Forget Flock and RockMelt: We Need Social Operating Systems

I saw a post by Benn Parr (Flock Social Browser Declares War on RockMelt with Version 3.5) about a new version of Flock, responding to the threat of RockMelt in the rekindled social browser niche.

It’s like a schoolyard brawl, where two kids wind up throwing punches because they like the same girl, not because they have any good reason to fight. It’s theater, not warfare.

There is something tantalizing about a ‘social browser’, but it’s all an illusion. There is a phantasmagorical attraction to the notion of an experience of browsing the web, reading things, discovering other things, all being informed by social networks, and all screwed into the browser.

But that is exactly what we are doing already. It just isn’t integrated into the browser. And as a result, the browser doesn’t have to know about the specific way that I interact with Twitter, or which social bookmarking tool I use, or which RSS capabilities I want. A social browser will always be some severely constrained subset of the range of social experience available, because developers are constantly dreaming up new apps.

Yes, a social browser might have some open architecture where third party plugins counld extend basic ideas about sociality, but that’s still limiting, too. Easier for a start-up to build something that plays in all browsers.

The future isn’t social browsers, but social operating systems. Once Apple, Google, and Microsoft (and others, like Jolicloud) start to standardize on common elements that should be built into the platforms — like profiles, streams, following, liking, reposting, and so on (as I started to touch on in my Tumblebacks notion) — applications could be much more quickly built, and would interoperate.

Today we take it for granted that an RTF file can be created and edited on a Mac, and emailed to someone without concern for their operating system, or email tools. In a few years, I will read something reposted by a friend in a social app, and I will be able to repost that into another app, and follow the author in a third, all without concern about things working. Contrast that with today’s mess, where reposting something from Twitter into my Tumblr blog takes minutes, not seconds, and whatever comments people make in Disqus on my blog about that post never find their way back to the original author.

This social plumbing requires re-architecting at the foundational levels of computing, not in the browser. The browser is a kludge: a tool developed to allow people to use the web on PCs that were designed without the web in mind. So we shouldn’t pour more attention into the browser. We have to look to the bedrock of our operating environments, and put social first, there.

30 November 2010 9 Permalink

Jolicloud Releases Jolibook

I have been tracking the inventive Jolicloud Operating System — a social Linux — for some time. Now it appears that the company has developed its own netbook. I guess they felt compelled to do it, but I don’t see how they can compete with low cost offerings like Asus, or top quality from Apple.

However, their O/S innovation continues to presage where we will be headed, as Apple and others build social into the O/S:

Joanna Stern, Jolicloud Jolibook review

Ah, the operating system. The Jolicloud! The major differentiator between the Jolibook and the other Windows 7 Starter netbooks out there. Yep, it’s the center of the experience here, and those that have used Jolicloud 1.0 or 1.1 before will be right at home, but if you’re new to the Ubuntu-based, web app-centric operating system there’s quite a bit to explore.

In essence, the OS is the antithesis of Windows or a “desktop” based OS — all the applications you need live on the first tab of the main menu, what the company calls its Dashboard or “App Launcher.” As you can see above, it looks a lot like iOS in the sense that its a grid of applications and you can add as many pages of apps as your heart desires. (The netbook comes with most of the apps you’ll want right off the bat pre-installed, including Gmail, Chromium, Twitter, OpenOffice, Skype, etc. You can install more from the app store, but we will get to that soon.) When you launch a web app or program, it lives on the top of the screen and you can toggle between them up there or by hitting Alt + Tab. Pressing the Jolicloud button on the keyboard always lets you return to the main menu.

The second tab on the main menu is what the company calls its “Social Stream,” and it’s really the feature that differentiates the OS from any of the other custom netbook Linux builds (i.e. Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Meego, Easy Peasy, etc.) out there. When you first get the netbook or use Jolicloud on any other computer, you’re required to sign up for an account using your e-mail address. You are also able to log in using your Facebook username, but that’s only after you’ve had a Jolicloud account setup. The reasoning behind all this is two-fold. Firstly, it lets Jolicloud store information about “your Jolicloud” — what apps you have, your settings, etc. — on its servers so you can log into the OS on any computer. They don’t call it the “Anywhere OS” for nothing! Secondly, it lets you connect with friends that also may be Joliclouders. Once you “follow” or friend those individuals, the Social Stream pulls in information about them — what apps they like or they’ve downloaded, etc. You can follow them and they can follow you back. You see, it’s a social OS — not just an OS built around social networks.

This is what Apple should build into Lion.

related articles

• Jolicloud Jolibook review (engadget.com)
• Jolibook - Jolicloud’s very own netbook (omgubuntu.co.uk)
• Jolicloud Jolibook netbook shipping this month (geek.com)
• Jolicloud’s Jolibook Netbook Hitting Stores (linuxjournal.com)

27 November 2010 4 Permalink