Re: State of Social Web Update

Hello All, 

I have a question regarding how applicable "Data Portability" is in a distributed social network, as described on the wiki. From my POV "data portability" is only a concern when considering data found in walled garden social networking sites. I wonder whether anyone else thinks that data portability shouldn't be a consideration, but inherent to the fact that as a user, one can decide whether they store their own data. 

A comment inline : 

On 29 Jun 2010, at 13:50, Christine Perey wrote:

> hi Harry,
> 
> I would like to put into question the second half of the first statement in this section of the final report. In particular my concern is with the reason the document attributes to a "surge" in interest in Social Web (I could even question if there is a surge of interest outside the academic community, but I will abstain from that for the moment).
> 
> The sentence finishes...
> fueled largely by the discontent with existing social networking sites's terms-of-service as regards the privacy of data.


> I believe that this is over emphasizing a hot topic in the blogosphere but if you were to ask a dozen people on the street, you would not find them overly concerned.
> 
> I don't want to cast doubt as to if this is somewhere on the list of reasons. Yes, privacy is on the list. It is ONE of many "constraints" imposed (or "liberties on the part of platform providers) which users (members of communities) could be feeling.

I have a bunch of references in this space, which suggest that more and more young people are becoming more aware of privacy, and the implications of Web2.0 style services on their privacy (follows is some text I wrote recently on this topic)

In January 2010, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg told TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington[1] in a live interview that he thought the concept of privacy no longer applies to the modern day[2]. Since this claim the below studies have attempted to understand people’s feelings towards privacy:

	* Pew Report on Online Reputation
	Pew Research, a US based research firm, recently conducted a report detailing peoples attitudes to privacy, and online reputation. The report 		entitled “Reputa- tion, Management, and Social Media”[3], found that young adults are more likely than older users to try and limit the amount of i		information available about them online. dannah boyd from Microsoft research presents an overview of the re- search on her blog[4].
	
	* Youth do care about privacy 
	A secondly unrelated piece of research under- taken by academics at University of California Berkley, entitled “How 	Different are Young Adults 	from Older Adults When it Comes to Information Privacy At- titudes and Policies?”[5] can be summarised in the below bullet points:

		–	Young Adults vs Adults The study did not find significant differences between young or older adults regarding privacy, everyone seemed 			to be equally con- cerned and acknowledge it as an issue.
		–	Young American were uneducated towards issues relating to privacy 42 per- cent of young Americans answered all of our five online 				privacy questions *incorrectly*. 88 percent answered only two or fewer correctly. The problem is even more pronounced when presented 			with offline privacy issues – post hoc analysis showed that young Americans were more likely to answer no questions correctly than any 			other age group.
		– 	An Aspiration for increased Privacy The report concludes that young-adult Americans have “an aspiration for increased privacy” even 				though they en- joy participating in social online activities. An aspiration for privacy, with a distinct lack of education with regards to the 				issues surrounding it.

[1] Mark Zuckerberg’s Interview: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/3848950
[2] Guardian’s report on the interview http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook- privacy
[3] Pew Report http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Reputation-Management.aspx
[4] dannah boyd’s summary of the Pew Report http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/26/pew- research-confirms-that-youth-care-about-their-reputation.html
[5] Research article detailing the survey http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract id=1589864

> 
> Others, some of which you elude to later in the paragraph, could be found here:
> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/socialweb/wiki/SocialWebFrameworks2#Social_Graph_Management_Today
> 
> Regards,
> 
> -- 
> Christine
> 
> Spime Wrangler
> 
> cperey@perey.com
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> 
> On 6/29/2010 1:26 PM, Harry Halpin wrote:
>> I've added this wiki-page with some notes (lots still to do!) on the
>> state of the social web in 2010.
>> 
>> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/socialweb/wiki/StateOfSocialWeb
>> 
>> Feel free to give it a read, edit, and hack away!
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 

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