Phillip Smith

Data Portability: Assessing the openess of Facebook

Facebook, Inc.

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Solid analysis of Facebook's new "open graph protocol" -- basically extending Facebook-ish features to any site on the Web -- by the fine folks over at Data Portability:

In essence, Facebook is striving to create a web-wide semantic search engine and recommendation system based on a mix of open and closed technologies.

While some of the approaches are indeed open, the overall outcome is an attempt to further lock in Facebook's dominance over the web's social infrastructure and capture as much attention data and social graph data in proprietary formats and API's as possible.

The post manages to keep the facts front-and-center and comes across as unbiased, which makes for an easy read. Well worth the investment of five minutes to get a sense of where Facebook is now, where it wants to position itself, and who it will compete against over the next few years.

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About

Hi, I'm Phillip Smith, a veteran digital publishing consultant, online advocacy specialist, and strategic convener. If you enjoyed reading this, find me on Twitter and I'll keep you updated.

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