David Recordon commenting on the first Federated Social Web Summit, Standards are best served second:
At times it felt as if people were starting with the technologies and protocols and only then trying to find a product that needs PubSubHubbub enabled JSON hCards federated via OStatus!
The Diaspora talk jumped out to me as they twice said, “we’ve implemented this product feature as a prototype, it works, and now we want to talk about the standard version of it.” That’s the right way to build standards. Have a product problem, solve it, and then iterate with others on an open specification.
I think this is a good rule of thumb to follow. Knowing when to make use of an existing standard/protocol vs. starting over can make all the difference in the world.