The Open & Social Web - Unifying Identities

The open & social web

Social Web - Chris Messina
This session will cover the latest and most important trends of the Social Web and dive deep into where this is all going, at both technical and conceptual levels. From the concepts of digital identity, relationships, and social
objects, this session will cover emerging technologies like WebFinger, Salmon, ActivityStrea.ms, OpenID, OAuth and OpenSocial.

Session type: 101
Attendee requirements: A web developer background and an interest in the social web.
Tags: ActivityStrea.ms, Salmon, WebFinger, PubSubHubbub, PortableContacts, OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial
Hashtag: #googlesocial

The Open & Social Web
Chris Messina
May 19

Today I’m going to talk to you about Google and the Social web [CLICK] but really this is more
about the social web.

<head>

Before we get started, a few things.

@chris.messina
buzz.google.com/chrismessina

@chrismessina
#io #googlesocial

Before we begin, : chris.messina on Buzz; chrismessina on Twitter.

The hashtag is #googlesocial

View live notes and ask questions
about this session on Google Wave:
http://j.mp/io-googlesocial

Before I begin I’d like to invite you to view live notes and ask questions about this session on
Google Wave

at j.mp/io-googlesocial

one more thing.

SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING:
THIS PRESENTATION
IS LITE ON CODE

Photo by Bob B. Brown - http://ﬂic.kr/p/7g21oL

THIS PRESENTATION IS LITE ON CODE. If you were expecting code... [CLICK]

Bridging the Islands:
Building fluid social experiences across websites
Joseph Smarr & John Panzer
3:00pm - 4:00pm in Room 9

I suggest you check out “Bridging the Islands” presented by Joseph Smarr and John Panzer
this afternoon from 3:00pm to 4:00pm in Room 9.

Now, I did want to make this experience less excruciating if you INSIST on seeing code...
here’s a little moment of zen for you... ready? [CLICK]

</head>

Ok, I hope that will hold you over. [CLICK]

Let’s get into the meat of the talk... starting with a PROLOGUE to give you a sense for what
I’m going to talk about today.

<body>



Prologue



First, these are two characters that you’re going to get to know over the course of this story.

these are “open web technologists”

they play an important role throughout our story... [CLICK]

“Open Web Technologists”

First, these are two characters that you’re going to get to know over the course of this story.

these are “open web technologists”

they play an important role throughout our story... [CLICK]

Chapter 1

for example, in chapter 1, they introduce OpenID, a decentralized identity technology.

Chapter 2

in chapter 2, they develop WebFinger, a technology for discovering information about email
addresses.

Chapter 3

And ﬁnally, in Chapter 3 they introduce Activity Streams, Salmon, and PubSubHubbub

...which make it possible to share rich activities across networks, in real time, and then
comment back with equal ﬁdelity.

The Open & Social Web

these three chapters are the start of the story of the open and social web.

and so we begin...

Chapter 1:
The Trouble with Travel

Once upon a time...

Once upon a time...

“Kate”

there was a character named Kate.

“Jack”

...and a character named Jack.

Jack lived on this island.

Kate lived on this island.

One day, they decided to go for a vacation...

Credit: xkcd - xkcd.com/256

traveling from one island to another...

...To the big island.

As it turned out, Kate and Jack met. And they liked each other. And then... [CLICK]

...and got married.

But on their wedding day... something missing: their families!

you see, when Kate and Jack left to go to the new island, they left their family and friends
behind.

As it happened, visiting other islands had become a hassle.

Immigration was a real pain in the butt, and having to ﬁll out forms like these [CLICK]

...really turned people off from traveling.

Especially when EVERY island wanted you to register with them!

You could no longer just show up and hang out.

Worse still, every island forced people to learn a secret chant that they had to recite every
time they came back to the island. [CLICK]

@!j
&4K
m$2

Worse still, every island forced people to learn a secret chant that they had to recite every
time they came back to the island. [CLICK]

$%&"'
()*+!

