Re: Finding user profiles on a Social Net

I think the "self" link relationship works well here, especially with a 
"type" saying what type of data is available.

That can be discovered either in a profile page, a Webfinger account, an 
activitystrea.ms object, or other places that links are discoverable.

-Evan

On 13-06-06 10:22 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
> I was thinking about the issue of finding user profiles on a social 
> net, and it's not always easy to know where a user's data will be 
> located. There seems to be no well known place to get user information 
> from a profile.  Which means it's harder for HTTP based social web 
> users to talk to each other.
>
> One increasingly popular method is to use the /.well-known/ 
> directory.  The disadvantage of this approach is that is it pretty 
> rigid and people say it amounts out of band hard coding.  However one 
> advantage is that it can save a round trip, compared with follow your 
> nose, and it can client implementations more straight forward.
>
> Taking the well known directory a logical pattern might be to register:
> *
> *
> */.well-known/user/bob*
>
> For the FSW?
>
>
> /Would it allow redirects/ -- I would say yes.
>
> /What would it return/ -- I would suggest linked data. Ideally a 
> browser would see html and an ajax request would see JSON, but you 
> could start with just one of the two, say JSON only.
>
>
> Good idea / bad idea / too hard to implement ... thoughts?