For any new technology (here, the example is social media), there is a natural evolution from closed to open standards. Early on, lots of proprietary code is modified as quickly as possible to see what works well in practice. Some companies win, some lose. An industry group trying to decide what to put in a standard is pointless b/c it's all hypothetical what features will survive the test of time.

Eventually, however, an open standards organization should come in and say "these are the standard features, let's encapsulate them in an open standard that everyone uses." This has been proven to be a very healthy way to get to an open standard that really works well in practice.

In 2011, I believe social media is ready to move to an open standard. The last five to ten years has seen a lot of technology built and verified by trial and error. There certainly has been enough capital investment in social media systems. The basics of what Facebook and Twitter do are a very good start. Something like OStatus can define the basics of what social media is by looking at what really works, which would not have been possible even a few years ago.

This is why I'm disappointed in google+. The social media industry is at the point in it's life cycle that it can move to an open standard. Google was in a unique position to ram it through all at once. Instead, they decided to make yet another closed system with minor improvements over the existing competitors. They may win lots of users in the short term but a bigger shift to open standards is coming, but now we have to wait longer for it.