Startup Addict Musings

Yesterday Google released a new API for the “social graph”. You can check out our previous discussions on the social graph here. Google’s announcement of the social graph API plays well with the 2008 theme of aggregation and organization of social media for users. The API will allow users to find and track data on their social connections across the Internet.
Tim O’reilly stated the social graph API is a major step in what he is calling “the Internet Operating System.”

Why do we care you ask? As entrepreneurs, we create startups that consist of, social networks, social media, widgets, rss feeds, aggregators, mashups etc…the Social Graph API will reduce the burden on users recreating and entering personal data in a world of hundreds of social networks.

The backend of social networks will have the ability to query data across the web pertaining to yourself and friends and populate the relationship of that data. The user will then be able to tweak the results for accuracy. Thus, enabling the spider and crawlers to do a better job populating your information in the future.

The privacy concerns will continue to be a red flag as the social graph matures, but ultimately will be easier to control in the end. More on this in later posts..

Google is on the forefront along with other big companies and a handful of startups to create a more standardized semantic web. Dataportability will actually become real with friendly API’s that allow users to both push and pull information for various social media sources along with friendly user standards like OpenID. This will allow the DataPortability group to fulfill its’ mission of:

To put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability. To promote that design to the developer, vendor and end-user community.

The earlier these standards are adopted the better the chances a startup will have in the social media space.

Tags: Data Portability by Startup Addict

One thing is already certain in 2008, social media and user data is migrating from disparate sources and networks to more centralized schemas. Imagine how much time you have invested registering for 4 different social networks (Facebook, Bebo, Myspace, Orkut) and 2 different social blog communities (Mybloglog, BlogCatalog) and 3 different social book marking tools like (delicious, stumbleupon and digg). That is a tremendous amount of personal data, usernames, passwords and profiles that need updating and tracking. This is where companies like Zoolit, Spokeo, meeCard and SocialThing come into play. SocialThing just received 300K in funding and has emerged from techstars with high hopes as the “killer app” of 2008.

SocialThing among other startups allow the storage of profile information in a consolidated format from multiple social networks. This information will update across your social networking profiles from there. One killer feature is being able to stay updated with friends across multiple networks and being able to transport friends from one network to the next. For instance, if I have 300 friends in Myspace I can take them into StartupAddict and fill my StartupAddict Rolodex avoiding repeating friend requests all over again. The trend is gaining tremendous momentum and there is room for more players. The right startup will do for social networking what Meebo did for instant messaging.

The portability of data in 2008 is moving at lighting speed and many bellwethers(Google, Verisign, IBM even Yahoo is reported) are porting to OpenID. Reason 103 from my choice in Drupal for SA 2.0. Drupal 6.0 will have OpenID support and has been in the works for most of 2007.OpenID and DataPortability.org to gain major support.

Quick 2008 trend Recap:

(1.) Startup social network aggregators (like SocialThing) will fight for the #1 spot as the goto “destination” or “portal” for all of your social profiles.

(2.) Opensource is big business in 2008 from Facebook to Google open is in and cool and opensource code will allow rapid development by thousands of developers.

(3.) OpenID will become a ubiquitous gateway for individual users, allowing us to traverse multiple social media properties as easy as browsing a basic webpage.

Tags: Data Portability by Startup Addict