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The New Black

Google's Joe Kraus agrees. Speaking at the Supernova conference, the director of product management for the search giant acknowledged that social networking is the latest fashion—"the new black," as he called it. "But people have been endlessly fascinated by one another for a very long time. Social networking is not new; we just have new ways to do it."

That is not to diminish the power of social computing. In fact, Kraus already sees it as the force behind three major trends in the way people use the Internet.

First, "the process of information discovery is changing from a solitary activity to a communal activity," said Kraus, citing as an example his own recent behavior in choosing an anniversary gift for his wife. He searched and found that candy is traditional for a sixth anniversary, then set up a message on his G-mail account, saying he needed ideas for a candy-based gift.

A friend emailed to tell him of an extraordinary baker who constructs specialty cakes and, thanks to her suggestion, his sixth anniversary gift became an elaborate cake in the shape of a colorful purse. So, said Kraus, he went from solitary information discovery to social information discovery—and a much better result than he could have achieved on his own.

Second, he said, how we exchange information is changing, from sharing information actively (emailing photos to friends) to sharing it passively (uploading those photos to Facebook and emailing notification to friends). "What's happening is that we're separating access from notification," said Kraus. This leads to more sharing because people don't worry as much about interrupting others with emails, calling attention to themselves and appearing too self-important.

Third, and most important, Kraus sees the web eventually becoming entirely social. "Today, social computing is something you do at a specific site," said Kraus. "But we're realizing that being social is not a site. It's a concept."

We won't get to that entirely social web, he added, until we find ways to allow users to do three things: establish a single identity to log on to many sites; share private resources such as photos or contact lists without handing out private credentials (such as an email account password); and distribute information across multiple social applications.

Google Friend Connect, a service that enables websites to easily provide social features for its visitors, incorporates three standards that respectively address each of those problems—Open ID, OAuth and OpenSocial, says Kraus. A preview version of the service was released in May. He sees Google Friend Connect as a path to the open web he predicts will arrive sooner than we imagine. "Already you can browse a site like the New York Times or Amazon, then write comments and reviews. Why shouldn't I be able to go to the Ticketmaster site and see where my friend is sitting at a concert I want to attend, providing he wants to expose the information?"

What all organizations need to prepare for, said Kraus, is a completely social web, where "your users will simply expect to be part of the conversation."

Comments (1)

	1. 27-09-2008 22:38
	In the future, human knowledge will become tangible outside the construct of corporations, banks, and even government - by residing in social networks.     All old business models will evolve. Money needs to be backed by something - money is currently backed by debt which is a promissory note based on future productivity. Any caveman can tell you that the only sustainable way to increase productivity today is to innovation yesterday - not tomorrow.    One example of a new DNA economy is well described at http://www.ingenesist.com; Innovation Economics. In short; Where knowledge is formatted like a financial instrument, innovation can be predicted as the integral of knowledge. The new DNA economy will peg the dollar to human productivity in the present resulting from innovation in the past. This will be sustainable.    There are a few simple web application - not yet developed - that can make human knowledge tangible as a financial instrument;    A knowledge Inventory  A Percentile Search Engine  An Innovation Banking System    Whoever develops these applications will generate a great deal of wealth in society - our brilliant entrepreneurs make short work of it.    The result is that human knowledge will become tangible outside the construct of the corporations, banks, and even government - residing in social networks. The question is whether we are ready, politically, to let the people have control over the priorities of what gets invented and what does not, what gets disrupted and what does not. Guest

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