Approaching identity, activity streams from the consumer side

[Steve Ivy]

While washing dishes last night I had some thoughts about OpenID and
ActivityStrea.ms, so I started working on a blog post about it. I'd
like to get some feedback from the community before getting too much
further in. I don't think these are new ideas, but we've been so
focused on the technology and UI around providing feeds that perhaps
there's room for some conversation around the process of consuming
activity streams?

Please let me know what you think - I've got more to write on the
technical side of this, and I'll be adding links, etc, but I'd like
some feedback on the concepts.

Thanks!!

--Steve

--------

I logged into Get Satisfaction earlier today, and something about this
simple act got me thinking. I've got two GS accounts - one using my
Google account, and one using my work account. One of the features of
OpenID is that you can maintain multiple identities (one might say
they tend to proliferate too easily, considering the number of
providers coming online) and use them for various purposes.

There are a myriad of open technologies now growing up around identity
and authorization: OpenID and Attribute Exchange. OAuth. XRDS/Simple.
WebFinger. These technologies (some emerging, some well established)
are focused on solving the problem of sharing and managing my identity
information in the distributed social network.

Increasingly, that identity is tied to a community: the OpenID I use
to login to [new service here] is just as likely to be my TypePad
identity, my Google identity, or my Facebook identity as it is to be
my personal OpenID. I may even decide which login identity to use
based on how the site I'm logging into relates (in my mind, of course)
to one of those *communities*. Most of my non-techy friends and family
primarily use Facebook; many of my co-workers are on TypePad; many of
my other online community contacts can be found on Google.

So tonight I'm thinking about the intersection of identity and activity.

Who we are is defined even more by what we do than by any particular
personal attribute - after all, "Even a child is known by his
actions". It should be no surprise that Activities are becoming as
important as Identity in how we interact with others online. Most
every social networking site now has some sort of activity feed that
shows you what your friends on that service are doing - and vice versa
- the activities *we choose to share* with one another are a powerful
bonding force. Many (most?) of those same sites are offering that
activity information in formats (RSS, Atom, or - even better - the new
ActivityStrea.ms extension to Atom) that can be aggregated by other
sites.

Facebook can import activities from a variety of feeds/sites; Typepad
will automatically import my Twitter status; FriendFeed made an entire
business out of aggregating just about any activity stream you could
find. When I use my community id to login to a site, why shouldn't the
community service query the requesting site for any standard activity
streams and then ask me:

"Hey Steve - as long as you're authenticating with <service> as a
member of this community, would you like to share your activities on
<service> with your friends and family here in the community?" (list
of possible streams)

I'd probably click that button in two shakes.

[ technical discussion to follow ]

--
Steve Ivy
http://redmonk.net // http://diso-project.org
This email is: [ ] bloggable [x] ask first [ ] private

[ronin691]

On Sep 29, 8:20 am, Steve Ivy <steve...@gmail.com> wrote:

> "Hey Steve - as long as you're authenticating with <service> as a
> member of this community, would you like to share your activities on
> <service> with your friends and family here in the community?" (list
> of possible streams)
>
> I'd probably click that button in two shakes.

Sounds cool. Could it also allow for an "affiliate program"?

"Hey Steve - as long as you're authenticating with <service> as a

member of this community, would you like to share your activities with
the Amazon? Anytime one of this community's members clicks, and
purchases, a song, book or DVD you mention in an activity, you'll get
a little store credit..."