Fundamentos Web: Social Network Portability
Tantek Çelik
Gijón, España
2007-10-04
Creative Commons
Public Domain Dedication
Social Network Portability: Problem Statement
- Why does every new "social" site make you:
- re-enter all your personal profile info?
- re-add all your friends?
- re-turn off notifications?
- re-specify privacy preferences?
- re-block negative people?
- re-... etc.
social network fatigue problem
- Brian Oberkirch
What continues to be the problem?
- How many sites do you have a profile / affiliation / icon?
- What happens when you:
- get promoted?
- change companies?
- move to a new city?
- want to change your icon?
- How many sites do you have to update?
- "profile update/maintenance problem"
What else continues to be a problem?
- On how many websites do you have "friends"?
- What happens when you:
- meet someone at a conference
- establish a good friendship
- or never want to see someone again?
- How many friends lists do you have to update?
- "social network update/maintenance problem"
Goal: user control over data
- move or syndicate for example:
- your profile information
- your friends lists and relationships
- your profile equivalency / identity consolidation
- Acknowledge and give users control of their data.
- data portability + URL stability = data syndicatability
Goal: easier for users
- New social networks should let you import/subscribe to:
- your profile information
- your friends list and relationships
- from any existing profile of yours.
- portability enables syndication enables subscription
- = "social internetwork", a network of social networks.
Goal: easier for sites
- Easier for sites = more adoption:
- Accessible to web designers (not just developers)
- Use modern web design practices (e.g. POSH)
- Incremental results for incremental effort
- Modular solutions - building blocks (not "all in one")
- Make it easy for current sites:
- Work with current URLs (don't require new URLs)
- Work with current content (don't require duplication)
- Also helps reliability per the DRY principle
Building Block: profile information
- info:
- name
- photo
- notes
- hyperlink to his blog
- Building block: hCard
- Live demo:
Building Block: profile equivalency
- users hyperlink to their identities
- social network profile(s)
- home page
- blog
- OpenID(s)
- Building block: XFN rel="me"
Building Block: friends list
-
screenshot from Twitter.
icons copyrighted by their owners. - friends lists with:
- hyperlinks to their profiles
- friend icons
- name (in img alt text)
- Building blocks:
Social Network Portability: How-To
- Publish microformats building blocks in user profiles
- hCard on user profile pages
- XFN rel="me" hyperlinks to user blogs/home pages
- hCard+XFN friends lists
- XFN rel="me" to separate friends list pages
- XFN+HTML4 pagination rel="me next", rel="me prev"
- Subscribe to microformats for profiles. Let the user:
- subscribe to their hCard user profile
- subscribe to their hCard+XFN supporting friends lists
- more: microformats.org/wiki/social-network-portability
How To: hCard profiles
How To: XFN rel="me" profile equivalency
-
screenshot from Pownce.
icons copyrighted by their owners. <a rel="me" href="http://flickr.com/people/...">
Flickr Profile</a><a rel="me" href="http://technorati.com/...">
Technorati Profile</a><a rel="me" href="http://pownce.com/t">
Pownce Profile</a><a rel="me" href="http://twitter.com/t">
Twitter Profile</a><a rel="me" href="http://upcoming.yahoo.com/...">
Upcoming Profile</a><a rel="me" href="http://tantek.com/">
tantek.com</a>
- rel="me" link symmetry required for profile equivalency
How To: hCard+XFN friends lists
-
screenshot from Twitter.
icons copyrighted by their owners. <span class="vcard"><a class="url" rel="contact"
href="http://twitter.com/davemc500hats"><img class="fn photo"alt="Dave McClure" src="dmc500.png" /></a></span><span class="vcard"><a class="url" rel="contact"
href="http://twitter.com/factoryjoe"><img class="fn photo"alt="Chris Messina" src="cm.png" /></a></span>... etc.
How To: separate friends page
-
screenshot from Twitter.
icons copyrighted by their owners. <a rel="me" href="/t/friends">View All…</a>
- be sure to link from friends page back to the profile with rel="me"
How To: paginated friends lists
-
screenshot from Twitter. icons copyrighted by their owners.
- "Previous" and "Next" links on a paginated friends list
<a rel="me prev" href="/t/friends?page=6">« Previous</a><a rel="me next" href="/t/friends?page=8">Next »</a>
Social Network Portability publishing support
- What sites and companies support this? Lots!
- Check microformats wiki for latest:
Social Network Portability import support
- Check the microformats wiki for latest support
- Take a look at:
Social Network Portability incentives
- Why would any company support this?
- Some actually "do the right thing"
- Get more users sooner
- Trustworthy data/syndication host
- Open standards network effects
- Outgrow the competition
Social Network Portability open source
- hKit - PHP hCard parser and web service
- Online Identity Consolidator - Python rel="me" web parser/crawler web service.
- Django-PSN (portable social networks) - Python UI for creating "Other Profiles" links
Social Network Portability non-goals, dangers
- Avoid violating user expectations -Adaptive Path
- Users expect signup email address is private
- Auto-consolidating identities based on email bad
- Obvious: don't publish user's email
- Less obvious: don't publish a unique hash either
- As hashes can be used to auto-consolidate
- Do not ask for other username/passwords
- Sites ask for Gmail / Yahoo Mail etc. passwords
- Teaches users very bad habit - phishers use this
- Don't spam users' address books
- Quechup did this recently
Social Network Portability: what next
- Implement today based on public data
- Keep up with updates on wiki:
- microformats.org/wiki/social-network-portability
- Add your site as you implement each aspect.
- Read up on OpenID
- Take a look at OAuth efforts
microformats.org