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Category: network

A Separate Reality: Identi.ca on the Brink

Published September 21, 2008 by cgerrish

A Separate Reality

Sometimes it takes a few days for the dust to settle, for all the threads to become untangled, and for the bright lines of an event to emerge. BearHug Camp defined the silhouettes of two alternate futures.

To paraphrase a politician’s recent comment, the fundamentals of microblogging are sound. The 140 character standard message length seems safe for the moment. But one senses there’s an uncomfortable feeling about the randomness of that specific constraint and its origin in SMS. Access to APIs and the ecosystem of multiple end clients providing and discovering unique new value propositions filtered from the fire hose of the full microblogging stream is pretty stable. But there’s a fear that access may be cut off, or that the economics of API access may change radically. System stability has improved measurably, but is still below acceptable major league standards. Real time messaging and track are still on the critical list, either absent or cobbled together as a pencil sketch (everything works for a small N).

Convergence on a unified microblogging standard is key to the foundation of a larger ecosystem, what Dave Winer calls a coral reef. Currently that convergence owes its existence to the mirroring of Twitter’s feature set. The distribution of power within the political economy of the system leaves this as the only avenue for progress. An open standard that departed from Twitter wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.

The first possible future belongs to Twitter. It’s a future where scaling a real time microblogging messaging system with track is key to success. The transition of the economic model of API access from free to one with some kind of usage tax will lay the foundation for a potentially dominant business model. As long as the tax is low enough and the volume high enough, Twitter will prosper and the friction they’ve introduced won’t slow down viral growth.

Oblique Strategy: Think Garden instead of Architecture

The second possible future belongs to a distributed network of players. The big scale required by Twitter’s architecture is redistributed to multiple players with different roles and responsibilities within a networked system. It’s not Identi.ca that competes with Twitter, but an ecosystem of sites that cooperate to provide the identical feature/function set along with a fertile ground for new innovation. But there’s a fly in the ointment, there is no ecosystem. Currently there are only unscalable instances of Laconi.ca that don’t connect to each other very well. In order for there to be viral growth in the Open Microblogging ecosystem the individual nodes actually need to form a network of connections. Today they don’t. The nodes aren’t nodes so they can’t grow as a network. Many aren’t competing against One.

There are couple of things missing from this garden:

  • Name resolution across Open Microblogging nodes
  • Inter-node real time public and direct messaging
  • Full network real time track (Aggregate XMPP Firehose)
  • Multiple clients for multiple devices

To the extent that these items aren’t at the top of the Open Microblogging project priority list, Identi.ca/Laconi.ca and Open Microblogging stand on the brink of an abyss. The “growth” of disconnected nodes is the illusion of growth. In a few weeks Twitter will turn on all services, introduce a small tax and the game could well be over. The acolytes of Open Source believe they will win the war because they have a structural advantage that over time will prevail. The metaphor that was used was “flipping the iceberg.” Except for the fact that there is no structural advantage and they don’t have a critical mass of users, nor a method to virally attract them. They’re living in a separate reality, their watches have stopped and their eyes aren’t on the prize.

BearHug camp showed us all the shape of the playing field, that the game was underway, and the ball was pointedly handed to the key players. Can they keep their eyes on the prize? From the opening gun, this game is being played in sudden death. The next move is crucial.

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The Party Line Revisited

Published September 9, 2008 by cgerrish

Rotary Telephone

The phrase “Time out of mind” refers to the distant past beyond memory. While we think of computer networks as laying the foundation of electronic social networks, it’s the telephone that first connected the country. And the user interface challenges and the viral qualities of that once new medium have slipped beyond the horizon of our living memory.

We assume that the user interface for the telephone is known and has always been known. But there was a time when people had to be taught to use the phone. What’s a dial tone? What’s a busy signal? Where do you find a number for a particular person or business? How do you dial a rotary phone? Why do you need to wait until the dial returns to its starting position before inputting the next number? What’s that ringing sound mean?

Why should anyone understand these interface elements? The film above was shown in movie theaters to help people with the change from operator assisted to direct dial calls.

We think of the party line as quaint artifact of the past, but like certain modern online services, it was used as a source of entertainment and gossip, as well as a means of quickly alerting entire neighbourhoods in case of emergencies such as fires.

