When a major figure in the pop music world is lost, what role can social media play in bringing us together in celebration of their life and music? Join me, Joseph Smarr, Chris Messina, David Recordon, and special guest, Kevin Marks for an unforgettable episode of The Social Web TV!

In this new episode of The Social Web TV, David Recordon, Joseph Smarr, and I cover the Social Web news of the week and the role of Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook in the Iran Election protests.

Identity is a critical component of the emerging Social Web. Tonight, Facebook opened up what will likely be one of the most important namespaces, allowing their 200+ milion users around the world to choose a username and secure their “vanity URL”.

“The Real McCrea” was there for the countdown, eager to participate in the historic moment — and hellbent on grabbing “johnmccrea” before any of the many others out there with *my* name. Like the lead singer for the band Cake. Or the famous comic book illustrator (who got the domain johnmccrea.com before me).

The team at Facebook had apparently prepared well for the land grab, as they were able to handle the massive spike without any apparent glitches. (Apparently, 500,000 usernames were grabbed in the first 15 minutes.) As for me, I had secured “johnmccrea” within 30 seconds. Major kudos an congrats to the team at Facebook!

Also, a shout out to my partner, Joseph Smarr, who, on the evening of his promotion to CTO of Plaxo, couldn’t help himself from digging into and patching the code for Plaxo’s online identifiers, so that anyone could add their shiny new Facebook vanity URL to the “me on the web” section of their Plaxo public profile. So, when you visit mine, at johnmccrea.myplaxo.com (yes, we’ve had vanity URLs for a while), you’ll now see:

Sweet!

Claim your Facebook username now.

Late last month, Google hosted their annual developer gathering, Google I/O, in San Francisco. Among the many interesting talks was one by Joseph Smarr, Plaxo’s Chief Platform Artchitect, someone involved deeply in all the aspects of the Open Stack. If you want to understand what’s going on in the emerging Social Web, you have to watch his talk, entitled “The Social Web: An Implementer’s Guide.”

Joseph explains how you can now leverage technologies for openness and interoperability to:

– Streamline your sign up flow
– Put an end to “re-friend madness”
– Kill the “password anti-pattern”
– Ride the “virtuous cycle”

His talk includes several demos. Check it out:

Alternatively, you can access the slides over at Joseph’s blog.

To quote Joseph, “The web is now social. And the Social Web is now open.”

On the third morning of the Internet Identity Workshop, Joseph Smarr and I welcomed Facebook’s Luke Shepard on to a special episode of The Social Web TV to discuss the big news of Facebook becoming an OpenID Relying Party.

The Internet Identity Workshop is such a special event. Heavy hitters from Facebook, Google, MySpace, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Plaxo, and more, all rolling up their sleeves on the most interesting problems of the emergent Social Web!

Here, with little commentary, my images from Day 2 of the event…

Luke Shepard of Facebook and George Fletcher of AOL led a multi-faceted session on the issues of being an OpenID Relying Party:

Angus Logan of Microsoft led a great session on a more scalable approach to letting developers register for API keys:

From a highly productive session on Activity Streams:

The afternoon demo session:

Two towering figures in the space: Joseph Smarr of Plaxo and Luke Shepard of Facebook. These guys are pushing the envelope, fighting the good fight, showing what’s possible with OpenID (as a Relying Party), and helping the whole industry work through the issues.

Here’s to another great IIW!

The past six months have flown by, and it is once again time for the semi-annual Internet Identity Workshop (IIW). I’ll post impressions and photos here from time to time throughout the day.

I had the honor of joining David Recordon and Chris Messina for an opening session on main stage, covering OpenID and other technologies of the Social Web. Here’s the presentation we used to structure our chat. It was almost the “Social Web TV” live!

Here’s the view from the stage:

The second session was on Information Cards, led by Reed Drummond:

The last of the morning sessions is Doc Searls on Vendor Relationship Management (VRM), which turns CRM on its head. Great stuff. You can’t and shouldn’t “own your customer”. Doc asks, “What’s another word for owning a human being?”

After lunch, we reconvened, this time in a three ring circle. About to begin the scheduling of the “unconference”.

Here are the key concepts behind the “unconference” model:

Some of the afternoon sessions:

In the thick of it: Sitting with Luke Shepard of Facebook (big news of today, as they became the largest OpenID Relying Party). Folks around us include Angus Logan of Microsoft and Dirk Balfanz and Breno de Medieros from Google.

Sessions in Rooms E, F, and G:

And here’s my post on Day Two.

On this week’ episode of The Social Web TV, Joseph Smarr and I welcomed special guest, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester, for a discussion based his recent report, The Future of the Social Web in Five Eras. I think this is one of our best episodes, putting the Social Web in the context of mainstream adoption and implications for major brands.

This w

Monday evening was historic, and the crew from The Social Web TV were there to participate and to record this epic moment in the evolution of the Internet. This special “highlights” episode is not to be missed. See: Mark Zuckerberg kick it off, with a great explanation of the strategic importance of open and interoperability; Dave Morin explaining the Open Streams API; Chris Messina on the Activity Streams open project that Facebook is contributing to; Joseph Smarr and I launching the Plaxo integration of Facebook Connect with support for the Open Stream API; Luke Shepard and David Recordon on Facebook’s announcement of upcoming support for OpenID, and more!

Wow! I am damn near speechless after an amazing evening at the Facebook “Technology Tasting,” for the launch of the new Open Stream API and the announcement that Facebook will soon be an OpenID Relying Party. Today really marks the birth of the Social Web. If you’d like to know my coherent thoughts, at least on the Plaxo integration I was involved in, see my official post on the Plaxo blog:

At Plaxo, we believe we’re on the cusp of a major transformation – the biggest change to the Internet since the birth of the Web 15 years ago – as the Web goes social, and the Social Web goes open. For that dream to be realized, we need to address the pain currently associated with using multiple social websites. We need true interoperability and true data portability, with users in control.

Today, together with our friends at Facebook, we are excited to deliver on that promise, with the roll out of an integration of Facebook Connect that demonstrates an unprecedented level of interoperability between two social networks (while preserving fine-grained control of privacy).

But here, for posterity, let me share some visual impressions of this historic event, via some photos I snapped from my front row seat at the action.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

Dave Morin, Facebook

Chris Messina, Vidoop, OpenID Foundation, Citizen Space, and DiSo Project

Robert Scoble, blogger, early adopter and Jason Kincaid, TechCrunch
(be sure to check out Jason’s video of the event)

Joseph Smarr, Plaxo, OpenID Foundation, OpenSocial Foundation

Luke Shepard, Facebook and OpenID Foundation

David Recordon, Six Apart and OpenID Foundation