Aggregation is only useful if you have a lot of individuals participating. If you don't, you can just form direct links to the publishers, without the need for aggregation
On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 6:24 AM, Bob Wyman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 9:13 PM, Ayende Rahien <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > How many service providers do you expect to have? > It depends on the service. Aggregation is hard. Thus, I wouldn't expect > there to be a great many aggregators at any one time since aggregation is > hard -- especially if the aggregators do things like offer real-time > "tracking" services (prospective search). But, even if there aren't very > many, we've learned from blogging and the web that aggregators are very > important to the health of the overall system. Ideally, there would always > be more than one provider of any particular service to ensure competition > and thus ensure pressure to innovate by offering improved or new > capabilities. However, if we don't establish the protocols to enable > aggregation of social networking content, we're going to find that the only > service providers that have a chance to enter the market will be those that > have special relationships to existing major social networks -- for > instance, like the relationship between Summize and Twitter. The result, of > course, will be that it becomes impossible to compete with existing services > by innovating. We'll have a lock-in that will not serve the community's > interests. > > It should be recognized that the "advertisement" mechanism has utility for > many kinds of publish/subscribe service -- whether or not they are > specifically related to social networking. Thus, the examples I gave in an > earlier note of "News Feeds", "Stock Market Quotes", "sports results," > "weather reports", etc.. It is best, I think, if we try to have social > networking systems rely on technologies that are generally useful. We should > avoid unnecessary specialization so that the Social Networking space can > benefit from innovation and ideas that come from other realms. > > bob wyman > >