!"#
&/0
*-1

$,&")
)*+-.

it was simply too much and over time, people just melted down from the stress of having to
manage all these secrete chants!

it was simply too much and over time, people just melted down from the stress of having to
manage all these secrete chants!

some resourceful islanders got together and decided to solve this problem once and for all...

Photo by Teresa Stanton

OpenID is like a personal skeleton key for all your web accounts.

By using an account that you already have to sign up for another website, not only is it more
convenient, but you are able to start developing your own universal web identity — that, if
you CHOOSE TO, you can own.

Unique OpenID Relying Parties
As of July 1, 2009

Data from Janrain

So as we’ve seen an explosion in the number of OpenID relying parties in the last ﬁve years
— users are carefully considering which account they want to use to sign in.

Unique OpenID Relying Parties
As of July 1, 2009

50,000

40,000

30,000

20,000

10,000

0
5

06

06

06

6

07

07

07

7

08

08

08

8

09

09
/0

/0

/0

/0
1/

4/

7/

1/

4/

7/

1/

4/

7/

1/

7/
10

10

10

Data from Janrain
10

So as we’ve seen an explosion in the number of OpenID relying parties in the last ﬁve years
— users are carefully considering which account they want to use to sign in.

OpenID usage trends
OpenID Providers on UserVoice

34% 33%

10%
15%
8%

Google Facebook Yahoo! Other
Twitter

Data from Janrain, May 2010

I want you to look at these graphs very carefully. Each color represents a different identity
provider.

Google - 34%
Facebook - 33%
Twitter - 15%
Yahoo - 10%

OpenID usage trends
OpenID Providers on Interscope Records

8%

12%

12%
52%

6%

10%

Twitter MySpace


...and on each site, people use different identity providers depending on the context.

Google 12%
Facebook 43%
MySpace 24%

OpenID usage trends
OpenID Providers on sulit.com.ph

10%

24%

1%

64%


Chart from Janrain, January 2009

Especially when you’re thinking about an international audience, everything changes.

Yahoo - 64%
Google - 24%
Facebook - 10%

OpenID usage trends
Sign in preferences across all Janrain properties

23.5%

Google
38.8%
Facebook
Yahoo!
Other (MySpace, Windows Live, AOL, etc)
13.0%
Twitter

5.8%
18.9%


And across all the sites that use RPX, a third-party authentication widget, we see a different
composition:

Google - 37%
Facebook - 26%
Yahoo - 11%
Other - 18%
Twitter - 6%

http://openid.net

to learn more about openid, visit openid.net

And so the innovation of the village geeks were essentially to allow people of all island
nationalities to visit with one another.... [CLICK]

by creating a system of interoperable identity and passport providers

...which made everyone very happy.

So back with the islands, people were able to travel and visit each other just ﬁne, but a new
problem emerged with people ﬁnding homes on new islands.

Chapter 2:
Staying connected

So back with the islands, people were able to travel and visit each other just ﬁne, but a new
problem emerged with people ﬁnding homes on new islands.

“Kate”

You remember Kate?

Well [CLICK], this is where she comes from.

“Jack”

And Jack?

[CLICK] He came from this island.

Before Jack and Kate left to go live at the new island, their family and friends could just send
messages to “Kate” or call up “Jack”.

When they moved to the new island, their family and friends now needed to specify WHICH
Kate and WHICH Jack they wanted to send a message to, making it much harder to stay in
touch.

? ?

Before Jack and Kate left to go live at the new island, their family and friends could just send
messages to “Kate” or call up “Jack”.

When they moved to the new island, their family and friends now needed to specify WHICH
Kate and WHICH Jack they wanted to send a message to, making it much harder to stay in
touch.

As it happened, the open web technologists got together and decided to solve this problem
once and for all...

WebFinger

...using a technology called “WebFinger”

The Hammer Stack
Discovery for the open web

WebFinger relies on an emerging set of technologies and formats that together we call “The
Hammer Stack”

How WebFinger works

Enter email: Email Lookup

Let’s walk through WebFinger works in practice.