In 20th century telephone systems, a party line (also multiparty line or Shared Service Line) is an arrangement in which two or more customers are connected directly to the same local loop. Prior to World War II in the United States, party lines were the primary way residential subscribers acquired local phone service.

Sometimes pundits like to make the argument that microblogging services like Twitter or Identi.ca are too difficult or obscure for “most ordinary people” to learn. Compare using Twitter to learning how to direct dial a telephone. If there’s value returned, people are will to invest the time and learn enough to profit.

There are other interesting comparisons between the phone network and the internet. The dystopian visions about The Phone Company match our current fears about the harvesting of our personal and attention data. Once we’ve internalized a user interface like the telephone’s, we begin to fear that it will be literally internalized into our bodies. The 1967 film The President’s Analyst envisioned the Cerebrum Communicator, a device that is located in, and power by, our brains. It also showed us a technology company secretly at the center of political power.

The telphone has become the mobile computer, and voice is now one of many data types transmitted through the Network. But the basic pattern of relating through an electronic network remains the same. The telephone still has a lot to teach us about the meaning of electronic social networks.

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Chrome: Mapping The Metaphor of Browsing

Published September 7, 2008 by cgerrish

The discussion around Chrome, Google’s new web browser, was kicked into a different dimension for me while listening to some comments by Marc Canter. Canter was excited about the idea of the browser serving as an orchestration point for a market of web services. And he was speaking of services consumed by regular users: a search engine, a mapping service, an rss reader, a social bookmarking service, etc. As a developer, Canter is interested in competing in an open marketplace for services supplied through and to the browser.

There’s an underlying shift in the role of the web browser, and a more telling shift at the level of naming and metaphor. Think about the common names for web browsers:

  • Navigator
  • Explorer
  • Safari
  • Camino

Metaphorically these names describe the process of traversing the terrain of the Network. It’s a world-wide web out there — you’ll need a compass and a map to find the place you’re looking for. Originally the Network of web sites had to be traversed on foot, link by link. Portal sites like Yahoo created maps in the form of a tables of contents, locations on the Network thought of as reference points in a big book. Librarians were employed to create a sensible taxonomy, a dewey decimal system for the Network. Effective web search effectively changed that playing field.

Think about the name “Chrome” and the way it relates to the web-based application container that Canter envisions. For those who don’t know, the word chrome is often used to describe the UI/presentation layer of an application. It’s the thing that surrounds the feature/function set making it pretty and usable — from an engineering perspective, it’s the shiny bits that are added around the edges. Does the name chrome extend the metaphor of navigation and exploration for the browser?

For most users, the internet is located in Google’s big database. Your only, or let’s say primary, access to the Network is through querying Google. (Micro-communities are changing this model as a primary source of links) The “browser” is now a frame around the services that Google, and other providers bring to you. No need to get off the couch, no need to don a pith helmet, no need to keep that passport up to date. The browsing you’ll be doing is flipping through the selections delivered to your door.

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No Objects w/o Authors: There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.

Published September 6, 2008 by cgerrish

There was a moment when email became the new file system. Senders, messages and attachments are organized as a sequence of events through time. We write and send a new message; we reply to a received message; we forward a message to someone who should hear.

When we need to save a copy of a document we’ve been working on, we email it to ourselves. As the cost of storage in the cloud approaches zero, it becomes the easiest way to organize information. No need to delete any email ever, no need to stash it away in a hierarchy of folders — search allows everything to be found across the timeline.

There are a number of alternative desktop and file system metaphors that have been proposed. Some of the more interesting ones rely on a history of documents through time as an organic method of organization. Email already accomplishes this transition. Objects in a network are never neutral or natural, their origin can always be traced back to a  human author. Everything you read is written — data is social — it’s by and for the people.

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.
It’s easy.

Nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.
It’s easy.

– John Lennon

Email is one way that people talk to each other, but there are many other ways we connect through the Network. Searching and Tracking across these multiple streams, coordinating and connecting them is the basis for a new file system.

We don’t like to wait for feedback, because we don’t like the feeling of being misunderstood or left hanging. Real-time web interactions provide immediate feedback to the speaker. The thing that seems the furthest away, the live web, is the thing that is most ordinary in our lives. Someone listens to a speaker and speaks back into the conversation, feeding it and helping it grow. All you need is…

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