Could Google+ be the first prominent open social network?

Google+ has an incredible amount of buzz surrounding it at the moment. But one element the young network lacks is open standards compliance.

It’s not unique to Google+, as almost all social networks for that matter have this problem. But Google is in a unique position to advance the cause of open standards for social networking.

To put it plainly, open web standards help make the Web and its services run smoothly. Organizations like W3C and the IETF help establish these so online services can work in a broad fashion. Look at e-mail: Because e-mail works on a standard protocol, you can easily send a note to someone that uses a different e-mail provider.

“It can be best explained as having a common, agreed-upon format,” Charles McCathieNevile, Chief Standards Officer at Opera, said in an interview with VentureBeat. “If we both agree to speak English, then we can communicate. And this extends to all web standards.”

With social networks, there are no standard ways to communicate from network to network. I cannot, for example, send a message from Facebook and have it land in someone’s Twitter direct messages box. Additionally, I can’t login to Facebook using a Google+ account or be notified that someone mentioned me on LinkedIn while using Twitter.

These are all closed systems that require you to sign up so you can participate in a single service. The more users consistently using that one service, the more market share it can consume and the more money it can charge for advertising and other monetized services. So there’s little incentive for a player like Facebook, which has 750 million users, to open its protocols to interact with other services. It wants users to spend its time interacting on Facebook, not interacting with Facebook users from Google+.

But Google+ is so new and has such small market share, it might actually have a reason to go open. If it can widely open its API and network, and even a few other networks or websites adopt those same standards, that could provide an incentive for all social networks—even Facebook—to join in.

What Google+ should do first to open up

Edd Dumbill, chair of the Open Source Conference (OSCON), recently explored the idea of Google+ as potentially the first prominent open social network. While Dumbill’s piece is highly speculative, he makes a strong case for why Google would be interested in innovating in this way.

“I don’t believe there should or could be just one social network, Google+,” Dumbill said. “Instead we’re approaching a commoditization of the core social features of identity, sharing, updates and collaboration.”

Dumbill told VentureBeat that Google has several things it needs to do if it wants to truly open Google+ up. One of the most important things it must do is open up its API and clearly define it so it emphasizes sharing and collaboration.

“The Google+ API should be a forerunner of a standard for interoperating social systems that will let people collaborate across the borders of these systems,” Dumbill said.

Another thing Google needs to do is add Google+ functionality to Google Apps, to make the office and enterprise more social.

“You should be able to share and discuss documents with a circle, and use the information flow in that circle to drive workflow,” Dumbill said. “The idea is that everything, which in real life we might be able to talk about, we can talk about in virtual life.”

But how likely is it?

Google’s history suggests it is interested in integrating open web standards and supporting the open web. In 2007, Google introduced OpenSocial, an API for building social applications across platforms.

And just a month ago, Google launched Google Takeout, a service that lets a Google account holder download all of his or her saved inormation from Google’s servers. People can download all manner of data related to their Gmail contacts, their Google+ activity stream, Picasa photo albums, and Google profiles. This sort of action shows the beginnings of a web standard for data exchanges.

Joseph Smarr, a technical lead on the Google+ team and an open standards enthusiast, said a personal goal of his is to make the entire social web more open. Smarr previously worked on OpenID and OAuth, two open protocols that allow data to be shared across networks. He said it’s possible for Google+ to become the first open social network, but that it would be a complicated road to get to there.

“It’s hard but achievable,” Smarr said. “There are usability challenges, and it can get complicated. For example, if you login to Google with your Yahoo account, what features are then available to you?”

Smarr declined to tell us when the Google+ API would open up and said there was no established time line. Game developers, among others, have been eagerly awaiting an API that would let them build applications on top of the network. An API would be a a step towards extensibility, but not necessarily openness, because it could be based (like Facebook’s API) entirely on a private network, or (like email protocols) on open, interoperable standards.

McCathieNevile suggests Google has such enormous resources that it could pull off an openness project without too much effort. He said it’s a matter of re-coding, establishing an open API, and having engineers come in to make it compatible for broad-scale use.

Plus, McCathieNevile suggests it would be a relatively inexpensive process for Google. “It’s extremely unlikely to break Google’s bank or even be a large enough amount that the accounting team would notice,” he said.

In a final note that highlights the realism of the Google+ open network idea, Smarr told us to remember how early we are in the network’s life. Google+ is a month old, and people need to have realistic expectations of what it will accomplish in the months and years ahead.

“We have a ton of basic stuff to do before we can tackle even bigger challenges,” Smarr said. “And how people are actually using the service will determine what we end up doing.”

Be sure to check out the rest of our recent series covering Google+, its features, and how the network fits into our social ecosystem.

