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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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Facebook appears to be preparing to launch a recommendation service that will be used on sites around the web. On the day before the F8 developers’ conference, independent developer Jesse Stay has posted code found on Facebook’s GitHub open source code repository account. Facebook is already very practiced at offering recommendations on-site: its News Feed technology pulls the items out of its Live Feed based on who and what you’ve shown is most important to you among all your friends and their activities. Facebook knows more about you than probably any other consumer service online, probably more even than Google. Recommendation could in fact become bigger than search, and so this feature could become one of Facebook’s biggest moves. Sponsor Stay believes the feature will function like Google SideWiki , the sidebar of running commentary about a page that website owners have no control over but that hasn’t really caught on with users, either. Two things you can be sure of: Facebook recommendations will make use of a website visitor’s Facebook friend connections and the feature will almost definitely make publishers happier than the uncontrollable Google SideWiki did. recommendations site=”abc.com” height=”300″ width=”400″ /> should be replaced by an iframe showing recommendations for the abc website (pending checkin on the server side). Recommendation would be huge for Facebook. Beyond just being cool for users, recommendation is compelling for site publishers because it’s like pre-emptive search. The language in that code implies to me that the feature will display content recommended to a user because of interest by friends in certain content on the site. Presumably if any of your friends have shared links to the site you’re visiting, you’ll be encouraged to visit those pages in particular. Perhaps recommendation will go further than that. It’s really hard to know, but we’ll probably find out tomorrow. That’s the question: is this a way for you to recommend content or to have content recommended to you? If it’s primarily one, I’m guessing it’s the latter. Make no mistake: recommendation could be a huge addition to Facebook’s arsenal. Recommendation technologies are something we’ve covered for years here at ReadWriteWeb . We asked a year ago if Facebook was secretly working on a recommendation technology , though the feature we saw then turned out to be something else. Beyond just being cool for users, recommendation is compelling for site publishers because it’s like pre-emptive search. Everyone wants to give their site owners an opportunity to search for the content they want to find, but even better is prompting them with what’s effectively personalized search results as soon as they land on a page. Opt-out/opt-in? This essential question of privacy will be put to the test in many ways, as Facebook continues to extend its system of identity across the web. Facebook knows enough about you, your interests, your friends, their interests, their friends and their interests too that it should be able to nail recommendations fairly well. Discuss
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Facebook May Launch Recommendation Service For Other Websites
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As we mentioned briefly last night , Google is going to attempt to reintegrate Android into the main Linux kernel – the code had been booted in December because it was “no longer being cared for,” according to Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Novell developer who maintains the staging, USB and driver core for Linux. The reintroduction process will take years , says Google open source programs manager Chris DiBona. On the one hand, it’s good to see Google trying to do the right thing by the open source community, but on the other hand, the argument could be made that Google appropriated Linux for its own for-profit ends without giving back. This move has been dubbed by some as “evil,” (in reference to Google’s infamous company motto, “Do No Evil”). The issue: Google forked Android’s development into private branches, implemented a closed code review process and and then trademarked the “Android” name all while providing an incomplete public software developers kit which is missing several key items needed to build a Android-based handset. Open? No. But is that evil? Sponsor The Arguments as to Android “Openness”…or Lack Thereof Vision Mobile’s research director Andreas Constantinou makes these same points and more over on the blog run by the market analysis and strategy firm. The post, entitled ” Is Android Evil? ” is worth reading in its entirety. But we’ll summarize some of the main points here by snipping out a handful of his top arguments as to why Android isn’t really open source software: Private branches: As noted above, select partners (OEMs mostly) have access to private codelines that are estimated to be 6+ months ahead of the public SDK. This allows them to stay competitive. Close review process: All code reviewers work for Google. Few outside contributions get in with no explanation as to why. Speed of evolution: Google innovates on Android so quickly that OEMs have no choice but to remain close to the company in order to get in on the new features and bug fixes. Incomplete software: The public SDK lacks radio integration, international language packs and operator packs. Android is a trademarked name. Private roadmap: The published roadmap is a year out of date . You have to contact Google to see the private one. Constantinou makes a few other arguments, too, like how the Android Marketplace is controlled by Google for example, but that’s not really as important to this issue – especially since there’s no Apple-like review process when it comes to accepting new applications. Another argument to Android’s not-so-open nature is that Google chose the Apache license so the derivative code doesn’t have to be contributed back. Google’s DiBona dismissed this, claiming differentiation is good and enables commercial vendors to succeed, according to the ZDNet report . Profit Isn’t Evil Commercial success with Linux isn’t a new (or “evil”) idea, though. Distributions like Redhat, SuSE, Oracle Unbreakable Linux – heck, even Tivo – among many others have turned a profit thanks to Linux. That’s not evil, that’s just good business. But the issue here is that Google is succeeding commercially on top of Linux while making changes to Android that are not shared with the community. Meanwhile, they get to promote “Android” as “open,” when, in reality, that doesn’t appear to be the case. The question we ask now is this: does this make the Android business “evil?” Or does Google get a pass since Android is far more open, comparatively speaking, than most other mobile operating systems today? Where does Android fall on Google’s “evil meter? in your eyes? Discuss
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Where Does Android Register on Google’s "Evil" Meter?
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The guardians of the Linux Kernel Archive , repository for the source code for the Linux open source operating system, turned the code for Google’s Android phone out the door last year. The guardians felt they were getting too little cooperation from Google and too few patches from its engineers. However, at the Linux Collaboration Summit, taking place today and tomorrow in San Francisco, Google has apparently broached the topic of bringing it all back home. Sponsor Both Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, and Chris DiBona, open source and public sector engineering manager for Google, reportedly believe it will be done. DiBona, however, told a reporter that he believed the restoration would be a “multi-year process.” DiBona even told ZDNet’s Paula Rooney that Google was hiring two engineers just to work on the kernel. He dismissed worries over forking and fragmentation, “noting that smart phone operating system code is not all appropriate for the operating system kernel.” In fact, that seems to lie at the kernel of the fuss over the kernel, the fact that Google, he says, is shipping millions of Androids per day. The exigencies of the profit-driven corporation and the clean code values of the guardians don’t seem like they will ever fit together seamlessly. Top photo by Paolo Massi Bottom photo by Seth Rasmussen Discuss
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Android and Linux Discuss Code Reunion
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German navigation company Skobbler is bringing their turn-by-turn, OSM iPhone streetmap application to the United States. Skobbler describes itself as “an Internet community with a free mobile phone navigation system.” Skobbler has been testing the application in several states in the last few weeks and has reportedly found the OpenStreetMap data quite good. OSM is a collaborative, crowdsourced project to map the world from the ground up, using volunteers and an emphasis on open-source presentation and rendering. Sponsor Skobbler is comparable in its leverage of community and focus on open source to the more established Waze . Skobbler had jettisoned NAVTEQ data and debuted with OSM in Germany in March. After a rocky start it has found its way into the top ten downloads in the German iTunes store. “Skobbler is using consumer feedbacks (reporting is integrated into the application) and the GPS tracks generated by users to improve the map data in co-operation with OSM volunteers,” according to GPS Business News ‘s Ludovic Privat. Discuss
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Skobbler Heads for the New World
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