What Is A Social Browser?

CO-OP
Originally uploaded by k.james.

I've been trying to digest the news that Firefox is going to add social functionality into their browser via a project called The Coop.

My initial reaction was "this is going to be great. Now I don't have to maintain all these social networks, Firefox will do it all for me". But alas, it's not that simple.

As I understand it, initially the functionality will be limited to creating a profile in the browser, allowing others to see when you are online (like AIM and Skype), being able to share URLs and publish feeds (like Flickr, Facebook, delicious, etc) to others.

That's a pretty nice set of features but it doesn't really address the fact that I've got all these profiles all over the web that in their totality represent me and I'd love to have one single profile that aggregates all of this activity and presents it in one single place.

Since I use Firefox almost exclusively, it's in a great position to do this for me. It can see all of my activity, capture all of it, and present it. But there's one obvious problem; not everyone uses Firefox. So unless all of the browsers adopted an open profile standard and all of them built social networking into the browser, the only people who will be able to participate in my social web are others who use Firefox.

It's probably easier to build this meta social profile as a web service and there are a host of companies trying to do just that. That approach requires that the social networks all cooperate with each other and share data. Given that the dominant social nets like MySpace and Facebook aren't exactly jumping up and down to do this, I am not sure the web services approach will happen so easily either.

It's client versus server. Client software benefits from its ability to see everything I do, but suffers from the fact that not everyone uses the same software I do. Server based software can't see everything I do as easily, but can achieve ubiquity (or get a lot closer to ubiquity).

Even though the social browser Firefox is building isn't exactly what I want, I am excited to get social features in my browser and it's telling that Firefox is going to get their first again.

Comments (10) | Posted April 5, 2007 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

...and bury Flock in the process.. but perhaps a little bit themselves, too.

Posted by: Zoli Erdos | Apr 5, 2007 9:07:28 PM

My intuition tells me that people would rather use one of their web presences (a blog or a social network profile) as an aggregator (similarly to what Fred is doing with his blog... linking to other web profiles and pulling feeds from them)... as opposed to using one specialized meta aggregator.

Somehow this seems more in tune with the "flattening" of all things around us and especially on the web.

This implies that all social network services would gradually include the necessary tools to aggregate stuff from other services.

Posted by: Emil Sotirov | Apr 5, 2007 9:22:00 PM

I understand that this is installed by default, requiring all users to install it regardless of if they were to use it. As an application which is modular (hence the extensions and add-ons), this seems to be against what it is all about. It would be better as an extension.

Posted by: Dustin | Apr 5, 2007 10:20:27 PM

So far Tumblr has been my best way to represent my profiles online in one place.

http://engtech.tumblr.com

I've also been playing with profilactic but I don't like how slow it is to load.

http://profilactic.com/mashup/engtech

Posted by: engtech | Apr 6, 2007 12:45:49 AM

A social browser is a one that browses in moderation, chiefly while socializing. When one browses alone or starts to hide browsing, it could be time for an intervention.

Posted by: Andy Swan | Apr 6, 2007 12:54:07 AM

I've said this on other blogs, and I'll say it here... This type of application is "stuck in the past" so to speak.

Fred, there's enough information on your blog that it would be possible to determine most of your relationships. In fact, there's enough information on most people's blogs to do this - why the need to rebuild our entire social network over and over again?

My point is, a web crawler doing a simple analysis could determine a user's network with relatively high accuracy (and perhaps some sort of semantic tagging just to top off the verification). There really doesn't need to be any input; if you're on the web and interacting, then odds are high that your network can be "mapped".

That would open the doors to a lot of things, and it's getting pretty close to semantics. Imagine being able to aggregate data about each of those users - if you want to buy something on eBay, just search your entire network and see who's selling it; the service doesn't matter, because the data is linked to the user (so it could be Craigslist, eBay, or Edgeio - it simply doesn't matter).

That's just one example; the semantic web is capable of a lot more, such as cross scheduling between services (i.e. you use Microsoft Outlook, I use Google Calendar, and client X uses Zoho).

Best Regards,

Robert

Posted by: Robert Dewey | Apr 6, 2007 1:04:19 AM

As someone who regularly uses multiple computers (many of which I don't have control over), I hate this concept. If my online identity is going to be consolidated (good thing), let it be online so that I have access to it from anywhere.

