Six Apart, the company behind the popular Movable Type blogging platform recently introduced a free social application for use with that platform. Now, they have posted the “laws” of this application. Those are:
– The biggest online social network is the Internet itself.
– Today’s mainstream social networks are like yesterday’s mainstream media.
– Reveal the community you already have.
– Your social network belongs under your control.
– Your community should start with half a billion members.
– The web is in Motion.
“We believe that the right strategy for connecting your blog or site to the world of social networking is not to select one particular social network to hold all the cards, but to connect to all of the powerful and vibrant social networks across the web,” says Six Apart Chief Evangelist Anil Dash.
We’ve recently seen other big data portability services come to the forefront like Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect. Motion has a similar function, but is open to more services, kind of like Meebo does for instant messaging.
“There’s never been an application like this, which supports the half a billion individual accounts across these services, allowing almost anyone on the web to comment on or favorite your content without having to register to create an account,” says Dash.
I think the first of Six Apart’s laws sums it pretty nicely. The Internet is the biggest social network, and we’re just seeing more companies allow the connection between big parts of it, so it all becomes inevitably more connected altogether. It’s going to be an interesting year for this kind of concept.
