We Are Opening the Social Graph
Your lists of friends and connections on the social websites that you use, sometimes called your social graph, belongs to you. No one company should own who you know and how you know them. OpenID, which was born at Six Apart less than two years ago …
Context & Ripple Effects
Six Apart's declaration rests on credentials it built itself: OpenID, introduced as a way to end multiple usernames and passwords, was created at the company less than two years before this announcement, and its Movable Type platform had already made it a fixture of professional publishing. The post reframes that identity work as something larger — a claim that friend lists belong to users, not to any single network.
First-order effects
- Six Apart converts itself from a blogging-tools vendor into an identity and data-portability advocate, betting its OpenID lineage gives it standing to define what an 'open' social graph means.
- Sites that adopt the framing would let users carry their connection lists elsewhere, directly challenging networks whose value depends on keeping those lists proprietary.
Second-order effects
- Closed-network operators — the space commentators had been watching all summer while waiting on Zuckerberg's next move — face pressure to explain why their graphs are not portable, making openness a competitive talking point rather than a technical nicety.
- OpenID's adoption path runs through usability, and analysts had already flagged its bewildering consumer signup experience in August 2007 — so the initiative's credibility now depends on whether the sign-in flow gets simpler fast.
Third-order effects
- If user-owned connection lists become a norm, the locus of competition shifts from who holds the graph to who offers the best experience on top of a shared one — with identity standards bodies and early movers like Six Apart setting the terms.
- The pattern points toward data portability becoming a regulatory and interoperability question for social platforms generally, since a graph that 'belongs to you' implies obligations no single company controls.
The trend: Social platforms are moving toward user-owned identity and portable connection data, with the company behind OpenID trying to set the openness agenda before the largest networks define it themselves.