So I’ll type my email in here and click LOOKUP [CLICK]

How WebFinger works

Enter email: chris.messina@gmail.com Lookup

Let’s walk through WebFinger works in practice.

So I’ll type my email in here and click LOOKUP [CLICK]

How WebFinger works
Discovering a user’s WebFinger profile

chris.messina@gmail.com

We take the email I’ve supplied, split it at the @ symbol, and use grab the domain’s host-
meta to discover the user’s WebFinger endpoint.

How WebFinger works
Discovering a user’s WebFinger profile


{
domain

We take the email I’ve supplied, split it at the @ symbol, and use grab the domain’s host-
meta to discover the user’s WebFinger endpoint.

How WebFinger works
Use host meta to retrieve an LRDD document

$curl http://gmail.com/.well-known/host-meta

How WebFinger works
Server returns LRDD document

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<XRD xmlns='http://docs.oasis-open.org/ns/xri/xrd-1.0'
     xmlns:hm='http://host-meta.net/xrd/1.0'>
  <hm:Host xmlns='http://host-meta.net/xrd/1.0'>gmail.com</hm:Host>
  <Link rel='lrdd'
        template='http://www.google.com/s2/webfinger/?q={uri}'>
    <Title>Resource Descriptor</Title>
  </Link>
</XRD>

How WebFinger works
Plugin acct: into URI Template

http://www.google.com/s2/webfinger/?q={uri}

so let’s bring back my email address and turn it into an acct: URI and plug it into the URI
template we got from the host-meta ﬁle.

How WebFinger works




How WebFinger works

acct:chris.messina@gmail.com



How WebFinger works
Retrieve WebFinger document

$curl http://www.google.com/s2/webfinger/?q=acct:chris.messina@gmail.com

How WebFinger works
XRD Profile
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<XRD xmlns='http://docs.oasis-open.org/ns/xri/xrd-1.0'>
<Subject>acct:chris.messina@gmail.com</Subject>
<Alias>http://www.google.com/profiles/chris.messina</Alias>
<Link rel='http://portablecontacts.net/spec/1.0'
href='http://www-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/api/people/'/>
<Link rel='http://webfinger.net/rel/profile-page'
href='http://www.google.com/profiles/chris.messina'
type='text/html'/>
<Link rel='http://microformats.org/profile/hcard'
type='text/html'/>
<Link rel='http://gmpg.org/xfn/11'
type='text/html'/>
<Link rel='http://specs.openid.net/auth/2.0/provider'
href='http://www.google.com/profiles/chris.messina'/>
<Link rel='describedby'
type='text/html'/>
href='http://s2.googleusercontent.com/webfinger/?q=chris.messina%40gmail.com&fmt=foaf'
type='application/rdf+xml'/>
<Link rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2010#updates-from'
href='http://buzz.googleapis.com/feeds/102034052532213921839/public/posted'
type='application/atom+xml'/>
</XRD>

from here I can grab any service that I need.

and so now if you wanted to do something like OpenID...

How WebFinger works
XRD Profile
type='text/html'/>
type='text/html'/>
type='text/html'/>
type='text/html'/>
</XRD>

you would just take that XRD ﬁle...

How WebFinger works
XRD Profile
type='text/html'/>
type='text/html'/>
type='text/html'/>
type='text/html'/>
</XRD>

and look for the rel value that you need and the appropriate endpoint.

Putting it together
Making OpenID easier using an email address

Enter email: Email Connect
Lookup

So, what if we turned this lookup service into an OpenID experience?

Let’s try this with an email address! I hit connect...

Putting it together

Enter email: Email Connect



Putting it together

Enter email: chris.messina@gmail.com Connect



and if I’m already logged in, I’ll be taken to a page like this, where I can click on button to
sign in.

Putting it together

Signed in as: Chris Messina



http://webfinger.info

to learn more about webﬁnger, visit webﬁnger.info

and so the geeks had created a kind of “forwarding address” or “service discovery protocol”
for the islanders...

and the people were happy once again.

