Openness and Social

Networking

Openness in social networking,
business communications and cloud
computing.

by Colin McAllister, (cc) 2009

Lecturing at SWINBURNE (Sarawak
Campus)
PDF: http://www.scribd.com/doc/14999326/Openness-and-Social-Networking
PPT: http://www.slideshare.net/cmcallister/openness-and-social-networking
 The Components of
Openness

Philosophy = Cluetrain Manifesto

Service = Social Networking

Infrastructure = Cloud Computing
 Contents

Openness and Freedom

Open Business Communications

Growth of Personal Communications

Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing

Experiment with Social Networking

2009 Developments in Openness

Conclusion and Actions

Copyright, References and Disclaimer
 Openness is Not

Proprietary Protocols – DECnet, Prodigy

Walled Gardens – The old Facebook

Invincible Monopoly – The old Microsoft

Product Lock-in by licence, DMCA laws,
DRM software, or closed source
software

Draconian Laws – Technology is a
frame of mind, not electronic gadgets
and industrial processes. Ref. Martin
Heidegger 1953, translated 1977
 Openness and Freedom

Internet Protocol is an open
specification.

Open Source Software is successful.

Corporate appeals for openness from:
Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Six Apart.

The Cluetrain Manifesto exhorts
openness in business communications.

Open Content and Creative Commons

United Nations' Article 19
 Corporate appeals for
openness

Google wants to make information
"universally accessible and useful."

Facebook wants to “make the world more
open and connected"

Anil Dash, of Six Apart,“With a name like
'Movable Type', we've always been keenly
aware of the importance of freedom, as that
name echoes both the birth of the printing
press and the creation of independent media
that an individual can control”
 United Nations' Article 19

Everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression; this right
includes freedom to hold opinions
without interference and to seek,
receive and impart information and
ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers.


UN http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

U.K. campaign http://www.article19.org/
 Without Article 19
there is no freedom of opinion,
expression, or communication of
information and ideas. Bloggers,
journalists, activists and others are
unjustly imprisoned, tortured or dead
because of videos or opinions that they
posted on the Internet.

Photos of prisoners from various web sites

 Open Business
Communications

The Cluetrain Manifesto (Levine et al,
1999) is a list of 95 theses, which
define an approach to marketing
communications that is open and
trusting. It advocates that business
messages should be more personal and
less “corporate”.

In 2009, the Cluetrain Manifesto can
guide businesses and individuals in
their use of social networking websites.
http://www.cluetrain.com/
 The Cluetrain Manifesto

The Cluetrain Manifesto (Levine et al,
1999) is a list of 95 theses on
communications.

The 1st thesis, “Markets are
conversations” values organic
communication networks.

47th thesis “They [companies] need to
resist the urge to "improve" or control
these networked conversations”

http://www.cluetrain.com/
 Growth of Personal
Communications

1989 Compuserve has 100,000 users

1995 Internet has 16 million users

2007 Internet has 1,300 million users

2007 15 million active bloggers

2009 Internet has 1,600 million
users,
24% of the world's population

2009 Facebook has 30 million users

2009 Twitter has 6 million users
 Web 2.0 Software

Web 2.0 encompasses almost any
web-based service that doesn't rely
on static HTML pages, according to
Tim O'Reilly.

Web 2.0 has standards for rich
communications features

Better user interfaces for updating
and linking websites

Mash-up of data from multiple
sources as a single presentation
 Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a style of computing in
which dynamically scalable and often
virtualized resources are provided as a
service over the Internet. (Wikipedia)

Internet companies are reorganising to
provide cloud computing as a product

Available services are: Amazon’s EC2,
Google’s App Engine, Mozilla’s Weave for
the Firefox browser and open source
EUCALYPTUS
 The Value of Social
Networking

Supports personal and professional
networking and free exchange of
ideas

Encourages collaboration at a human
level on a global scale

Organises an overwhelming volume
of information in an interesting way

Grows virally via friends of friends

Generates over US $ 1 billion
advertising revenue annually
 Experiment with Social
Networking

Start a personal or professional blog.

Join a social networking website

Act with caution to protect your privacy.

Add friends. Share photos and web links.

Join in or create new discussion groups.

Post your resume/C.V. on LinkedIn or Xing

Create a social network on Ning or a CMS.
Facebook Profile
Xing Discussion Groups
Ning Social Networks
Delicious Social Bookmarking
Use Friendfeed to merge your
social networking streams
 2009 Developments in
Openness

The Open Cloud Manifesto is signed by IBM
and other computer companies

Microsoft appeals to Apple for openness

Oracle buys Sun Microsystems, vendor of
an open source software

Facebook joins OpenID Foundation

Facebook announces Open Stream API

Facebook hires ACLU civil liberties lawyer
 Microsoft's Appeal for
Openness

'Openness is central because
it's the foundation of choice.'


said Steve Ballmer of
Microsoft,criticising the closed
architecture of Apple's iPhone at the
Mobile World Congress, 2009.


http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/21/1
318253
 The Open Cloud Manifesto

“This document is intended
for CIOs, governments, IT
users and business leaders
who intend to use cloud
computing and to establish a
set of core principles for cloud
providers.“ co-authored by
IBM and rejected by Microsoft.

http://www.opencloudmanifesto.org/
 Conclusion and Actions

Evidence of success for open standards

Openness is a mission of ICT companies

Social networks grow by viral marketing

Personal caution can improve privacy

Industry standards can improve service

Develop a new attitude of openness

Join and use a variety of social websites
 References

“Use the Cloud to Get a Clue.” A

discussion of openness in
communications that could change the
way you use the Internet. Focussing on:
The Cluetrain Manifesto, Cloud
Computing and Social Networking.
Developed at Curtin University
(Sarawak).

Available on www.scribd.com as
UseCloudGetClue.pdf
 Copyright
Slide show and images (cc) 2009 by Colin
McAllister, lecturer at Swinburne University of
Technology, Sarawak, Malaysia.
email:colin.mcallister@ymail.com
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 2.5 Malaysia License.
To view a copy of this license, visit:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/my/deed.en_GB
 Disclaimer

As well as it can expressed in the time
available: This presentation does not
endorse any commercial names,
trademarks, images, or otherwise that
it contains. They are used only to
illustrate general technology trends,
not the specific attributes of any one
company or product. Opinions herein
are personal expressions and do not
represent an employer or any company
or organisation.