All about timing.
I think the idea of being part of decentralisation is a little bit early and optimistic for our system. I agree that monopoly (such as Facebook) will be replaced someday by a democratic system but we’re not sure when will that happen. And I do not think it will be in a near future.
First of all, social networking monopolies are in their golden season. With hundreds of millions of live users and hundreds of thousands daily registered users, monopolies are expanding rapidly, the market says YES. I agree that the centralisation (actually ownership) of user’s data actually preventing people from collaborating and contribution. But still people are contribution through suggestions and feedbacks channels FB provides. With the large amount of users, monopolies are able to collect the latest market requirements and improve themselves. Another thing is that most users on Facebook don’t have the concept of ownership of their data. As long as they are having fun and can get what they want when they want them, they don’t care who is managing their data. For those who want to collaborate, maybe open source is a good idea. Monopolies satisfy most users and are improving themselves all the time. They have mature business model and suitable for current situation, and they are not willingly to change therefore when decentralisation will become the main trend is unpredictable. This is a potential risk for us to aim that high.
Secondly, I think decentralisation is more about a concept, a habit but not a technology. Technically, a decentralisation system can be done, but will it be successful in today’s climate? Will it survive in the battlefield of social networking market? We cannot say that for sure because even if we have one system like this, will end users actually benefit more from a decentralised system than Facebook? From a user’s perspective, I can hardly see innovations from the paper “decentralisation – the next generation of social network site”, what it says are protocols that acts similarly like Facebook (of course, the idea was not originated from Facebook as well). Network effect sticks people closely with popular social networking sites. And people are having fun. People may ask, why change? This situation also reminds me a case that Microsoft’s Windows OS was criticized for its monopoly in personal computer Operating System market several years ago. Windows took up too much of the market share that resulted in other companies’ bankrupt. What Microsoft says is we’re collecting latest users’ requirements that make us the best Operating System in the world. I think this is why Windows 7’s advertisement slogan is: Windows 7 was my idea and that’s also the reason why Windows has over 2 decades history. So in my opinion so far, popular social networking users are enjoying, it’s hard to change for now.
And again, I’m not denying the concept of decentralisation. I just think it is a little bit far from us. At the end of the day, we’re not guiding the trend but following it. My suggestion is to keep a low profile and does something concrete. Since from technical point of view, the two things are similar. We keep this dream and do things step by step. Make early preparations and when things come we’ll be the first to embrace it.
You’re totally right that the vast majority of users don’t care in the slightest about the privacy, or data ownership issues with Facebook. However saying that nobody will support a decentralised alternative is wrong – as shown by OExchange. This is a collaboration between Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Digg, YFrog, etc.. as an open alternative to the Facebook “Like” button.
Facebook’s grip on the internet is clearly a threat to innovation and other companies are now forming temporary alliances in order to level the playing field again. If OExchange is used more widely than the like button (it’s not… currently) then Facebook will eventually be forced to abandon the non-standard Like button and adopt OExchange.
If anything, this is the perfect time to suggest workable alternatives to the Facebook platform, as it is still feasible for the other big social networking providers to fight back. Due to Facebook’s recent expansion into the web in general (through Facebook Connect), other providers are going to be motivated to have their own offerings.
I do agree it’s going to be hard to get people to switch from Facebook to an open alternative (such as Diaspora). That’s why the proposal I made a few blog posts ago includes Facebook integration and avoids things such as forcing users to create new accounts. Websites which use the tagging system can choose to allow people to authenticate using their Facebook accounts, post to their Facebook wall, etc. exactly as they can currently. However, because of the decentralised nature – this could also invite new social networks, or existing social networks, to run their own etags servers which store the tags for their networks. All of the clients using etags could then have their photo pages with “Photos on LinkedIn”, “Photos on the Web” for example – which is a clear advantage over what Facebook offers. This could tempt users away from Facebook or encourage Facebook to embrace etags (or something like it).
Further to that, we would still be offering the cross-site tagging service, allowing blog and website owners the chance to allow people to tag the photographs they post. This is another thing which Facebook currently lacks (although I’m almost sure they’ll be working on this…. it’s such an obvious idea… unless they are hoping to keep ownership of actual images for as long as possible).
I also don’t think it’s a bad thing to be ambitious here. Why should we be following the trend? (I’d actually suggest we are following the trend of decentralisation which is being seen across the web except from Facebook – see Diaspora, Google OpenSocial, OExchange, etc. etc. but that’s besides the point). Nobody got anywhere by keeping a low profile and thinking small. If we release the initial idea of a closed cross-site image tagging service we’ll quickly be replaced by a more open solution.