Insight Into Google Development, The Future of OpenSocial and the Social Web

October 28, 2008 by Erika · 1 Comment

This is one of the richest interviews we have ever given. If you know the
right questions to ask someone like Kevin Marks, you can come pretty close
to predicting the next couple years of Google’s technology objectives.

Who is Kevin Marks?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Marks

Kevin Marks is a Developer Advocate for Open Social at Google, bringing
external developers and Google engineers together to make a better web.
Over the last 20 years he’s alternated between giant companies and founding
startups - BBC, The UK MultiMedia Corporation, Apple QuickTime, Technorati
and now Google. The common thread has been working out how people,
computers and media can complement each other, and solving the engineering
and social problems where they meet. He is one of the driving forces behind
microformats.org and advisor to the Open Rights group. He wants you to
remember that URLs are people too.

CNET Credits Kevin Marks for the genesis of podcasting as he was a primary
developer of the program that downloads RSS-enclosure audio files and
transfers them to Apples I-tunes music player so they could be synchronized
onto the I-Pod. Later this became know as podcasting. (This is why
Feedburner has two feed options, one for podcasting and one for direct
feeds).

Here are some of the major topics and controversial questions covered in
this interview:

- How many Open Social applications exist at Google?

- Why is the concept of “data portability” a misnomer?

- How does Social Graph work with the publicly declared connections, XHTML
friends networks, XFN markup and FOAF (friend of a friend)?

- Google did not create a unique crawler for XFN and FOAF. (This has been
heavily debated and Kevin puts this controversy to rest).

- What are Google’s plans for XFN and FOAF as it relates to Search Engine
Optimization? (This has been heavily debated and Kevin puts this
controversy to rest).

- What does it mean (exactly) that Googlebot follows XFN and FOAF? (This
has also been heavily debated and Kevin puts this controversy to rest).

- XFN markup and FOAF were originally designed to display the distributed
networks and social relationships to the general public. How should you
prepare for where this is all going?

- What are the security risks and concerns regarding all of these publicly
revealed social networks.

- What is an “activity stream” and how do you avoid mixing your friends
from Church with your friends at the night club?

- Because Googlebot follows publicly declared connections via FOAF and XFN
it should be easy to determine where the “influencers” are located over
massive global networks. Why has Google rethought their strategy on where
true influencers exist as nodes on networks?

- How will the recent “geek disputes” about this issue effect the
proprietary and Google patented “influence rank” concept? (This is also
called “friend rank” or “social value rank” by the Internet Marketing
pundits).

- It it really possible to use “knowledge of influencers” to predictably
place “interruption advertising” inside major networks?

- Can you expect good conversion using this sort of “influence rank” as a
predictor? (Kevin really exposes the issues that Google has been sorting
through in order to adequately answer this question).

- Why is it unwise to view social networks as a channel for Adsense based
on traditional “search” behaviors?

- What is the best way to use social networks from a branding and
advertising?

- What is a “self targeting” ad network when it comes to social networks?

- One of the biggest challenges Google developers have had is trying to
create a data model that maps the natural discernment processes taking
place in the human brain (Cognitive Neuroscience). What do you need to know
about the weaknesses of machine driven neural and social networks?

- When will Friend Connect be released and why is it taking so long?

- What are the Google Friend Connect developers currently focused on in
the lab?

- I-Google (Google personal desktop) now has Canvas mode. How will this
relate to Friend Connect.

Special Thanks to Kevin Marks, Sara Jew-Lim and the Google Open Social
development team.

Special Thanks to Erika Preuss of TechnologyGoddess.com who landed and
coordinated this interview.

I look forward to seeing all of you at the Theme Zoom Protege Event where
Sue, Jon, Erika and I can expand on exactly what all of Kevin’s information
means to your business over the next two years.

At the Theme Zoom Protege conference we might informally chat about the
following topics between other program events, so take the time to listen
to the interview:

- What does this new information about Open Standard means for your
Krakken Keyword Genetic Code?

- How does this information influence the Silo Feed Machine System as
Erika and I work out with Sue Bell how to handle the technology and final
development aspects of the system. It is ironic that one of the final steps
during our blueprinting of the Silo Feed Machine system was how we should
deal with “podcast enclosures” as separate feeds from your primary data
feeds- ironic in that Kevin invented these (sometimes) annoying-but-useful
things.

- Feeds are the Glue that can hold all of your primary and secondary
networks together if you know what you are doing. How can you use them
(combined with your Krakken Genetic Keyword Code) to improve website
conversion?

- How has this information has been simplified by our Silo Feed Machine
system so that you do not need to be a rocket scientist in order to
implement geeky technologies invented by aliens?

Streaming Audio Interview: