Information Society Watch

August 6, 2007, Scott Gilbertson, Wired.com

This article scrutinises the closed-network characteristics of social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, whose increasing popularity makes them an important terrain on which to take up the argument for open standards. In fact sites such as Facebook and MySpace are propriety networks--just as cellphones are locked and music is copy-protected, the personal data on these social networking sites is available only to users of that particular site. Along the lines of open source, consumers are better off when their personal data could easily travel from network to another as it does across e-mail, but the web still lacks a generalised, underlying framework that conveys 'friend' and other relationships between people on the Internet. The article calls for an open standard framework that links individual sites and designates social relationships, a way of defining 'micro social networks' within the macro network of the web. To serve as a possible starting point, it offers a Wiki on how individuals can replace their Facebook accounts with open source social tools.

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