DISQUS

In my opinion, this is pretty shady. However, given the historical trend of platform dominance over applications (microsoft IE, or any other app provided as "default") it isn't too surprising. It is clearly a "next step" in facebook's product, but undoubtedly should make developers weary of the apps they spend time making.

It will also be interesting to see how Apple's platform turns out as there has already been conflict between Amazon's MP3 store and iTunes. I'll be watching closely as I have a vested interest in the outcome.

Solid. Too bad the Digg sample of the overall internet population doesn't include male/tech/politics-centric people (even though I fall in this group).

I understand that it doesn't REQUIRE downloaded software, my argument is that it is such a turn off that you shouldn't promote it at all. In the demo and through out the static front pages, this is the first feature mentioned (download the software and IF your friends have it they can use it too). In my opinion, you'd be much better off syncing up web-based editing of the docs/presentations, but then I'm not too sure what the advantage is over zoho or google. I respect the effort, but I can't see enough of a value proposition for authentication based document sharing. What's to stop someone from copying and pasting the whole document or saving the presentation to their computer and putting it on a flash drive before they are revoked access to that document?

I can't say I see the demand for a consumer oriented svn-like document tracking/sharing system that requires both parties to install software. Very few social/sharing services succeed when they require software. Music/filesharing worked as a software service because I, a user, don't care who else is using the service as long as some anonymous peer has what I'm looking for. For documents especially, I can't see the advantage of using this over Google Documents and just sharing the link because it requires no additional downloads.

Edit: only after 3 minutes in the demo video does it mention that someone doesn't need to have the software to utilize the service - why have it at all?

I find it very interesting that most (if not all) of the advocates for "portability" only stand to benefit from it being a reality. People (mostly bloggers) can throw around the words "friend, data, and portability" in the same sentence together, but the fact of the matter is they really have no muscle in the argument until they build something people actually want to use. I picture the whole debacle like a dad with very small children pulling on his shorts to try to get him to do something. As implied, I very much agree with the view you expressed over the weekend about sites such as facebook being reduced to nothing more than a "well design communication platform" if it does in fact become a reality.

I wasn't aware that anyone used Myspace for anything other than promoting adult webcam sites. That aside, I think this is a rather good move in the long run as it will give more legitimate (defined as ones who are willing to pay for promotion) apps more attention than they otherwise would get. Otherwise, attention of users would directly correlate to how viral an app is (as well as how engaging it is). As we've seen with Facebook, the most "useful" apps rarely gain traction in the face of spammy applications with no other purpose but to make money (and subsequently fame) for the developers.

You're just jealous your URL isn't as tiny :p