Which brings us to the third part of our story... keeping in touch and sharing.

Chapter 3:
Keeping in touch
and sharing

Which brings us to the third part of our story... keeping in touch and sharing.

so one other problem that islanders encountered was the slow delivery of correspondence.

essentially they had to keep checking: was there a new message? how about now? how about
now?

meanwhile, people also started capturing richer and richer content.

and tracking all of their activities in order to keep their friends and family up to date.

but sharing richer and richer media meant a need for more efficient and faster ways of
sending this content around.

, Kate
d r Kate nd
H yd Isla
hn is t 01209
!
s k e nst

-ja

but sharing richer and richer media meant a need for more efficient and faster ways of
sending this content around.

some resourceful islanders got together and decided to solve this problem once and for all
with a series of technologies...

PubSubHubbub

the ﬁrst technology is called pubsubhubbub

Rather than having to constantly check to see if there were new messages, now Kate could
just sit back and relax. Whenever Walt sent a message, it would

hms hubbub
Rather than having to constantly check to see if there were new messages, now Kate could
just sit back and relax. Whenever Walt sent a message, it would

hms hubbub
Hubs stand in the middle and deliver content to the subscribers in real time.

(Slowed down 1000x)

hms hubbub
Hubs stand in the middle and deliver content to the subscribers in real time.

ActivityStreams

let’s start with ActivityStreams.

1999

This story starts back in 1999 when a format called RSS was introduced by Netscape as a
content-gathering mechanism for My Netscape Network (MNN) back when portals were all
the rage (pre-social networks).

By providing a simple snapshot-in-a-document, web site producers acquired audience
through the presence of their content on My Netscape.

so, you’d have someone like the NYTimes wanting to grow their online audience...

...and they’d use RSS to get their content into the Netscape portal.

Copyright 2000 ZWave, LLC

...and they’d use RSS to get their content into the Netscape portal.

RSS
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">

<channel>
<item>
<title>When Will Location-Based Coupons Take Off?</title>
<link>http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/when-will-
location-based-mobile-coupons-take-off/</link>
<pubDate>Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:38:26 +0000</pubDate>
<creator>By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER</creator>
<description>
People want to receive location-based cellphone coupons,
but most have not, according to a Web analytics firm.
</description>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

RSS looks like this.

RSS

title + link + description

the only mandatory fields in RSS are title, link, and description — which makes it an
extremely flexible format. The only problem is that aggregators have to do a lot of
guesswork about what’s in it.

this was complicated by the various flavors of RSS (0.9, 0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 2.0 et al)

2005

this in 2005, a group of people got together to create a “better speciﬁed” syndication format
called Atom.

Atom
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<entry>
<title>When Will Location-Based Coupons Take Off?</title>
<link rel=”alternate”>http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/when-will-
location-based-mobile-coupons-take-off/</link>
<id>urn:uuid:60a76c80-d399-11d9-b91C-0003939e0af6</id>
<updated>Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:38:26 +0000</updated>
<author>
<name>By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER</name>
</author>
<summary>
People want to receive location-based cellphone coupons,
but most have not, according to a Web analytics firm.
</summary>
</entry>
</feed>

here’s what ATOM looks like.

Atom

title + link + summary +
author + id + updated

so, in ﬁve years, the required elements of RSS essentially doubled, and we now had a unique
way to identity a feed entry, the author, and when it was last changed.

even still, this format was really still designed for the case of syndicating ARTICLES into
PORTALS.

Copyright 2000 ZWave, LLC

even still, this format was really still designed for the case of syndicating ARTICLES into
PORTALS.

so, you take an article like this, turn it into RSS or ATOM...

and the most interesting thing the browser can do for you is turn this rich and well designed
page into something like this... [click]

and yet we know that people are performing more and more activities online.

and yet, regardless of its type, sites only publish this information as RSS or Atom

so no matter what, to sites like Friendfeed, Facebook, or Google Buzz, all these activities all
look the same.

icons by Fast Icon

so how do you differentiate all these different feeds when you only have one basic format?

