OpenID Needs A Friends System

UPDATE: A reader informed me (indirectly) about something called PortableContacts. Commentary at the end. Original post follows…

Personally, I would like to brutally murder the term “Web 2.0″ with katanas and fire. It annoys me. But regardless, I sorta kinda understand that when people say “Web 2.0″ they mean the era of the web where user-generated content (read: comments threads) became an essential part of everything. Also that whole social interaction stuff. But in the back of all these Web 2.0-loving people’s minds is the question, “What is Web 3.0?” Again, I have a profound moral and biological(?) objection to putting a version number after “web,” but I’m going to humor everyone and say what is absolutely essential if we ever want to get started on whatever “Web 3.0″ is: OpenID.

But the problem with OpenID is that it just identifies you, and perhaps passes along some little bits of info like your name and email address. Every one of those individual sites, whether they take OpenID or not, still requires you to maintain friends lists on all of them. And there’s no central hub to see what friends are doing all across the web. FriendFeed does not count, you still have to friend people again there too. If I use my OpenID at a site, and a bunch of my friends have done the same, I don’t want to go around adding them as friends there again. They’re my friends no matter where I go.

Then again, some people you meet on the web might be more “clients” or “contacts” or something than “friends,” per se, so keeping these relationships intact across the web would encourage people to stop “friending” everyone they see, and simply add them to the appropriate group; now you can finally show those photos of you getting drunk and stripping only to people you really trust. So it’s more of a “relationships” system.

Now, all this user-generated social stuff (Web Two Point Freaking Oh) didn’t really take off until the basics of the web, like HTML, were finally made (mostly) compatible with everything. So in order to move on to the next big trend in the web (Web 3.0, if you REALLY must), we have to make social networking work all across the web. So, let’s figure out how this OpenID-based (or complimentary) interpersonal relationships system would work.

First, let’s give it a name. Do you have any suggestions, Helvetica Bold 10 Dark Red?

How about OpenRelationships?

Hmm, uh, no, I’m not sure that’s the best connotation. You know what, just OpenID Friends works. Here’s what it should be…

OpenID (or some other open identification system) providers will not only keep track of stuff like a person’s name, email address, and anything else another website might need, but also Friends data. This would essentially be a small text-based database thing. I’m going to write an example in YAML because YAML is the best thing ever.

OpenID Friends
---
Mom:
    -ID: examplemom28.openidexample.com
    -Groups:
        -Family
Greg:
    -ID: xxmytorturedsoulxx.openwound.emo
    -Groups:
        -Family
        -Best Friends
    -Note |
          Brother.
Tracy:
    -ID: tracy-mclean.internetcompany.biz
    -Groups:
        -Colleagues
        -Best Friends
        -Secret Lovers
    -Note |
          My secretary.

And so on. You can add friends by just clicking an “add” button on a site where you see them, or by typing their OpenID into your provider’s website. Then you give them a nickname, put them into your personal groups, and make notes about them. Perhaps there’d be an additional section at the end with people who have added you to their friends list, but you haven’t added back yet. And then every website which can take your OpenID will interpret your friends list and act accordingly. Either a website would send notifications (like, “you got a comment!”) back to your provider, who would then inform you, or just email you directly, depending on your personal preferences. And that’s it.

That’s it?

Yes, Helvetica Bold 10 Dark Red. That’s it.

So that’s all it’ll take to fix the problems with social networking?

Um, yes.

Why hasn’t this been done yet?

I was just about to ask the same thing.

UPDATE CONT’D: PortableContacts seems to have all the necessary components. It seems more complex than it is, and definitely needs someone to write a human-readable usage guide, but other than that it’s rather nice. Why the hell is it still in draft? Implement this. Now. And put it on Wikipedia, dammit, it practically doesn’t exist without an article there.