Re: An Introduction: SOCML

Melvin, Pelle, Julian,

It is nice to meet all of you. I was worried that I had stumbled into a
dead forum -- good to see some life in here! I also want to thank you all
for the feedback and encouragement!

I have to say, I find the concept of Activity Streams to be nice and close
to what I would like to accomplish; however, it seems to lack an emphasis
on portability of user content, and largely seems to be "action related." I
worry that this format, based on the backgrounds of its authors, will be
mainly used as a method for the "big social networks" to aggregate more
user activities outside of their service rather than fostering the growth
of competitive alternatives.

While, I find JSON to be meritorious in its usefulness and conciseness; I
still believe that XML is the most widely understood and supported data
interchange standard. Most shortcomings with XML can also be solved with
simple compression algorithms.

With respect to Melvin's comment about putting too much of an early
emphasis on security and authorization; I think he's right. It's probably
best to keep the standard focused as a data standard and leave the
implementation of security and authentication up to the user's service.

Currently, some of the main design issues I'm struggling with at the moment
are:

   1. Should the standard include "action related" structures that
   incorporate a "push" and "retrieve" methodology for facilitating interop
   between services?
   2. How can we standardized social media objects such as messages, status
   updates, pictures, etc. while maintaining the ability to add additional
   extensibility to these objects?
   3. With respect to service interop: is there a way to uniquely identify
   users while allowing each service to assign its own IDs to these entities?
   4. How can we create a data structure that prevents impersonation and
   spoofing?

Most of you have probably noticed that I have been slow with updating the
Wiki. The main reason for this is because of the aforementioned issues.

Any insight and help would be greatly appreciated. In the meantime, I think
I'll work on some of the low hanging fruit and knock out the XML structures
for some of the more simplistic social media objects.