This is where ActivityStreams comes in.

author title link

In contrast to the basic model of RSS and ATOM...

actor verb object target

the ActivityStreams model presents an “actor verb object” tuple, with an “target” parameter

Atom
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<entry>

<title>...</title>
<link rel=”alternate”>...</link>
<id>...</id>
<updated>...</updated>
<author>
<name>...</name>
</author>
<summary>
...
</summary>
</entry>
</feed>

so let’s take a typical Atom entry template...

Atom


(remember that the foundation of Atom is title, link, summary, author, id, and the updated
time.)

Atom+ActivityStreams

+ verb + object-type + target

and let’s layer in verb, object-type, and target — reusing “author” for the actor element...

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:activity="http://activitystrea.ms/spec/1.0/">
  <entry>
      <title>...</title>
      <id>...</id>
      <author>
        <activity:object-type>person</activity:object-type>
        <name>...</name>
      </author>
      <activity:verb>post</activity:verb>
      <activity:object>
        <activity:object-type>note</activity:object-type>
        <content type=”html”>
          ...
        </content>
      </activity:object>
  </entry>
</feed>

here’s what Atom+ActivityStreams looks like. Similar,

  <entry>
      <title>...</title>
      <id>...</id>
      <author>
        <name>...</name>
      </author>
      <activity:object>
          ...
        </content>
      </activity:object>
  </entry>
</feed>

here are the new parts.

  <entry>
      <title>...</title>
      <id>...</id>
      <author>
person
        <name>...</name>
      </author>
post
      <activity:object>
note
          ...
        </content>
      </activity:object>
  </entry>
</feed>

so, see what this adds for the aggregator?

person post note

as the most basic example, we’re essentially telling the aggregator that a person posted a
note.

person shared link

but this model works for someone sharing a link...

person started following person

or someone following someone else...

service updated status

or if a service updates its status.

so before activity streams, all of this syndicated data was treated the same and lead to
overload!

icons by Fast Icon

but now, with activity streams and relevancy ﬁlters, the most relevant, useful data streams to
you based on the appropriate context.

Salmon

So what happens when you get that nugget of information that begs to be responded to?

If you’re on the same island as the sender, well, you walk right up to them... but if they’re not
— and they live on another island, that’s where Salmon comes in.

Just as before, when you receive content, you want to respond to it. Salmon is one emerging,
secure mechanism to push comments across the web.

PubSubHubbub doesn’t work in this case because it uses a one-way channel. Instead, we rely
on salmon’s excellent sense of smell to navigate their way back to where they came from.

4 !"#$%&'
3'#$*!"#$%&'
(&)*+,%#-.
/01/2
5"#-6,!

—6#5'

Just as before, when you receive content, you want to respond to it. Salmon is one emerging,
secure mechanism to push comments across the web.

PubSubHubbub doesn’t work in this case because it uses a one-way channel. Instead, we rely
on salmon’s excellent sense of smell to navigate their way back to where they came from.

We can also use the same mechanism to notify people when they are mentioned in posts.

Think of salmon mentions as evolved trackbacks where you can now send a pingback to
someone by using WebFinger to discover their salmon endpoint!

4 !"#$%&'
3'#$*!"#$%&'
(&)*+,%#-.
/01/2
5"#-6,!

—6#5'



4 !"#$%&'
3'#$*!"#$%&'
(&)*+,%#-.
/01/2
5"#-6,!

—6#5'

'4 !"#$%&'
3'#$*!"#$%&
(&)*+,%#-.
/01/2
5"#-6,!

—6#5'



4 !"#$%&'
3'#$*!"#$%&'
(&)*+,%#-.
/01/2
5"#-6,!

—6#5'

#&*+%,-.#('
"#$%"&'()@
8 ,91:"#$0 !
/&*+%,- 012)-,3),-
45647
;<=>?!

