PLING involvement in the newly created Social networking XG

Dear all,

As circulated previously over the PLING list, the W3C has launched a Social Web Incubator Group. I was at the W3C Workshop on the Future of Social Networking [http://www.w3.org/2008/09/msnws/] that led to the creation of this group and I want to share some ideas that came with regard to privacy:

-- a P3P profile for social networking sites. P3P's base data scheme is systematically unsuited for capturing the data that is processed on social networks. Besides subsuming lots of interesting and frequently collected data elements under the broad categories (education history, employment history, ...), it adopts the view that one's personal information is only revealed by oneself. But how about socio-topological information? Maybe some of languages we have in our wiki are better suited for capturing such information. Maybe it's a worthwhile endeavour to extend the base data scheme. 

-- best practises on how to communicate privacy practises in social networks [http://esw.w3.org/topic/SocialNetworkingBestPractices#head-8f66821602a1ef7726718d433a44c03210c31890]. I think this will be the point where operator involvement is crucial but also where we can have the highest impact. From my point of view, it will be useless to come up with best practises out of the blue sky. These should be backed up by some empirical research into what users really want without being too utopistic. At the workshop, there was quite some interest in having these best practises. 

-- overview of existing privacy practises on social networking sites: I am currently working on that and will have a follow-up post soon.

I am convinced the PLING group has a good expertise on the privacy theme and could make valuable contributions for the Social Networking XG. Our visibility has been a bit low, though.

Best regards,
Sören

Received on Thursday, 9 April 2009 11:41:34 UTC