Re: ACTION: Top Social Networking services

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 2:53 PM, Christine Perey<cperey@perey.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On this wiki page [1] I have posted some comments regarding the original
> list proposed on June 1, a few suggestions, and (below my comments) a
> separate list of 30 popular social network services.
>
> Unfortunately, I am a little fuzzy about the long term purpose of this list
> (and the wiki page does not say). As was mentioned during one of the
> conference calls, there are already many lists of social networks.
>
> Was not the original intention of preparing this list to prepare profiles of
> these services?

There are lots of profiles already, I agree. From a standardization
viewpoint, there are also many technologies that these sites can use
for portability, privacy, and context. This is more murky.

What would be more useful than a general purpose profile would be, via
some reasonable metric (number of users etc.), grab a list of the
sites and see which ones  implement which technology, like OpenID,
OAuth, OpenMicroBlogging, OpenSocial, FOAF, etc.

So, for exmaple, the Wikipedia list [1] is a bit deficient in this,
especially towards end. It says things like "Contact Management" and
"Supports the Semantic Web", |Supports DataPortability" Does that mean
uses vCard import/export? PortableContacts import/export? FOAF? I have
no idea. Instead of a vague list, we need to know about precise
technologies.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_social_networking_software

> Is the purpose of this list to make sure that we are looking at how these
> services "work" (operate) today when we propose new architectures?
>
> The purpose/use of the list should, when agreed upon, appear at the top of
> the wiki page.
>
> I invite discussion on the wiki, on our weekly call or on the list.
>
> [1]
> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/socialweb/wiki/TopSocialNetworkingSites
>
> I don't know if this ACTION item is now closed or if it is continuing.
>
>
> Christine
>
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>
> cperey@perey.com
>
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>

Received on Wednesday, 10 June 2009 05:46:21 UTC