Chris







On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 4:50 PM, Melvin Carvalho
<melvincarvalho@gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On 11 February 2013 23:38, Pelle Wessman <pelle@kodfabrik.se> wrote:
>
>> 11 feb 2013 kl. 23:03 skrev Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 11 February 2013 19:27, Julian Steinwachs <
>> julian.steinwachs@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>  Hi,
>>>
>>> this protocol agnostic approach sounds very interesting. Because you
>>> said you did not search the web thoroughly: There is a standard called
>>> activitystreams ( http://http://activitystrea.ms/ ) that is designed to
>>> describe social interactions (activities) in atom/xml or json. Beyond the
>>> discovery and requesting stuff socml could be designed as an encryption
>>> wrapper for activitystreams. Or to make it very short
>>> socml=activitystreams+PGP ?
>>>
>>
>> I like AS, but my impression was that original poster asked for something
>> that was patent free.  If AS one day put under the IETF or W3C that would
>> work, but I dont see this happening in the short to medium term.
>>
>>
>> AS is released under the Open Web Foundation which should make it as
>> patent free as anything put under IETF or W3C? See
>> http://activitystrea.ms/licensing/ and http://www.openwebfoundation.org/
>>
>
> I know AS is very popular with some folks on this list so I hope not to
> offend.  It's a system I like, but I like to take a more holistic approach
> and look at the bigger picture, which includes linked data, open graph
> protocol, tent.io and some other promising projects.
>
> IANAL, but it seems to me a grey area.  I have seen lawyers involved in
> the AS mailing list, I have not to date seen that happen in social oriented
> specs elsewhere.
>
> Certainly there has been patent litigation between OWF members in recent
> years, Yahoo vs Facebook springs to mind ... in any case, I'd advise
> looking at all the options out there.  The legal aspect is just one of many.
>
>
>>
>> We have existing standards that are mature, well adopted and approved by
>> standards bodies, namely the linked data family of standards.  I would
>> suggest this is a better match to the requirements listed.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Greetings
>>> Julian
>>>
>>> Am 11.02.2013 02:03, schrieb Christopher A:
>>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>>  First, I want to apologize if I have overstepped boundaries with
>>> respect to editing the groups Wiki page. I also want to apologize if you
>>> receive this message twice. For whatever reason, the Listserv was not
>>> showing that it as having been sent.
>>>
>>>  I recently posted a proposal for a "Federated Social Network Data
>>> Standard" on the groups Wiki. I admit, that I have not searched the
>>> web thoroughly with respect to other initiatives like this; however, given
>>> the superficial research I have done, I have come to the conclusion that
>>> there are no open dialogs currently on this topic.
>>>
>>>  Over the next couple of days I will begin posting proposed
>>> technical specifications for the standard. I would like for everyone to
>>> contribute feedback and make suggestions/modifications.
>>>
>>>  The solution I am proposing is simple: we need to standardize social
>>> media content such that independent developers can create their own
>>> services that can share and aggregate data under a common standard. Much
>>> like the RSS format, this data standard should be open and free, not
>>> encumbered by patents, and be easy to implement while offering these
>>> features:
>>>
>>>    - Complete end-to-end privacy control, with the use
>>>    of asymmetric encryption.
>>>    - A method for authenticating that people "are who they say they
>>>    are."
>>>    - True protocol agnosticism, this data standard should be
>>>    freely interchangeable with the number of web technologies that exist.
>>>    - Content portability, meaning the user can choose to use a number
>>>    of providers to store pictures, comments, events, messages, etc. while
>>>    still having their information available to those with the proper access.
>>>
>>>  Anyway, here is the current link to the proposal:
>>> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/wiki/SOCML_Proposal
>>>
>>>  The SOCML standard overiew:
>>> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/wiki/SOCML_Standard
>>>
>>>  And the Technical Specifications (in progress!):
>>>
>>> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/wiki/SOCML_Technical
>>>
>>>  Please feel free to critique or reprimand.
>>>
>>>  I hope everyone is doing well, and I look forward to working with
>>> everyone.
>>>
>>>  Chris
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 5:08 PM, Christopher A <chris.socml@gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello all,
>>>>
>>>>  First, I want to apologize if I have overstepped boundaries with
>>>> respect to editing the groups Wiki page.
>>>>
>>>>  I recently posted a proposal for a "Federated Social Network Data
>>>> Standard" on the groups Wiki. I admit, that I have not searched the
>>>> web thoroughly with respect to other initiatives like this; however, given
>>>> the superficial research I have done, I have come to the conclusion that
>>>> currently there are no open dialogs around this topic.
>>>>
>>>>  Over the next couple of days I will begin posting proposed
>>>> technical specifications for the standard. I would like for everyone to
>>>> contribute feedback and make suggestions/modifications.
>>>>
>>>>  The solution I am proposing is simple: we need to standardize social
>>>> media content such that independent developers can create their own
>>>> services that can share and aggregate data under a common standard. This
>>>> standard, should be open and free, not encumbered by patents, and be easy
>>>> to implement while offering these features:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    -
>>>>     - Complete end-to-end privacy control, with use
>>>>    of asymmetric encryption.
>>>>    - A method for authenticating that people are who they say they are.
>>>>    - True data agnosticism, meaning the end user can choose to use a
>>>>    number of providers to store pictures, comments, events, messages, etc.
>>>>    while still having their information available to those with the proper
>>>>    access.
>>>>    - The ability to freely host or move their information to different
>>>>    service providers.
>>>>
>>>>  Anyway, here is the current link to the proposal:
>>>> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/wiki/SOCML_Proposal
>>>>
>>>>  The SOCML standard overiew:
>>>> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/wiki/SOCML_Standard
>>>>
>>>>  And the Technical Specifications (in progress!):
>>>> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/wiki/SOCML_Technical
>>>>
>>>>  Please feel free to critique or reprimand.
>>>>
>>>>  I hope everyone is doing well, and I look forward to working with
>>>> everyone.
>>>>
>>>>  Chris
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>