Today I received a spam-like email:

from {CrypticSN@gmail.com}
{CrypticSN} invited you to be their friend.

Click here to go to My Latest Piece where {CrypticSN} found you.

I looked at the URL for the link, and it did redirect to “mylatestpiece.com”. Being the cynical “don’t click links in email” person that I am, I typed in the address and checked it out.

Lo and behold, it’s one of the google friend connect examples I checked out a few weeks back! {CrypticSN} is listed there under my “new friend requests” in the little iframe.

I haven’t thought too much about google friend connect since the few posts I wrote about it. This generic email has me really surprised, for a few reasons.

1. It’s incredibly generic. Since it’s a friend request, I may or may not know {CrypticSN}. So sending an email from their email address may not prevent the request from a quick trip to the spam filter.
2. There is no mention of the community aspects of the site. Granted, it’s an example, but “My Latest Piece” doesn’t lend itself to being a destination I’ll be making friends at. That being said, if I were really a community member at My Latest Piece, I would probably recognize the site name and the fact that there is a notion of “friending” there.
3. Where do my friend requests go? This is the part that I think still is a major concern for GFC. If I friend {CrypticSN} here, where does that information live? Do I need to invite him to be a friend on other GFC sites, or on other networking sites? Indeed, can I?

The ability to find and request friends is clunky. There doesn’t appear to be an search functionality, so you have to navigate through “previous” and “next” links of current members to find the one you’re looking for. You may then look at their profile, including their friends, and request their friendship. There is no option for a personal note, just a confirmation asking if you’re sure you want to send a request.

I know this is a new service, but come on. The mode for managing contacts and sending messages to people has been done before. There are strategies and models that are tried and tested. What is the goal here, to find people you may know, or generically spam other people and foster a “friendship” in which you can’t even complement someone on their avatar when you “befriend” them.

Perhaps I’m too cynical, but I still fail to see the user benefits to this whole deal. While it may be great for My Latest Piece that I just returned to their site, as a user, this whole exchange has been less than satisfying.

I would explain to {CrypticSN} that it’s not him, it’s me, but I clicked “ignore” on the invite, which evidently means “hide this invite and give me no way to retrieve it.” You know, Ignore as in Delete…

Doc Searls (co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto) is speaking at iCitizen about Open Source and Vendor Relationship Management. This is one of only a few sessions I’ve actually been able to attend, and it ended up being quite tech-heavy. Great for me! The idea is about how we can change our perspective on how to manage relationships. Doc (do we call him “The” Doc?) focussed on the role of technology in this matter. We extolled the virtues of open source technology to meet user needs.

He spoke of the VRM (vendor relationship management) work he has been doing at Harvard. The icon or symbol is the relbutton, which looks like two magnets attracted towards each other. The two negotiate a contract based on some as-yet-undefined terms. He mentioned Open Social a few times, and the idea that the user should be in charge of his own data. A good example: when we go to a doctor’s office, we are responsible to manually input our history. Each time we have to regurgitate information, we risk inaccuracies. He gave a statistic of how many people died of “misinformation” every year. So what if this was data we could carry with us?

I was interested in the language we would use to define these relationships - it made me think of established interfaces. There are two parties, how do we negotiate the languge we use to communicate? APIs are getting quite popular, but this is obviously on a much larger scale. He spoke frequently of Open Social, which I will admit I don’t know much about. My thoughts were moreso focused on microformats, the idea of describing our relationships with parties.

After the session I was talking to David Griner, and his thoughts on the matter seemed to be more related to the notion of privacy than openness. Indeed, this entire notion is called “Vendor management”, are we forgetting about the needs and expectations of the consumer? Doc mentioned that the individual was in charge of this data (the whole data portability notion that is de rigueur right now), and then there was also mention of the need for a 3rd party.

Doc is approaching this challenge from a tech standpoint, and I fear that this was a bit of a barrier to many of the folks in the room. It was a good presentation with regards to a potential challenge, but I think the need therefore isn’t entirely established as of yet. I think it’s also an interesting topic in the light of all the social networks data portability announcements that have occured in the past week. Who owns our data, do we really have the power to take it with us, and perhaps most importantly, what is that data? Some of us are experiencing social media fatigue, and I think there was some question from the user perspective if this required an additional level of “data management”. Do I need to define a profile to carry with me to specific sites, or do I establish an online persona that comes with me as I negotiate the web generically? How do we protect that information? Certain services like kaboodle offer us a place to aggregate products related to a certain user task (shopping). Perhaps this needs to be not about data, but about tasks..

I asked David if he had done much with OpenId. I think the model may be similar: there are certain issuers of the IDs, and others that will accept them. As long as we trust the issuers, we could determine our level of comfort with data sharing in other places. Once again, David’s real question was what the benefit was to the consumer. Can I not just go to a site and perform my desired task? Do I need to carry my history/preferences etc with me?

I can see both sides. In a later metrics track, we discussed how it can take several site visits before conversion occurs. Often people want to perform research, establish trust, etc. So I do believe there are merits in the site being aware of some level of the established relationship and history, at least on the site level. But does a system like a generic VSM need to manage that? Or can that stay within the site (as happens now, and as personalization systems like ATG advocate)? This is the same model we see in the brick and mortar stores: the folks at the starbucks start to recognize me, ask me how I’m doing, anticipate my preferences. I think people are comfortable with that level of recognition. It is when behaviour at the starbucks downtown influence how I’m treated at Crimson Cup that people start to be a little concerned.

Plenty of stores accept competitor’s coupons. That’s the level where this sort of universal ID seems to make sense. Let me bring in my deals or specials from someplace else, if I so choose. And perhaps that’s a user opt-in, just like if I choose I want my browser to store my login information. But even if the data lives elsewhere, the control thereof certainly needs to live with the consumer. Do I want to manually write out my health information at each doctor, or do I carry a card that has it all written out, and distribute it. The idea and the infrastructure to support it certainly makes sense, but I don’t know if there is overall value to the forced implementation thereof.

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