Re: FSW CG now has 100 members

On 30 June 2013 15:13, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@w3.org> wrote:

> > On 30 June 2013 14:29, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@w3.org> wrote:
> >
> >> > The Federated Social Web Community Group was just joined by the 100th
> >> > member.
> >> >
> >> > Welcome Pili Hu !
> >>
> >> That's great!
> >>
> >> Just to remind people, the W3C is thinking heavily of starting
> >> standardization in this general area, but we need your position papers
> >> ASAP:
> >>
> >> http://www.w3.org/2013/socialweb/
> >>
> >
> > Harry, that looks like a great initiative.  I enjoyed following the
> > workshop in 2009.
> >
> > Could I propose a simple use case:
> >
> > Friending -- ie it should be possible for a user in one social network,
> to
> > add a friend in another.
> >
> > We didnt really solve this yet.  If the workshop can work out use cases
> > such as this, it could be a great building block for further federation.
> >
>
> I would think the Pussubhubbub + ActivityStreams solves that, if by you
> mean "friend" you mean "follow their status updates in another network".
> The problem is more lack of implementation and any security/group
> features. However, there are always alternate ways and a list of use-cases
> would be great. Just send it in!
>

Thanks for the reply.  Yes, I'm glad you pointed this out, while
'friending' is a simple concept the devil is in the detail.

I think we need to break down the use case into separate workflows e.g.

1. Facebook style (bidirectional) : user sends a friend request, request is
either rejected or accepted -- this is what people are most used to today

2. Microblog style (unidirectional) : user follows someone on a network,
this can be reciprocated or not -- google plus also does this

"Activity streams solves that." -- No it doesnt, but it may in future.

The more fundamental part of this is that one system needs to know how a
user is identified on another system.  Easy, right?  No, wrong!  Because
everyone has a different way of identifying users.

Most people tend to work with local identifiers, and that works find if
you're dealing with the same protocol.  But more problematic when trying to
federate (hint: this is why we dont federate! :)).  Some people overload
"email style: identifiers (which is a little better) because users can type
this into a form, but even there there's confusion ie is it user@host or
mailto:user@host or acct:user@host or xmpp:user@host ... all too often when
asked about identity people cannot give an answer, or just come back with
'its complicated'.

Identity is more complicated that it seems, but it need not be.  I think
this is an area where standardization can help.  If each system can say
"Here are the identifiers that we accept, and here are the ones ones we
dont accept", everyone can know who they are able to federate with.
Presently it's hard! :)


>
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Andreas
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>