—$"-,



2"+3"#$*
!"#$@%&"''(%
2"4+)56+&#7
+89":7 )&"''(%*+,,,
nst ! -./01

—:%&7+;



http://j.mp/pubsubhubbub
http://activitystrea.ms
http://salmon-protocol.org

to learn more about these technologies, visit j.mp/pubsubhubbub, activitystrea.ms, and
salmon-protocol.org

And so now we’ve put together three very exciting technologies and once again...

everyone was happy and partied all night long.

...happily ever after

and everyone lived happily ever after...

Chapter 1

We ﬁrst learned about how the problem of inter-island identity was solved with OpenID...

Chapter 2

then we learned about how WebFinger could act as a kind of forwarding service to make it
possible for people to stay in touch even aftey moved...

and a secondary beneﬁt was to make the process of using OpenID easier.

Chapter 3

Finally we learned about Activity Streams, Salmon, and PubSubHubbub which make it possible
to share rich activities across networks, in real time, and then respond with equal ﬁdelity.

Google and the Social Web

so let’s tie this back to Google and the Social Web.

Credit: xkcd - xkcd.com/256

At Google, we see the entire web as one big social environment, bridged by a number of
open technologies....

Though they are still emerging and involving, Google is proud to support OpenID, WebFinger,
OAuth, ActivityStreams, PubSubHubbub, and Salmon.

Together these technologies represent several of the underpinning technologies that will
form the foundation of the future web.

And so that brings me to Google Buzz, Google’s latest entry into the social scene.

As it turns out, all the technologies I just told you about help to power the Buzz platform.
This helps frame the context for the work that Google is doing on the social web.

In fact...

“ The idea is that someday, any host on
the web should be able to implement
these open protocols ... without
any one company in the middle.

DeWitt Clinton, Google

Photo by Joi Ito

Writing about Google Buzz, DeWitt Clinton said:

“The idea is that someday, any host on the web should be able to implement these open
protocols and send messages back and forth in real time with users from any network,
without any one company in the middle.

“ Google Buzz will be just another node
(a very good node, I hope)
among many peers.”

DeWitt Clinton, Google

Photo by Joi Ito

This is really important. The goal of Google Buzz, on one hand, is to create an excellent
social experience for Google users...

Image from the Opte Project

...and on the other to promote the adoption and development of technologies that expand
the size and participation on the social web.

</body>

And with that... I’d like to conclude.

And thank you for your attention.

Don’t forget to checkout out the
Google Wave discussion:
http://j.mp/io-googlesocial

Make sure to check out the backchannel for this talk at j.mp/io-googlesocial

What's the hubbub about Google Buzz APIs?
Chris Chabot, Marco Kaiser (Seesmic), Ming Yong (Socialwok)

make sure to check out Chris Chabot’s talk called “What's the hubbub about Google Buzz
APIs?” featuring Loic Le Meur and Ming Yong from 1:45pm until 2:45pm in Room 8

Bridging the Islands:
Building fluid social experiences across websites
Joseph Smarr & John Panzer

And, for then for the code-heavy Part II of this talk, please see “Bridging the Islands”
presented by Joseph Smarr and John Panzer this afternoon from 3:00pm to 4:00pm in Room
9.

Fireside chat with the Social Web team
David Glazer, DeWitt Clinton, John Panzer,
Joseph Smarr, Sami Shalabi & Todd Jackson
Tomorrow (May 20)
2:15pm - 3:15pm in Fireside Chat Room

Fireside chat with the Social Web team
David Glazer, DeWitt Clinton, John Panzer,
Joseph Smarr, Sami Shalabi & Todd Jackson
Tomorrow (May 20)
2:15pm - 3:15pm in Fireside Chat Room

Answers & Questions

Now I should have time for questions...

And PLEASE COME UP TO THE MICS — and remember, a question begins with a capital letter
and ends with a question mark!

The Open & Social Web - Unifying Identities

The Open & Social Web - Unifying Identities

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