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Facebook announced yesterday that it is taking a number of dramatic steps that would all add up to serving 1 billion "like" clicks from visitors to sites around the web, within 24 hours. Many people are concerned about Facebook's growing dominance around the web . One group of high-profile New Yorkers has launched OpenLike , a "very alpha alternative to Facebook Like." Working on the project so far is much-watched blogging investor and startup guy Chris Dixon , Huffington Post co-founder and MIT Media Lab guy Jonah Peretti , Jonathan Glick of Dixon, Conway , Ehrenberg and other VC-blessed TLists , Tom Pinckney who with Dixon both sold SiteAdvisor and founded Hunch.com and MIT grad and Hunch engineer Peter Coles . Dixon said this afternoon that the project is "looking for an authoritative open source person to govern it." Sponsor So the establishment is in Palo Alto and the rock-star insurgents are from the East Coast? Let no one say the Internet is boring. The lightweight technology at OpenLike is right now just a way for site owners to provide buttons for sharing content on a wide variety of social networks. One line of javascript adds a series of sharing buttons to a site, which the site owner can edit. Given that there are any number of ways to do more or less this same thing, and that these are very smart people working on this, we're sure there's a lot more in the works. The project describes itself on its site as "an open protocol to allow sharing the things people like in a simple and standard method between web applications." We'll share more details if and when this project develops. Related: See also developer Jesse Stay's blog post How Do You Compete With This Beast: Here's How , about long-time open standards community member Phil Windley's new product Kynext . The battle over control or absence of control over the internet is far, far from over. There are lots of people getting ready to step up and challenge Facebook's powerful, seductive, expanding control. Discuss
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OpenLike: All-Star Team to Challenge Facebook's Expansion
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The British novelist Ian McEwan said, "The naming of what is there is what is important." But there is a thing, or an idea, a system or network, that we live with every day, that we live in , that we, in point of fact, are , which has no name. When apprehending and recognizing something new, we humans name it. Some say we name things in order to control them and there might be some truth to that. But who would not elect to control an earthquake than be controlled by one? Our information gathering network has changed out of recognition, but its taxonomy has lagged behind. We need to name this new network, and we would like the readership of ReadWriteWeb to help us. Sponsor In the Big Room, our editorial chat room, we were speaking about the earthquake that struck Baja this afternoon. Before the media, even the new media, got it, we had read it on Twitter . ReadWriteWeb has written before on the ability of this new tool, and others like it, to gather and disseminate information. In the course of this discussion, we came to a surprising realization. Twitter was no more the issue than the so-called mainstream media was. We were beyond all of that now. Our network was not restricted to three news channels, or the cable news networks, or a handful of social media websites or thousands of Facebook accounts, or even all of those things taken as a whole. Our access to information, our ability to exchange it, was no longer bound by anything at all, with the possible exception of time. The reason for this sea-change is that we ourselves have in part become the system formerly we only used . We have become the fulcrum of our own network. Prometheus is well and truly unbound. This network, the one that connects us to virtually every part of the world, to every person on the globe, branches like a Mandelbrot set . It consists of computing devices from desktop computers to laptops to tablets to phones; it consists of every program written to run those devices, every website and service that helps us to process and move the truths we witness or create; it consists of cell towers and server farms; it consists of social media tools and word processing programs; but above all it consists of, it is powered by, human beings, both singularly and in aggregate, minds and mind. Our network is alive. But it needs a name, and we don't have one. Jokingly, one of us called it The Culture . It isn't. It isn't even a culture. Just a network. But a vast one, a possibly game-changing one and, above all, a nameless one, one which we should control rather than allow to control us. Help us assert control over an exciting, but daunting reality. What should this global network, this lace of machine and human, location, data and feeling, thought and thing, observer and observed, speaker and listener, be called? Discuss
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Our Network is Alive
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It's Monday and that means that the Interactive portion of SXSW is drawing closer and closer to its close tomorrow after a weekend of great talks, panels, parties and overall hoopla. While some of the most fun parts of SXSW may be behind us, there are still a lot of great things to go see in Austin, especially for those in the startup and entrepreneurship communities. So if you're looking for some interesting panels to attend before you catch your flight home later this week, here's a run down of some of the remaining startup-related talks and events. Sponsor This afternoon, a keynote interview with Twitter's Evan Williams will surely provide any striving entrepreneur with some intriguing insights into his tactics for success. Williams will be joined in Exhibit Hall 1 by Umair Haque of Havas Media Lab at 2pm. Later on in the afternoon, author Clara Shih, whose book The Facebook Era was one of our Weekend Reading suggestions, will be signing copies of her book at the South by Bookstore. The signing starts at 3:20, so get their early and on time because 10 minutes later there is a trio of interesting panels to choose from. At 3:30 in the Radisson Travis, Jason Oberfest of ngmoco and Eroc Eldon of Inside Network will be presenting on how online games can take advantage of social media. We've seen a lot of interesting developments in web-based gaming lately, especially with the success of Zynga on Facebook. New technologies are making in-browser games much more powerful than anything we've seen before, and the opportunities to tie social networking into the experience make the possibilities for startups in this genre very promising. If gaming isn't your cup of tea, head on over to the Courtyard Rio Grande A to see Elizabeth Hallmark and Drew Scherz of Texas Comptroller speak on " Building Happy and High Performing Teams ." This is similar to a topic discussed by David Russo in his book 17 Rules Successful Companies Use to Attract and Keep Top Talent , which we also profiled in our Weekend Reading series. But stealing the 3:30 time-slot might be a discussion of the future of incubators with some startup super-stars. Naval Ravikant of Venture Hacks, David Cohen of TechStars and Paul Graham of Y Combinator will join a few others to discuss what they call the "Seed Combinator," but really startups and entrepreneurs could glean value from anything these guys chose to talk about, so don't miss it. After those panels, pick up and walk over to the Hilton at 5pm for what should be a fascinating discussion about customer service in the world of today's social networks . This five-member panel including Jeremiah Owyang, CNET 's Caroline McCarthy, and executives from Microsoft, HP and Comcast should shed some light on how customer support has evolved "in a 140 character world." Tomorrow morning, as the Interactive portion closes out, entrepreneurs may want to stop by Ballroom A at 9:30 for a discussion on protyping web applications . Are wire-frames and mock-ups going the way of the Dodo? Darren Delave and Michael Leggett of Google think so, and will present on ways "make and present prototypes to improve all stages of the design and development cycle." But the real issue every startup and entrepreneur wants to know about is how to get money from investors. At 3:30 tomorrow in Hilton A/B, don't miss legendary investor Reid Hoffman and Justin Fishner-Wolfson of Founders Fund present on "Getting Your Company Funded ." The talk promises to debunk the myths and questions behind VC funding, term sheets, options, liquidation, "much much more." And finally, a good way to close out the festivities is to check out day 2 of the Microsoft BizSpark Accellerator competition at the Hilton. You can stop by and check out the companies which present throughout the day, but come back at 6pm to see which of the 12 finalists will be crowned this year's winners. And if you aren't in Austin, you can still watch for free online at the Accellerator homepage (granted you have Silverlight installed, of course). Also, remember that everyone at SXSW is tweeting like crazy at all of these events and discussions, so use Twitter search to find out more information if you can't make it to each event. Each event's description on the SXSW homepage also includes the official hashtag for the event so you can easily see what people are saying about it on Twitter. If you have any other suggestions for startups and entrepreneurs at SXSW, let us know in the comments. Photos by Flickr users toprankonlinemarketing , and magerleague . Discuss
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What's Left For Startups At SXSW?
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