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Summary: The proliferation of social networking silos, the growth of proprietary social media technologies, and fragmentation of digital conversation must be addressed. Here's one way we can do it and you're invited to contribute.
Open standards have long been a major boon to information technology users because of the many benefits they confer: Interchangability, economies of scale, interoperability, efficiency, open markets, and avoidance of lock-in. The list goes on and has led to countless success stories and even the creation of entire industries.
Not coincidentally, open standards have also been absolutely instrumental to the success of the Internet itself, making it possible for you to read this very piece on any device of your own choosing, running any operating system, any browser, on any network connected to the Internet. As long as they follow the open standards that underpin the Web, that is.
I've long been following the story of open standards and social media, one of the most meandering standardization stories I'm aware of, from early initiatives like DataPortability.org and OpenID to the raft of social standards contenders that had emerged by 2010. The reasons for this are varied, but basically boil down to the highly competitive nature of the big public social networks, a poor understanding of the utility of IT standards by many enterprise social media practitioners, and frankly, a limited comprehension by the industry of what we actually needed in the early years.
To be clear, the benefits of open standards are potentially quite considerable: All our data would be open in any social network, we could export our contacts and conversations whenever we want, we could easily find knowledge anywhere it lies any social system, and innovative new social tools would be easier to adopt because they talk to everything else already (and I do mean everything, since standards like OpenSocial mean even all our applications are integrated into the social fabric.)
If this is so great -- and it's hard to argue a convincing countercase -- then why hasn't it happened? As I pointed out earlier this week, companies already feel like social media is steadily encircling them, service by service, app by app. But making this rapidly growing portfolio of social tools talk together, securing them, and ensuring they are compliant with global regulations and laws is extremely challenging. In other words, social media needs to be a single medium that can be treated one way for all our concerns, not an increasingly fragmented collection of them.
And frankly, another big reason standards adoption has been slow is that digital networks have slightly different rules for success than other ecosystems. One of them is that already successful social networks can easily be tapped by new ones to grow, at least if they're open past a certain point. In other words, the services with the people in them already often don't want to be connected to the services that don't have them, no matter how good it might be for their users. To them, it can sometimes seem like a matter of survival not to support standards.
There are also other reasons open standards for social business haven't taken off, but in the end they just don't matter that much. That's because there's a very important piece missing, and that piece is end-user demand for standards and interoperability. Unfortunately, we have only to look in the mirror for why this is the case. We are not requiring our providers of social media to support them, and especially, to enable them in a way that provides us the value we seek. This locks us in and forces us to lose control of our own information. We've forgotten the priceless lessons of the 1990s when application providers were routinely turned down by companies if they didn't support standards. And it may even be too late to change this.
Today the network effect of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the whole host of other services is so large that they can't really be ignored. Your companies and employees must use them, because everyone else does. And to be fair, almost all social network services, both consumer and corporate, support some of the open standards that are now common in social media: OpenSocial, Open Graph, Activity Streams, and to a lesser extent Pubsubhubbub, Portable Contacts, and the Salmon Protocol, to name some of the top candidates.
However, for all these reasons, there simply isn't critical mass in the social media industry today around open standards. Worse, there's no consensus on how best to use them to achieve the larger benefits that are possible. Back in the era of blogs and wikis, we all had control of our own social media platforms. Certainly, the Web itself wouldn't exist if we hadn't defined and defended the standards that make it up. Nowadays, commercial providers provide everything in the cloud, including our friends and data, largely using their own technologies. This has led to the fragmented silos and social apps that increasingly isolate our digital activities into parochial conversational islands within our businesses and across the Web.
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How we can create open standards for social business
Squirrel monkeys discovered the power of social networking long before the birth of Facebook and Twitter, a study has shown.
In a series of experiments, scientists identified "trendster" monkeys with the strongest social networks who were quickest to catch on to new foraging crazes.
The researchers presented the monkeys with artificial "fruits" that could be opened in one of two different ways.
A pair of alpha males from two monkey populations were each trained in a different method and then allowed to spread the word among their group mates.
Monkeys with stronger social network connections within the groups picked up the new techniques more successfully, the scientists found.
Statistical analysis showed which animals were at the "heart" of each network and which were more at the edge.
The "trendsters" at the network centre were quicker than their peripheral group-mates to learn how to open the artificial fruits.
Professor Andrew Whiten, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, who led the research reported in the journal Current Biology, said: "Our study shows that innovations do not just spread randomly in primate groups but, as in humans, are shaped by the monkeys' social networks."
The scientists now plan to look for evidence of different "subcultures" within the monkey social networks.
