5:10

Tying in the cloud.. "Is there a cloud we can put around social relationships?"

Friday February 29, 2008 5:10

5:10

Yes. The cloud is in your head. You don't think about these things actively, but you know them in your own realtionships.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:10

5:11

If it's in your head, all we need to do is associate it with the people.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:11

5:12

Summing up : Open Social involves building the cloud around social networks. Offering your application access to data, even if it's stored other places.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:12

5:13

Question: What are the negatives?

Friday February 29, 2008 5:13

5:13

Marks doesn't stumble, but he's obviously painting a nice 10,000ft picture.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:13

5:14

You have to trust your primary site.. and its policies for sharing that data.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:14

5:14

Obviously, this is a problem that hasn't fully been solved.. or solved at all.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:14

5:15

Question : This sounds like a utopia.. and utopia's don't work

Friday February 29, 2008 5:15

5:15

The avitar complex breaks the model.. I want to be one person over here.. and another person over here..

Friday February 29, 2008 5:15

5:16

People are far more complex than this data model allows, (personal observation)

Friday February 29, 2008 5:16

5:18

some sites will specialize in being a registration site.. some will specialize in apps. The API gives the ability for others to solves these problems. The user base defines the eventual model

Friday February 29, 2008 5:18

5:19

Question : Who is responsible for authenticating? How do you eliminate spamish or fraud links and definitions of relationships?

Friday February 29, 2008 5:19

5:19

OpenID and XFN are the answer.. XFN is directional, OpenID validates ownership of urls.

Friday February 29, 2008 5:19

5:20

Question: Why is google in this?

Friday February 29, 2008 5:20

5:20

To make the web better.. that sounds like plattitude but, it's true"