BuddyPress.org

Regarding who is responsible for data, it seems there is a lot of misunderstanding about OpenID out there. I’m not the ultimate evangelist on all this, but 90% of these types of concerns have already been addressed by the real know-hows of distributed social networking.

OpenID does *not* mean everyone has access to everything. Rather, it just becomes a viable way to port information, when necessary or desired, more easily, as well as providing a way for an individual to be identified more easily at any given site — but, again, this doesn’t preclude telling every site everything. Trust is still a site by site variable.

Here’s a list of great reads (plus a web “TV” show!) for those interested in understanding what’s true and what isn’t:

http://factoryjoe.com/blog/page/12/ (old, but addresses some common concerns)

http://josephsmarr.com/2008/04/23/data-portability-privacy-and-the-emergence-of-the-social-web-web-20-expo/ (also old, but an original “diso” reference”)

http://www.sociallipstick.com/2009/03/a-proposal-for-a-conceptual-open-stack/ (social stack reworked)

http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2009/02/13/this-week-in-video-facebook-and-the-openid-design-workshop/ (a bunch of videos from the OpenID Summit)

http://thesocialweb.tv/ (periodic episodes updating the latest in diso)

The final thing I would add is, like it or not, distributed social networking (OpenID and the like) are _already_ here: Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, AOL, MySpace, and a host of other providers have already embraced OpenID, and the clock can’t be turned back. There are still a lot of variables to be worked out (such as “single sign out”!), but BuddyPress would do well to support it, if not because it is a highly useful technology, then at least to support the percentage of customers who are going to want (demand?) the technology.

Anyway, back to RPX and BuddyPress…