App.net Is Just an Identity Provider

This is the core premise of the article: "What we really need is an Open (Social) Protocol".

I've seen this a lot in regard to App.net. Before I go too far, I want to state my feelings about App.net... I don't have any strong feelings about App.net. I don't "get it", but I don't have any strong feelings. I don't care if Dalton wants to try something new. To the contrary, he gets points from me simply for the fact that he's trying something different. Back to the point.

The challenge of an "open social protocol" is the very nature of such a protocol. Open means anyone can use it. Open means commodity.

Email is a great example of an open, "commodity" (in the sense that it is interchangeable between providers) protocol. However, email was born at a time when commercial interests weren't paying full attention. The protocols that make up email were adopted in an environment where no one was lining up to monetize email users. AOL was an early attempt, and they almost succeeded, but by the time commercial interests fully arrived, email as an open protocol was already entrenched, and commercial interests have been trying to supplant it ever since.

Like it or not, an open social protocol will have to compete for users along side non-open protocols (like Facebook and Twitter). Yes, I'm abusing the term protocol here. Facebook and Twitter are not protocols, but this proposed open social protocol will compete with them. The issue is as clear as mud.

From the user's end, these wildly different technologies will compete head-to-head. When a user decides how they'll contact someone, they might decide to post on their Facebook wall, rather than email them. They're choosing a "closed" protocol over an open one, because the nature of the protocol doesn't matter to them.

When applications developed upon App.net enter the fray, they will compete in the same market, and will be judged by the same criteria. For users, email, Facebook, and Twitter are all free. You could consider that the annoyance of ads is a cost, but they're clearly a cost consumers are willing to pay.

App.net is in such uncharted territory that it's difficult to have a focused discussion around it. There are many open questions, some of which lie at the very core: what is App.net? If I have one strongly held opinion, it is that App.net faces some of the hardest challenges one could set themselves against.