Re: Question: User Story -- Bootstrapping Facebook

On 10 February 2011 10:58, Nathan <nathan@webr3.org> wrote:
> Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>>
>> This is my question.  Is it a problem that they dont currently use
>> fragments.  And can we easily can get around that?
>
> It's probably the least significant of all the problems tbh, strictly for
> webid all we need to do is prove that somebody had/has write access to the
> "resource", so regardless of whether somebody uses /profile or /profile#me,
> in both cases you'll be looking to see if the persons public key is in
> /profile.

Agree

>
> The /profile#me uri only comes in to play in RDF terms when you're looking
> for information about /profile#me, and since facebook provides next to no
> information about it's users, much less in full RDFa with the subject set,
> this isn't really a factor at the minute.

It does have some info: e.g.

http://graph.facebook.com/100001566244685
http://graph.facebook.com/100001566244685?metadata=1

>
> One could even suggest that if facebook ever did publish full RDFa and
> adopted fragment identifiers for people (they don't currently make
> distinctions between pages and the thing the page is about), that the
> information wouldn't be publicly available anyway, as in you'd have to be
> "signed in" to facebook to see it!
>
> Another potential issue, is that sites like facebook don't have "one uri"
> for each person, each person can have several different ones, basically
> whatever is in the address bar when that person is looking at their own
> profile.

each person ha a unique uid

>
> It could be worse though, look at twitters URIs for users..
> http://twitter.com/#!/webr3 that would lead to a GET on http://twitter.com/
> for every user on twitter.
>
> Back to facebook, there are just so many questions - could a user ever add
> their own "webid information" (public key for instance) to their own profile
> page? publicly? in a machine readable consistent way? would facebook block
> it? would facebook add it? would they require open graph? would they only
> show it to identified / signed in sessions? etc.
>
> Ultimately, there are three questions for facebook here:
>  - would you ever allow users to sign in to facebook using webid(s)?

yes

>  - would you ever allow people to use their facebook uri as a webid?

ye

>  - would you publish users profile data (subject to their privacy settings)
> in a machine readable way, at the profile uri?

maybe

>
> In the meantime though, we can identify what steps facebook would have to
> take to adopt and support WebID fully, without any input from them, and see
> just how easy it would be for them ("not very" would be my opinion on it!).
> Likewise for other sites, is it even possible for them to adopt without
> changing their platform and deployed systems? (Twitters URIs effectively
> means "probably not", likewise facebooks privacy and custom auth* solutions
> + various apis).
>
> However..
>
>> I cant comment on why they built their platform the way they did, what
>> they will roll out in future, or in what time line.
>>
>> But I'm interested in the short medium term, to see how easily
>> compatible WebID is with their EXISTING setup?
>
> If we ask the question "why would somebody want to use their facebook uri as
> a webid?", about the only answer I can come up with is so as to re-use their
> (public) profile information.
>
> One potentially very fast way to do this is to create a quick service which
> dumps out foaf for each user, gives them a uri and let's them get a webid,
> say something like fbusers.foo/webr3 . Although a service which did this and
> imported info from any number of services (google profiles, yahoo profles,
> twitter, facebook, myspace etc) may be more useful for everyone, i dunno
> something like openprofile.com/webr3 would be sweet for this.. (.. ..... ...
> ... .!!)
>
>> Right now everyone is developing for the FB platform due to the
>> network effect.  If we can have a hybrid system that easily manages
>> WebID and Facebook account, I can see people using it (I would at
>> least).
>
> Indeed, we make a hybrid system then :) Unsure if managing a facebook
> account it required, not simply import from the facebook account..?
>
>>> Sorry, there are just too many hypotheticals in your question to make it
>>> possible to give any clear answer. There are many simple solutions to their
>>> problem. They could use redirects for example, if they don't like # urls.
>>>
>>> If they are interested in WebID, perhaps we should invite them directly,
>>> then we could answer their questions with more context....
>>
>> I think they would be good people to talk to, yes, if it's possible to
>> get them more interested.  It's the dominant social eco system on the
>> web.  I know from SWXG telecons that David Recordan has at least heard
>> of WebID, so that's a start...
>
> Fully agree, we have to ask people what their requirements are from webid,
> and what restrictions they'd place on implementing/adopting/supporting
> webid. The people who the SWXG spoke to, like David Recordan, are the key
> people we need to be discussing things with.
>
> Best,
>
> Nathan
>

Received on Thursday, 10 February 2011 12:46:12 UTC