"If there are subgroups within the network, then what appear to be mixed behaviours at the group level could, in fact, be different behaviours for different sub-groups - what could be called subcultures," said Prof Whiten.
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Monkeys lead way in social networks
SELMA, Va., June 27, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Just in time for Anime Expo 2013 in Los Angeles July 4-7, SimulTV is launching its industry-first 'social TV everywhere' service with exclusive streaming content from the expo and an anime VOD collection that can play on any web-enabled device with voice and video chat, popular social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, and online search embedded in the same screen. SimulTV's streaming service and built-in social features allow anime fans to attend conference highlights virtually including rock concert performances by Cell and Kaya and Moonstream, opening and closing ceremonies, fashion shows and dozens of industry panels and share their reactions with faraway friends without switching to a second device to socialize or look something up on the Internet.
The company is also selling tickets to AX at http://www.simultv.com and offering a free 14-day subscription to anime fans who register for a SimulTV subscription during the conference online or by using the QR code that will be provided at AX in SimulTV's Screening Room 405.
"Anime fans are bound together by their passion for the medium. They want to share their anime crushes, discuss the finer points of anime art, and debate the merits of every series. That makes anime an ideal launching pad for our combined content/social TV service," said Steve Turner, founder and president of SimulTV. "We are redefining the social TV experience by eliminating the second screen to interact with friends, family and content creators. Anime enthusiasts can now be among the first to climb on board."
Anime Library (VOD)
The SimulTV on-demand anime library will launch with fan favorite series Blue Exorcist, Durarara!! and Fate Zero as well as the U.S and international debut of Happening Star, the kids' anime science fiction adventure series witha second movie release due in Japan later this summer. The collection will quickly expand to over 500 additional episodes of 40 anime shows available for $.99-$2.99 apiece all with built-in social TV.
Based on the hit shonen manga of the same name, Blue Exorcist was produced by acclaimed staff at Anime Studio A-1 Pictures (Sword Art Online, Oreimo 2, Welcome to the Space Show). Durarara!! a must-see for fans of extraordinary anime that blew Japanese viewers away when it was released in that country in 2010 is based on the hit novel by Ryohgo Narita that shocked readers and the light-novel industry with its unique characters and out-of-this-world story. Fate Zero is the introductory series to Type Moon's Fate universe, one of Japan's all-time most popular multimedia franchises with titles such as Fate/stay night, Tsukihime, and Fate/Prototype and millions of novels, manga, video games and anime sold since 1998.
Social TV Everywhere
SimulTV subscribers also get :
Subscriptions
SimulTV subscription packages range from $5 to $20 per month and are required to order VOD titles. Subscriptions currently include 37 cable TV channels (expanding to 100 before fall) and hundreds of non-anime VOD titles (expanding to 5,000 by late summer) again offering built-in social TV. Cable channels include SimulTV-exclusive stations dedicated to music videos, film noir, cartoons, family films, cowboy theatre, sports from around the globe and more.
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Anime with Built-in Chat & Social Networking: A First from SimulTV
Washington, June 28 (ANI): Researchers have found that the power of social networks didn't start just in the digital age and monkeys, who have strong social networks, adapt to new method very quickly.
The researchers, led by Andrew Whiten of the University of St Andrews, made the discovery by combining social network analysis with more traditional social learning experiments.
By bringing the two together, they offer what they say is the first demonstration of how social networks may shape the spread of new cultural techniques. It's an approach they hope to see adopted in studies of other social animals.
Whiten said that their study shows that innovations do not just spread randomly in primate groups but, as in humans, are shaped by the monkeys' social networks.
Whiten, along with Nicolas Claidiere, Emily Messer, and William Hoppitt, traced the monkeys' social networks by recording which monkeys spent time together in the vicinity of "artificial fruits" that could be manipulated to extract tempting food rewards.
Sophisticated statistical analysis of those data revealed the monkeys' social networks, with some individuals situated at the heart of the network and others more on the outside.
The researchers rated each of the monkeys on their "centrality," or social status in the network, with the highest ratings going to monkeys with the most connections to other well-connected individuals.
The artificial fruits could be opened in two different ways, either by lifting a little hatch on the front or by pivoting it from side to side. The researchers trained the alpha male in one group of monkeys on the lift technique, while the leader in another group was trained on the pivot method.
They then sent them back to their groups and watched to see how those two methods would catch on in the two groups.
More central monkeys with the strongest social ties picked up the new methods more successfully, the researchers found. They were also more likely than peripheral monkeys to learn the method demonstrated by their trained alpha leaders.
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'Social networking' monkeys learn new methods successfully