Enterprise 2.0: Sun’s Project SocialSite

One of the entries in the launchpad competition today was Sun Microsystem’s Project SocialSite.

It’s part of the larger Glassfish project, and uses Apache Shindig as an OpenSocial container - they demo’d OpenSocial widgets running inside Drupal and MediaWiki - all running inside a Java Application Server.

Video:
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Don’t Make Me Decide Yet: Lowering the Barrier to Entry

A few days ago Josh Porter was tweeting about the notion of “fatigue points”:

I think it’s a very useful concept, pointing out that people’s decisions aren’t binary: it isn’t a single yes/no decision but an active, ongoing negotiation, which determines which services you use and don’t use.

You can also think about the barrier to entry of a new user in a similar fashion. Any time you try out a new application or service there are a few barriers, and whatever the application developer can do to lower those barriers the more users will get over that threshold.
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Now it’s getting interesting - distributed social networking

Two exciting and (relatively) new projects this morning for those interested in social network portability, the social graph, and related concepts: Apache Shindig and DiSo. Both are critical, necessary, and sizable building blocks pointing in the direction of a free (as in freedom AND beer), open, portable, distributed social network infrastructure.
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Open Social is not Social Network Portability

I’ve been struggling since OpenSocial was announced last week to figure out how to put into words what exactly I felt was missing. I feel like I’m seeing lots of people reacting to the announcement describing what they want OpenSocial to be, not what it actually is.

(People I’m reading on this include my colleague Sebastian Wohlrapp, Marc Andreessen, Josh Catone, and Jeremiah Owyang - of course there are a gazillion others as well).

Did I miss something somewhere in the API documentation or the Campfire Video? (It has been a busy few weeks, and I would be happy to be wrong).

As I see it, in short: Open Social is not Social Network Portability. It’s social network widget portability.
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