We don’t take our other valuables with us when we travel—we leave the important stuff at home, or in a safe place. But Facebook and Google don’t give us similar control over our valuable data. With these online services, it’s all or nothing.
We need a ‘trip mode’ for social media sites that reduces our contact list and history to a minimal subset of what the site normally offers.
A well-argued piece by Malcolm Gladwell on the relative pros and cons of weak-tie networks and strong-tie hierarchies ...although, as always, Gladwell relies on anecdotes more than data to make his point.
The blog of the book by Gavin Bell.
An interesting take on the business models of social networking sites.
An examination of behavioural contagion in social networks.
This presentation by Steven Pemberton increases in value over time.
Ben has written a superb article outlining the hows and whys of distributed social networks with hCard and XFN, finishing with an inspiring call to arms.
Liveblogged notes from a discussion I participated in at BarCamp Brighton 2 about Social Network Portability.
A nice summary of the technologies presented at my SXSW panel.
Chris interviews himself about portable social networks and distributed identity.
Brian's article on portable social networks is a clear and concise introduction to the subject with explanations of the technologies involved.
A new site to track the building blocks of portable social networks: OpenID, OAuth, hCard, XFN and more.
Six Apart are getting ready to make portable social networks a reality. Watch this space for code.
Cameron's plea for social network transparency and portability is one of the most lucid and succinct yet.
Portable social networks are no longer just theory: Dopplr makes it a reality.