Putting it into the browser is the wrong direction.

Posted by: Michael Chui | Apr 6, 2007 2:28:26 AM

This is where semantic markup is probably best illustrated in terms of user instantiated, "machine agent" understanding of data as opposed to robot based, machine agents.

A couple of days ago, someone named Danja left this on the Mozilla wiki in regards to FOAF and Coop:

" Internal Representation (from danja, Apr 4 2007)
* I'd strongly recommend using FOAF as it can provide rich, extensible modelling of the interpersonal domain and is based on established web standards
* it already has: foaf:Person, foaf:knows, foaf:OnlineAccount etc.
* it has been mapped to many other person/social representations - microformats, vCard etc
* there is an XML serialization (RDF/XML) which can be used with XMPP, APP etc.
* many existing systems already have support, e.g. millions of users on LiveJournal
* it would give Mozilla a solid position on the Semantic Web of Data"

We have modeled FOAF in our application's ontology in order to provide this level of understanding to other applications like Coop.

Then inferring over the data about relationships between objects is where additional benefits are to be found.

Posted by: Raj | Apr 6, 2007 5:26:43 AM

It's really a problem of economics, not technology. FOAF exists, and other completementary standards could easily emerge, if there was a reason for them to exist.

Today, social networking sites measure success by the number of users in their network and the number of active users on their site. These are the measurements that would drive an acquisition, for example. If everyone had easy access to the MySpace network, or if the network was distributed around a implementations of an open webservice protocol, I don't think Fox would have bought them.

In order to make an open system successful, we need to find the benefits of openness for the providers. One benefit of openness is that tiny companies can thrive. http://doxory.com is a simple social web service which simply imports your network from LiveJournal using openid. For a certain class of application, that eases both development and adoption, and can be a win. But doxory isn't trying to be the next myspace or linkedin.

What incentive does LinkedIn have to be open?

Posted by: Richard Tibbetts | Apr 6, 2007 7:31:41 AM

You read my mind. I have spent a fair amount of time the last few days trying to find a grown-up MySpace that would be oriented toward a professional that has a full life. Like you, I wanted one central place for my profile, blogs, links etc., that I could control and post information about all my activities. Basically a personal web page (Geocities?) in a social network with blogging. If Google integrated many of its features that might be close. I want that because I am a financial professional, but am also writing a book and have done some comedic writing, blogging and performing. If I had my profile and links to all that information in one place, there would be fewer surprises for anyone that searches for me online and finds information out of context. I got this idea from a ComputerWorld article posted on Web Worker Daily, "Web Anonymity can sink your job search http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/03/28/why-you-may-need-an-online-persona/

I would use this service to post links to my LinkedIn profiles, myspace etc. on that one page and give that address out as my sole web presence, rather than the current myspace,twitter, etc list.

I agree with Zoli that such a thing would be better as a web-based service rather than a browser so it can be accessed anywhere.

Here's what I have found so far: I searched through Download Squad and posted a request for help on Twitter. Tumblr was an early suggestion but there are limits on blog functionality for commenting. I then started this blog to have the functionality and to have flexibility on my subject matter. I found Vox by accident while looking through Twitter profiles. I believe it's the closest thing to what I am seeking. However, I spent over an hour this morning writing and posting my profile only to find it formatted as one giant run on paragraph. Apparently the profile formatting capability is not finished, yet that was the key reason I subscribed. So back to square one, although I have not given up hope on Vox. There was an article on Business Week that mentioned Adesso "tubes", itLinkz and gather.com, but I've kissed enough frogs on this project for today.
The bottom line is I think you're on target regarding the need, there might be a number of way to execute that would not necessarily require opening of social networks. I envision a few different services: yours could be fredwilson.geocities and mine could be cathleenritt.vox. Given all the services already out there, it seems like it would be an "easy" one to create. I am not an expert more of a web 2.0 fan, but it seems that some services are part way there and others have not necessarily executed well on features important to me. That's what makes a market.
Thank you for putting this out there for the marketplace and providers to see and discuss. See you on Vox, myspace, technorati, etc.

Posted by: Cathleen Rittereiser | Apr 6, 2007 12:54:59 PM

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