XdbE - Vision of the future
XdbE has a potential to become a game changer in the field of Online Communities and Social Networks. Right now, despite multiple attempts each Online Community Service (AKA Social Network) remains in a state of a "walled garden" where users can not communicate or interact across network boundaries. Attempts of integration are sporadic and usually based either on one-to-one model where two OCS attempt to bridge their users with one another or on releasing a proprietary API not compatible with existing ones. XdbE project aims to change this by providing a software solution exclusively designed for one purpose - opening social networks to each other and to the rest of the world. It ultimately aims to build a Global Social Graph owned by the whole Internet community.
The creation of Global Social Graph will provide a new impulse to Online Communities development and their evolution because there will be no fear for a new communities to be isolated and left out. It will bring the end to rivalry between Online Community Hosts and their battle to keep users locked within narrow boundaries of their services. Instead of fighting each other, community hosts will have an opportunity to concentrate their attention and efforts on improving their own features and services, making them truly unique and useful thus adding more value and usability to their services. Having access to user data from all other communities participating networks will get to know their own users better, will discover their needs and desires which enables them to build services tailored for their users leveraging their unique qualities hence providing better user experience.
Access to GSG will lead to qualitative leap in whole web applications development industry as instead of designing "yet another" application tailored for and limited to a single particular network, developers will be able to create applications more oriented not towards specifics of a given community but towards users browsing from one community to another hence making them more user oriented. And finally, USER could manage all aspects of his or her online presence, connect and disconnect profiles, manage friendships regardless of their community affiliation.
Starting this project as a small scale undertaking it is crucial from the very beginning to outline a clear vision and set up a roadmap for the future development to be able to see opportunities and perspectives that might not otherwise be apparent at a first glance.
In the nearest future it is intended to release client components of XdbE (DSC, DSS and DC) to enable the initial uptake of the service by Online Community Services. Undoubtedly, since these pieces of software are meant to be installed at third-party production environment their complete Source Code shall be disclosed. Open Source is definitely the way forward for this part of XdbE software. However it is yet to be decided under which particular license this code is to be released.
The next milestone is public release of XdbE core software. The core, consisting of XdbE DS and XdbE RS modules should be released shortly after the release of client modules. At this stage the ownership of the code should be formalised and depending on the policy and ownership it can be either released under Open Source or proprietary license. Ideally this part of XdbE software should also be released under one of the Open Source licenses but this way of development might not be feasible for reasons of sustainable product development. To ensure the future for the project we must work out a business model that will provide free and open access to XdbE software, protect the intellectual property rights of developers and ensure rapid improvement and wide uptake of the software itself. These things are difficult to balance hence it is to be decided how and when to release the core of XdbE under an Open Source license. Prior to such a release it is important to make sure that XdbE will generate sufficient Product Halo to support future development of the Project. At this stage the Project business model should be refined to ensure consumer confidence as well as sustainable cash flow.
At late stages it is likely that mature development of XdbE project will be supervised by some sort of non-profit foundation to ensure free public access to Global Social Graph (User Circle) data as well as to avoid conflict of interests that may arise if such a project is lead by one of existing corporations.
In terms of functionality XdbE provides an excellent platform for extensions and although AGL is the basis for building GSG there is no built-in limitation that would prevent XdbE at later phases carrying additional data such as for example user groups affiliation, characteristics of relationships between users and so on. XdbE can also be expanded towards providing a platform for cross-network instant messaging and location services. Perhaps even more important is the fact that even at the current stage of development XdbE is a ready-made platform providing a possibility of a universal cross-network User ID.