Re: What is a social network?

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 3:53 PM, Christine Perey<cperey@perey.com> wrote:
> I was asking myself, when populating the list of 30 popular community
> services: What defines (for those of us in this W3C XG) a service as being
> unequivocally on the list and why?
>
> Do we all have the same definition of social networking? Judging from the
> services on the first list on this wiki page [1], probably not.
>
> I suggest that we take a stab at a W3C Social Web XG 'accepted' definition
> of scope.

1. A system of 2 or more agents (usually associated with a primary
key) that allows connections to be made between agents.

2. The agents tend to have a primary key, the four biggest, each with
over a billion instances, are: ( phone number, email, URI, Instant
Messager ID ) though some of these tend to be open to attack by
spam/spim.  Perhaps URI is the most spam resilient.

3. Strictly speaking, mathematically, the connections in a "network"
as opposed to a "graph" can have a weighting (but no one seems to use
this)

The phone network and email are good examples of systems where you can
talk to agents in other subsystems, social network websites tend to be
more insular. but seem to be evolving towards a more open model.

>
> Playing the devils' advocate here:
>
> One of the problems with a public/published W3C definition of "social web"
> or "social networking" is that it may need to be examined regularly and
> modified/updated. Where will the boundaries every end?
>
> Social networking ("community") features are beginning to permeate many
> other (previously non social) digital services. There are already and will
> be more social "features" added to everything.
>
> Some examples:
>  + a music (or any entertainment content) service where people rate the
> tunes, movies, etc
>
>  + a weather service in which you can see the weather near your friends,
>
>  + a local nightclub search service on which you see where your friends have
> already congregated,
>
>  + an auction service on which your friends or taste neighbors offer
> opinions/advice before you conclude a purchase
>
> Take this out into the distance and what you have is an infinite list of
> socially-aware services. Everything is social...
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/socialweb/wiki/TopSocialNetworkingSites
>
>
> Christine
>
> Spime Wrangler
>
> cperey@perey.com
>
> mobile (Swiss): +41 79 436 68 69
>
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>
> from anywhere (Skype): Christine_perey
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 9 June 2009 20:51:57 UTC