I can’t really remember the other few sites where I’ve seen this, but Ma.gnolia’s newly added OpenID support is a good example on how not to implement OpenID.

So I go there to register an account, and sure enough, I find an OpenID form.

I click the button, allow Ma.gnolia to use my ID, and end up here:

Umm, yeah… but no. I used my OpenID so I do not have to think about new usernames. I believe that asking me to come up with an unique username completely defies the concept of OpenID. Using OpenID in this form is like having a story line in a porn movie. Sure, you can boast that your movie has a plot, but who cares? It’s still just a smutty flick.

Somehow I think that one of us two isn’t completely understanding the concept of OpenID. Is it me?

(Disclaimer: I am not discussing the overall quality of Ma.gnolia here. I don’t use it. Others do and seem to like it, so I have no opinion in that regard.)

Thank the Gods, the huge pile I’ve found on the sidewalk next to our door was just the remains of a friendly neighbour’s dog! Phew.

I mean, you might expect me to be upset since said friendly neighbour was too fucking lazy to pick up the steaming heap of crap his goddamn (and obviously horse-sized) mongrel left behind, but nooooo… not me.

Because for a moment I was seriously afraid some sort of monstrous mutant mole had broken through the asphalt and was now terrorising my ‘hood, but — phew! — it was just pooch poop.

A felt metric ton, no less.

Like, 10 meters from my door.

Motherfucks.

So Friendfeed opened yesterday. Naturally, I had to sign in to take a look.

When I got to the point where it wanted me to configure the feeds and services to grab data from, it first asked for my Google Reader shared items. Okay, can do. Then it asked for my Tumblr name, and this is where my eyebrows went down.

So Tumblr allows me to bundle many of my “activities” in one place. Flickr, blog posts, Twitter posts, links etc., you name it. It does so by querying your Flickr account, your blog(s), Twitter, your del.icio.us bookmark dump (to name a few) via their RSS feeds. And I believe many people are using this feature just for that. I know I do. So that’s usually the first (or even second) re-posting of original content.

Now lifestream services like Friendfeed come hopping along and are going to add another level of abstraction, in the form of aggregation of already aggregated content, or an RSS feed for the aggregated lifestream, or yet another social network layer, and/or by adding comments on top of that.

How much more meta can we go? This is some Zen shit, man.

I swear, one of these days someone will put yet another layer on this Crazy Content Cake of Doom and a black hole will open in the middle of the Internet and suck out all intelligence, reason and original content. (Yes, like Digg, just a wee bit worse.)

Also, I am well aware that I, too, run my own version of a lifestream service, and that my post might seem hypocritical, but by the Gods, there’s a reason why I try to keep escaloop simple.

Update: Added some clarifications.

“Wir machen auf der Wiesn Mittag, kommst’ mit?”

Warum lass ich mich immer nur wieder breitschlagen? Was für eine Scheisse. Zuerst Ochsenbraterei, weil es am letzten Donnerstag da so leer war. Oh, alles voll, Überraschung. Okay, dann Paulaner! Dort haben wir sofort einen Platz bekommen, mussten uns aber von der Bedienung “massregeln” lassen, weil ich nix trinken wollte, Min nach einer Limo fragte (Antwort: “Nur in der Mass!”) und Julian um einen Spezi bat (“Hört mal, was seid Ihr denn für welche? Des is’n Bierzelt!”).

Die Speisekarte war ein offener “Fuck you, hahahaha”-Brief an den Verbraucherschutz (die meisten “normalen” Gerichte pegeln zwischen 15 und 22€). Wir wollten dann was zu Essen bestellen, aber die Bedienung meinte nur “Nah, erst die Getränke”, kam dann aber nach 30 sek zurück, um uns mitzuteilen, dass wir, wenn wir in der Mittagspause wären, eh nur Hendl essen könnten, weil alles andere länger als 30 min dauert. Da ich aber kein Hendl wollte, schon gar nicht für 9€, bin ich eben gegangen, und hab mir ‘ne Haxnsemmel geholt. Die war auch nicht so toll.

Julian war das alles irgendwie peinlich, und ich hab ihm nahegelegt, sich bei der Bedienung aufrichtig dafür zu entschuldigen, dass wir sie belästigt haben.

Fuckers. Gott, ich hasse diesen ganzen Wiesnbetrieb. Kann das nicht nach Nürnberg ausgelagert werden oder so?

(Disclaimer: The following paragraphs might be pointless and you might end up feeling I have once again stated the obvious. So… you’ve been warned.)

TechCrunch reports on Google apparently working with some unnamed industry bigshots on opening up their social networks services.

Yesterday a select group of fifteen or so industry luminaries attended a highly confidential meeting at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View to discuss the company’s upcoming plans to address the “Facebook issue.” [...] Google’s goal – to fight Facebook by being even more open than the Facebook Platform. If Facebook is 98% open, Google wants to be 100%.

Well, we’ll see how that’ll pan out.

I have been discussing the whole Facebook API thing with friends and co-workers over the past few weeks. You are constantly hearing about how cool it is that “Facebook is open”, that everyone can build FB applications and become wealthy and all that jazz, but most people have already figured something out—it isn’t open. It’s a goddamn closed system.

So let’s assume you want to use their rich API set to build the next killer application and get rich in the process. How’s that going to work? Yes, you can build cool stuff. Definitely. It’s just—how are you going to monetize your work? In the end, in my eyes, there are but two types of applications:

1. Advertisements, i.e. marketing widgets/apps that display links (in different forms, of course), trying to get the user to click through to a non-FB site.
2. For-fun apps like games or graffiti-wall-alikes, which completely run within the boundaries of FB and never leave them.

And that’s the thing. Either you’re building something that is basically an eye-catcher for your already existing site, not unlike a digital carnival barker, and hope to get attention and visitors coming from Facebook to your site. Or you build something far more complex, inside Facebook, without a viable way to make money from it. Which might cool from a hobbyist point of view, but is crap when you build things for a living. What’s built for Facebook stays in Facebook.

Hendrik noted the other day that if there was some sort of “Facebook points” (akin to Xbox Live Arcade points or Linden Dollars), i.e. micropayments, the situation would be far more interesting for professionals. And he’s right. Alas, there’s no such thing. Too bad.

So, to me, it seems that right now everyone developing real applications within Facebook is an unpaid semi-employee of Facebook.com. If you need to make money on the web to put food on your own table, I don’t think is an option. There is no incentive. So far, Facebook is a purely hobbyist platform. End of story.

I might be completely wrong about this, mind you. But I still don’t understand all the applause and excitement about the prospect of writing Facebook applications. Just saying.