wanderingstan

It’s long overdue.

Almost 4 years ago I started to get excited about what could be done with a social graph (or network, as we called ‘em back then). My head swam with possibilities of a real trust network: get product and company reviews , prevent spyware and check validity of files, control process execution, and of course use your network for trusted searching. That last one let to the development of Lijit, which was been my life for the last 3 years.

I never imagined how hard it would be to actually get a graph. The “big guys” of MySpace and Facebook sealed their users’ graphs in TOS-protected Silos, and users grew wary of re-friending on every new web service. Open standards like FOAF and XFN were there, but no one really used them. It was beginning to look like social graph innovation would be limited to whatever the big guys wanted to allow.

So I’m excited about Google’s new Social Graph API. There’s a still a long way to go, but maybe with Google’s weight other services will allow users to publish their graphs and be available to this API.

Google went big by using the information in the Web’s link-graph. What exciting new tools will be possible when we have real access to the social graph?

Related: Not all links are created equal

Soon I’ll post my long-awaited list of why Outlook sucks.

But before ripping into it for sucking in so many ways, I must admit that it is the only open email platform in use today.

We realized that email is the real social network, but only Outlook offers a platform where 3rd parties can innovate. I’ve learned to depend on Xobni for quickly seeing conversations and shared files. (See screenshot at right, or Fred’s post.) The LinkedIn Outlook plugin is cool too–I hope it soon integrates photos.

Yahoo may offer a platform around their webmail, which would be a huge step in the right direction, but I’m doubtful that they could pull it off.

So as much as I really hate Outlook, it is the only place where someone with a good idea for improving email can actually do anything.

Related: Outlook sucks more than I even imagined