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Tags: API, Application programming interface, Google Plus, OAuth, open standards, OpenID, opensocial, social networking, Social networks, W3C

Companies: Facebook, Google, Twitter

People: Charles McCathieNevile, Edd Dumbill, Joseph Smarr

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New Missouri Law Bans ‘Exclusive’ Online Contact Between Teachers, Students

Senate Bill 54 was designed to protect children from sexual misconduct by teachers, but one provision of the legislation bans teachers from having a nonwork-related website — like Facebook and other social networking services — that allows “exclusive access” to current or former students.

A controversial new law in Missouri designed to protect students from sexual misconduct bans direct contact between educators and students on social networking websites, but has prompted criticism from those who say it goes too far in its effort to clearly define digital boundaries. 

Senate Bill 54, also known as the “Amy Hestir Student Protection Act,” was signed into law on July 14 by Gov. Jay Nixon. 

The law requires state school districts to report allegations of sexual abuse to authorities within 24 hours, and holds those districts liable if they fail to disclose suspected or known abuse by past employees. 

It also bans registered sex offenders from serving on local school boards and strengthens criminal background checks on school bus drivers. 

But one provision of the bill — section 160.069 — also prohibits teachers in elementary, middle or high schools from establishing, maintaining or using a “work-related website unless it is available to school administrators and the child’s legal custodian, physical custodian, or legal guardian,” effective Jan. 1. 

“Teachers also cannot have a nonwork-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student,” the new law reads. 

The new law is believed to be the first of its kind nationwide. Other states and school districts have only recently formed guidelines and policies on student-teacher online interaction. 

In Massachusetts, some districts have adopted a model by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees that bans “improper fraternization” via Internet and telephone. 

Elsewhere, teachers in several districts in Toledo, Ohio, have been told they can communicate with students when it directly relates to school matters. But some teachers say Missouri’s approach, although well-intended, is heavy-handed and will ultimately hurt students by restricting access to educators. 

“Throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to social networking is bad policy,” said Todd Fuller, spokesman for the Missouri State Teachers Association, which represents 44,000 members statewide. “There’s so much gray area in this bill that it’s difficult for us to define them,” Fuller said. 

MSTA officials have recently received calls from educators on an “hourly” basis regarding the provision. Some callers have inquired about potential ramifications of the social networking clause, while others are concerned about breaking the new law unwittingly. 

“What happens if I use a third-party website to communicate with students?” Fuller said, mimicking an educator. “That’s not public. There are lots of elements beyond Facebook that are part of social networking that I don’t think this bill takes into account.” 

State Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, sponsor of the bill, told FoxNews.com that the social networking provision bans solely “exclusive access” between a teacher and a student. 

“We are in no way trying to stop communication between educators and students,” Cunningham said Monday. “We are allowing school districts to form their own policy with this and to police themselves. The social media aspect comes in because we’re finding that it’s an early pathway to sexual misconduct.” 

The bulk of the legislation, which was approved unanimously by the state’s Senate on April 7, will take effect on Aug. 28 — just in time for the new school year. 

Districts will have several additional months to implement the social-networking aspect of the new law. “Frankly, a teacher that has nothing to hide will be real pleased by this, because it’s going to show their good work,” Cunningham said. “A good teacher is going to like this.” 

Randy Turner, a communication arts teacher at East Middle School in Joplin, Mo., told FoxNews.com he’s fearful districts will ban usage of social-networking sites altogether to eradicate any potential gray areas. 

“I understand people have concerns about who their children are having as friends on Facebook, but I know many teachers who have used Facebook, and all of them have been professional,” Turner said. “We’re not getting on there to be pals. It’s a professional service.” 

Turner said he’s also worried that the new law removes an important “avenue” for contact between teachers and students — both during times of emergency and during the everyday grind of homework. “A student having difficulty with a classroom assignment probably won’t want to advertise on Facebook that he or she is having a problem with it,” he said. 

Under the new law, Turner said teachers wouldn’t be able to respond directly to seemingly innocuous questions like whether school will be in session tomorrow or to directly disseminate information during times of emergency. Turner said he used Facebook extensively in May following the tornado that killed at least 116 people in Joplin. 

In a statement to FoxNews.com, Facebook officials said a growing number of teachers everyday use social networks as a “valuable educational tool” to answer homework questions or to identify bullying. “It is imperative that this law does not limit schools’ and teachers’ ability to use technology in this way to educate Missouri’s students, and we are working with the education and legal communities to investigate,” spokesman Tucker Bounds wrote in an email to FoxNews.com. 

Meanwhile, Robert Sigrist, assistant principal at Central High School in St. Joseph, Mo., said Cunningham’s primary intention with the new law was to ensure that “inappropriate communication” does not take place between teachers and students online. 

“This is an evolving thing,” he told FoxNews.com. “It still has to be worked out as to what is acceptable. This is new technology, especially for people who don’t tweet and aren’t on Facebook, so there’s always concern for the unknown.”

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