Facebook and MySite

you know the one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhNIUOkWAmo

No, really.

You seem like a nice enough guy, and you definitely do some amazing work, but you really sound like a jerk. Look how much time you spent displaying your "superior intellect" instead of simply saying "it's a drupal module". I did search for MySite, though I left out Drupal. But let me ask you this: if you just joined a group dedicated to social networking sites, and you saw two social networking tools mentioned in a short post with little in the way of description, with the first being an external application, why would you assume that the second was a Drupal specific module? I've worked extensively with social networking sites (mostly using them for political outreach and engagement) and I had never heard of the module, so whatever, sue me.

I'm also of the mind that if you're writing a post that's asking for help with something, you should do the explaining. You talk about lazy, but why should I care more about this than the 1000 other things going on/being discussed in these groups? As I said, I did search for MySite, btw, and didn't find anything useful within the first 20 seconds, so I asked here. And you answered, albeit in a really bratty way, but you could have just as easily ignored my post, instead of starting this whole, fairly ridiculous, exchange.

Thanks for all your contributions to Drupal (esp the MFA related contributions), and sorry if my silly little mind doesn't understand these here search thingies. I'm trying to get smarter, I promise, but it's hard work, and I'm really, really lazy.

Dave-

I've posted more complete info about using MySite with external apps at http://groups.drupal.org/node/6632.

The missing piece would be the 'dial home' to record usage stats, but that can be handled pretty easily as well.

--
http://ken.therickards.com/
http://savannahnow.com/user/2
http://blufftontoday.com/user/3

You're right, I should have been more specific: it's not working on either IE7 or Firefox on my Windows XP machine (I'm not having problems with any other sites)- the different areas of the page are crashing into each other, which could be css, stray div tags, etc.

Here's a shot from Firefox:

And here's one from IE:

As with everything else, this will continue to evolve, is my point. The SNs are consuming a huge number of websites, already, and, at the same time, are giving others a first-time web presence. SaaS solutions are continuing to emerge, consuming more websites in the process. The staggering levels of participation in SNing is pushing classification of data into useable form and eventually, the need for SN's as we know it today will disappear because data will be fluid and coded for relationships and access and identity.

Your point about people enjoying site visits and beautiful designs is a good one. Certainly, that will help shape the future.

The take home message from all of this is to aim efforts towards Berners-Lee's vision on the semantic web. Today, it's a smart first step to utilize Microformats, for types of data that a standard is available (or proposed) and to watch this industry closely. RDF? More Microformats?

Yesterday, I watched a very interesting interview with Mark Zuckerberg that brushes on many of these changes and how he is positioning Facebook. His discussion of the social graph gets at the heart of this. But, watch how Facebook can offer no promises to third party devs. (Which makes some sense since we have no idea where it's all heading but, make no mistake, it's also for strategic business positioning.)

Then, look at this Plaxo video for an example of a company that is positioning as an Online Identity Consolidator in the SN space. Pay close attention to the "battle" they are having getting the end user data in the SN's opened up. Consider Zuckerberg's response to the question of opening access to end user data to make it more portable in his interview.

So, why the fuss?

My point - in an attempt to bring this back on topic - the "container" will not be nearly as important as the data; and, efforts to target a specific social network could end up being wasted, instead, think broadly about all SNs. We are seeing yet another enormous change in our industry and it is impossible to accurately predict where it will end up but, one thing is certain, it's about the data. It is not about the website or the SN.

Probably should open another thread for this to continue discussing. My real point was to interject the need for considering the bigger picture and that I see MySite as a possible solution to providing a good Drupal solution to feeding all of the various networks.

~~ Amy Stephen ~~
http://OpenSourceCommunity.org