Social Network Portability: Is the Semantic Web Ready?

Harry Halpin, <H.Halpin a! ed.ac.uk>

RDF

June 2008

Opening the Social Graph

facebook pic

Users are increasingly wanting more and more powerful applications to access their social data - and having that data behind a firewall just won't do in 2008.

Developers and (some) companies are tired of lock-in to just one social network

The DataPortability.org group came to be, major vendors from Google to Facebook to Microsoft all joining a list-serv..

The Data Portability Group

data portability

Has been tremendously successful as a grassroots group attracting interest - over a 1000 subscribes, action groups, and every single major vendor from Google to Facebook has joined.

But seems to be making little technical progress...and only a very few Semantic Web people involved.

A Rose by another Name

roses Data portability is also the idea behind the Semantic Web

Is the Semantic Web a solution in search of a problem?

Maybe that problem is social data portability...

Two Stories

The Social Web requires: data portability
  1. The Authentication Story: How can you use a single login to securely access multiple services, both to download, modify, and upload social data?
  2. The Social Graph Story: How do we actually get the social graph, merge with otherrs from different services, and query graphs.

Privacy

We have nothing to say about privacy on the Semantic Web?

Just publish all your data on the Web will not work for sensitive social data.

Multiple profiles, trust, security, deleting your data on command... semantic web

The Social Web needs solutions now.

The Future

semantic web

The two questions are:

  • What will the technical solutions be? (OpenID, FOAF, SIOC, OAuth...),
  • Can the major vendors commit? (Can W3C help?)
  • The first easy-to-use Semantic Web application that let people manage their social data across these services are going to make a large splash...

    Where's the Semantic Web research and addressing these issues?

    The Future

    semantic web

    The two questions are:

  • What will the technical solutions be? (OpenID, FOAF, SIOC, OAuth...),
  • Can the major vendors commit? (Can W3C help?)
  • The first easy-to-use Semantic Web application that let people manage their social data across these services are going to make a large splash...

    Where's the Semantic Web research and addressing these issues?

    W3C Social Web XG

    w3c

    Allows a much-looser and quicker moving forum than a Working Group for exploratory purposes, allows creation of a Working Group in a year to be sped up!

    Can be a group inside the W3C to get diverse groups interested in this communicating

    Harmonize and stabilize relevant standards and think through privacy and identity issues with the Semantic Web.

    Anyone can join as an Invited Expert and completely open - contact me or Dan Brickley.

    If a W3C Member - interested in joining or co-sponsoring group?

    Starting soon - help us create the charter on a wiki

    Parting Thoughts

    gutenberg

    I pondered all these things, and how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.

    William Morris. A Dream of John Ball