Re: What is a social network?

On 10 Jun 2009, at 13:59, Christine Perey wrote:
> Hi Harry, et al.
>
> The purpose of the SWXG:
>
>> help provide guidance for Web services that want to add these
>> types of social features: Show them how to add these features
>> in a open, extensible, privacy-enhanced, accessible,
>> internationalized and Web-based way.
>>
>
> I applaud the use of the term "service" (as opposed to "the site").
>
> But can "The Web" -based service be accessed and used WITHOUT a user  
> being
> required to run a browser?

yes.

reducing the web to what the browser can parse is something natural,  
and it is a point of view that browser developers tend to have. But it  
is limiting and limited and does not tend to get one very far as soon  
as one allows plugins in the browser, which can then make pretty much  
anything possible.

This came up at the TPAC meeting a year ago, and led to a lively  
discussion. Tim Berners Lee came up with a short definition of the web  
that does not mention broswers: "the web is a mapping from URI's onto  
meaning". I explore that in more detail here:

  http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/possible_worlds_and_the_web

> I simply seek to point out that a Web-based service MAY also be  
> accessible via a proprietary client application.

You are quite right. Note that web browsers can be proprietary too.

> Proprietary applications can also use open and standard-compliant  
> protocols
> for specific features.

Indeed Opera is an example of a proprietary yet standard compliant web  
browser.

But one could have open source browsers that were not html browsers at  
all and yet that clearly are web based. See for example my open source  
foaf-browser

   https://sommer.dev.java.net/AddressBook.html

[this has not been worked on for a little while, and contributions are  
welcome]

One could also mention rss readers, that clearly are also web based  
apps, though they tend to have a strongly embedded html component in  
them.

> If we are going to use "social features" in the goal of the SW XG,  
> we need
> to provide some clarity on what these are. Does anyone care to begin  
> the (SW
> XG) list of attributes of "social feature" on a wiki page?

What about the 5 use case I put up http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/socialweb/wiki/UserStories
?

• 1.1 Drag and Drop
• 1.2 Linking to a remote friend
• 1.3 Using a web service should not involve password or account name  
creation
• 1.4 Distributed Group Access Control
• 1.5 Distributed Family Access Control

It may be easier to start with simple use cases we understand and that  
we can all see would be beneficial before trying to define what a  
social feature is.



>
>
> Christine
> Spime Wrangler
>
> cperey@perey.com
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>

Received on Wednesday, 10 June 2009 12:08:42 UTC