Social File Sharing

I recently received an email from a well known supplier of enterprise level file sharing systems. In the enterprise, one solution is called "Wide Area File Services." There are other ad hoc solutions. I am not very familiar with the details of these systems, but understand some of the problems they are trying to solve. A corporation wants fast, simple access to files from any location (anywhere their employees are) while ensuring users access a single version of the file. The are also concerned about the cost of bandwidth (which ensuring a single file helps, since users normally waste resources copying and forwarding a file or video by email, since they are really not aware of the consequences and generally do not understand they can just forward a link).

Although these issues are important, I think this perspective misunderstands the most important need today. Corporations are always concerned about meeting requirements, being defensive, controlling their population of employees more than they are about doing something new or finding new and better ways to do something. They are blinded to solving the problems of how to do more things better by the need to clean up the messes their productivity and growth creates. This is why they are so often blindsided by innovation.

What we really need is social file sharing. What good is sharing a file, a digital photo, video or spreadsheet without knowing who it came from and what group it belongs to? It starts with a simple idea:

Every piece of information should be accompanied by the identity of persons or group to which it belongs wherever it goes.

I've given this issue some thought before, but the email reminded me of it. By "belongs" I mean to include both the individual or the group to which the file is associated with in a given social network. For example, we already see an example of social content sharing through sites like Facebook. Of course, YouTube is also a kind of platform for social sharing of content, but there the concept of "file" or a package of information anyone can take with them and carry it onto their PC or laptop or cell phone or save on a CD is missing. And no, YouTube is not good enough. What we need is a way to retain a media object's social connections as it is transferred from system to system. To do otherwise would imprison files on their respective platforms.

When I upload an image to flickr, any social connections formed around the image is contained within the flickr ecosystem. If I download the image and then share it with someone, the social connections are lost. If I share the original image with someone by email, it lacks the social connections the version on flickr acquired. Why can't all these versions of the image somehow carry social connections the same way EXIF data carries meta data about the production and authorship of the image?

Maybe someone is working on this right now, perhaps a modification of existing RSS standards to allow social network information along with an attachment, creating a kind of "podcast" that could bring social data along with the file. Maybe Google's open social network framework is looking at this. But whoever does it, it is important that it gets done.