Opening up to OpenSocial, OpenID, hCard and oAuth

So, there is a flood of propaganda coming out of the web 2.0 conferences either about OpenSocial, OpenID, oAuth or hCard. And many people seem to be smoking the peace pipe and passing it along. Sorry, but I don't smoke, and I don't read the tabloids. Usually, I like to wait until a technology is bound and in print, before I am ready to commit. Sorry, but it is an old guy's habit after seeing too many idealogical fads hit the Internet.

However, a co-worker said something today that actually made sense to me. And it was not about only having one login to remember, or how cool it was to link all your accounts together, or any other feature set that has been tried before. It was the way he related the registration process to a check out process, and indirectly related the registration information to credit card information.

...Okay, so you probably do not get why this excited me enough to write a blog about it, but read on...

For the last few weeks I have been doing a lot of reading on usability, design, and marketing. And the only thing that I think every time someone mentions these technologies is "So great. You want me to both convince users to register with my site, and do so using a process they are unfamiliar with?" What if my user does not have a GMail or Blogger account? How are you not setting me up to just confuse a lot of people? I mean, how do you expect to sell this to non-geeks? The n00bs? My mom? (Yes, my mom is my favorite test-case for usability. If she gets it, everyone does.)

So, the concept of these services as personal information brokers in the same way that Visa and Mastercard are brokers of my credit card information is powerful. If registration is a checkout, your login is your credit card information, and sign-in is like Amazon's 1-click purchase. This ability to relate these systems to a very well established user interaction might just give this whole thing some credit. I can now see a small sliver of light that suggests this stuff might make it to hard copy, might be around in three years, and might be worth my time considering.

To the many behind OpenSocial, OpenID, hCard, oAuth, and whatever else is out there, my suggestion is this: Stop selling this stuff to me, the web 2.0 geek, and start figuring out how you are going to sell it to my mom. You do that, and you will have a recipe for success. So, please go fire up your branding iron and get to work, because you have long chasm to cross if you really want this to catch on.

But, What Are We Really Building?

On every major web project that I have ever worked on, there comes that point where I find myself asking 'But, what am I really building?'. Often, the project has some idealistic mission statement about 'Providing people with X and interested in Y a way to connect with Z.' Often, Y=Z or X=Y and the mission statement is all the simpler. However, once the product is actually unleashed on the real world, only 1/10th of the people have X or interested in Y or even care about connecting with Z. The other 90% are interested in people with X or who are interested in Y, and want to connect them with P.

Reverse Your Mission Statement

What triggered me to write this blog entry was the comical, yet sadly true Cracked.com article
Internet Safety Tips. So, my point is this: While mission statements define the market and give support to the projects scope, your product will be ten times as successful if you also approach the mission statement in reverse. How do I allow only Z to connect with people with X who are most likely to be interested in Y. This is particularly in products that contain any part 'social networking' in their mixture of features.

Case in Point

Myspace.com has started to loose substantial ground for the first time in many months according to Google Trends for Myspace. Shortly after 29,000 registered sex offenders were found on Myspace, there has been a noticeable decline in activity and new membership. While some good PR and new features should be able to turn this trend around, you have to ask in hindsight, what could have been done differently to avoid this?

So, to all of you who are out there building your next great web product, please, please, please take the time to say, how do I keep people with X interested in Y from being targets of people attempting to connect them with P. Otherwise, do not be surprised when your product is shanghaied by the porn industry, illegal gambling, or other predators who can probably turn out a higher profit from your users than you can with their lack of moral fiber.