technology

The announcement that Facebook apps can now also be deployed on other websites (outside Facebook), has gone largely unnoticed, except for some Dutch press coverage.

Following the introduction last year of the Facebook platform, which precipitated the OpenSocial effort, widening the scope in which Facebook apps can be deployed is potentially a big deal. Deployment of Facebook apps across the web is attractive for both application developers (gain exposure) and for Facebook (drive traffic).

However, Facebook may have passed the peak of it's hype cycle already. The proliferation of apps results in a deluge of spammy messages that seriously annoys the user population.

Exporting this problem to other sites will only hasten the "Through of Disillusionment."

In 2001, Manuel Castells published an instant classic: The Internet Galaxy, Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Re-reading it strikes you full force with the enormity of changes we've seen already, in the few years since 2001.

Here your are, in the age of World of Warcraft and Facebook, reading a text that analyzes role-playing chat environments and The Well as premier instances of social behaviour on the internet. Meet The Flintstones.

However, in other respects, Castells turns out to be a powerful visionary.

With Microsoft joining DataPortability.org, an impressive line-up of major web2.0 sites is now co-operating on establishing common ground for exchanging social data.

This augments Google's launch of OpenSocial, a programming standard for social networking environments, last november.

Microsoft has announced, that the upcoming release of Internet Explorer will render standard-compliant web pages in a non-standard way. Standard-compliant rendering requires a non-standard page tag. Huh?

welcome to the mirror palace!

If you get the feeling something's not quite right here, you're right. The reasoning behind this proposal was quickly shredded to pieces by the development community. You might as wel have a laugh

Welcome on this, my new blog about open technology economics. You can find a detailed writeup of what this is all about in the static introduction page.

Meanwhile, I'm off managing my Technorati Profile. See you!