social-network-portability

2007-08-02T23:07:23Z

SimonW: /* Social Network Portability FAQ */ - note about an OpenID being a globally unique identifier

<h1> Social Network Portability </h1>
<div style="float:right">__TOC__</div>
One of several [[user-interface]] ideas and suggestions for working with microformats.

=== The Problem ===
Why is it that every single social network community site makes you:
* re-enter all your personal profile info (name, email, birthday, URL etc.)?
* re-add all your friends?

In addition, why do you have to:
* re-turn off notifications?
* re-specify privacy preferences?
* re-block [http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/04/angrynegative_p.html negative people]?

AKA "social network fatigue problem" and "social network update/maintenance problem".

=== The Goals ===
When you join a new site, you should be able to ''import'' or preferably ''subscribe'' to
* your profile information
* your social network
from any existing profile of yours.

In addition it would be nice if preferences around:
* notifications
* privacy
also transferred between profiles.

AKA a social internetwork, a network of social networks.

=== Design Patterns and Recipes ===

The "How To" for social network profile sites that want to solve the above problems and achieve the above goals.

# Publish microformats in your user profiles:
## implement [[hcard|hCard]] on user profile pages. See [[hcard-supporting-profiles]] for sites that have already done this.
## implement [[hcard|hCard]]+[[xfn|XFN]] on the list of friends on your user profile pages. See [[hcard-xfn-supporting-friends-lists]] for sites that already do this. (e.g. [[http://twitter.com/ Twitter]]).
# Subscribe to microformats for your user profiles:
## when signing up a new user:
### let a user fill out and <em title="Auto-sync is more than just one-time import, check it and sync-up once a day.">"auto-sync"</em> from one of their existing [[hcard-supporting-profiles]], their name, their icon etc. [http://microformats.org/blog/2007/06/21/microformatsorg-turns-2/ Satisfaction Inc already supports this.]
### let a user fill out and <em title="Auto-sync is more than just one-time import, check it and sync-up once a day.">"auto-sync"</em> their list of friends from one of their existing [[hcard-xfn-supporting-friends-lists|hCard+XFN supporting friends lists]]. [http://microformats.org/blog/2007/06/21/microformatsorg-turns-2/ Dopplr.com already supports this.]

=== Discussion and suggestions ===
* Jeremy Keith: [http://adactio.com/journal/1209/ Twittering]: <blockquote><p>Here’s what I want: when I go to the latest social networking fadsite, I want it to ask for my URL. Then it can go off and fetch my [[hcard|hCard]] and [[xfn|XFN]] list. A pre-filled form for my details and a pre-filled list of potential contacts can then be presented to me.</p></blockquote>
* Derek Featherstone: [http://www.boxofchocolates.ca/archives/2006/11/21/solving-problems-with-social-networking Solving problems with social networking]
* Jeremy Keith: [http://adactio.com/journal/1212/ More thoughts on portable social networks]
* Glenn Jones: [http://www.glennjones.net/Post/820/Microformatsandportablesocialnetwork.htm Microformats and portable social network]
* Velvetsarah has [http://www.velvet.id.au/2006/11/23/portable-social-networks/ posted a screenshot and brainstorm] about how a site could handle importing XFN enabled contacts.
[http://www.velvet.id.au/2006/11/23/portable-social-networks/ http://www.velvet.id.au/out/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/picture-9.png]
* Jeremiah Owyang: [http://twitter.com/jowyang/statuses/156097392 Twittering]: <blockquote><p>What if we could port all our friends and family from one social network to another. Why do we have to continue to add people = annoying</p></blockquote>
* Brian Oberkirch: [http://urltea.com/10ee Highrise, microformats and portable social networks]
* Kevin Lawver: [http://www.lawver.net/archive/2007/07/17/h12_portable_social_networks_at_mashup_camp.php A Portable Social Network Prototype] - A simple Ruby on Rails app that uses OpenID + XFN to look for users of the site w/ the same homepage as the href value and allows you to add them as contacts.

=== Social Network Portability FAQ ===
*''Doesn't [http://openid.net/ OpenID] address the re-enter all your personal profile info problem?''
** No it does not. OpenID is fundamentally about proving to one site that you own or control another particular URL. Nothing more. All the profile stuff is extra and even then the specific property set is unspecified in OpenID. That's where [[hcard|hCard]] comes in. hCard specifies a vocabulary of personal profile info (name, email, birthday, URL etc.) based on industry standard vCard. And in fact that's all you need to solve the "re-enter all your personal info" problem for public sites - no need to authenticate public URLs via OpenID, just read them and parse their hCard(s).
** What it ''does'' do is provide people with a way to create a globally unique identifier for themselves - which can then be used as a basis for portable social networks, since it provides a way of referring to a single person that makes sense across the whole Web. Of course, people can (and will) create multiple OpenIDs, so a method of enabling people to tie their OpenIDs together (e.g. XFN's rel="me") becomes important.

=== Issues ===
* For import/subscribe to hCard user profiles, "we need a defined heuristic for picking out the page owner from the friends." - Kevin Marks in IRC.
** There are some thoughts and proposed heuristics for this in [[hcard-brainstorming#Representative_hCard_discovery|hCard brainstorming: representative hCard discovery]].[[User:Tantek|Tantek]] 14:35, 31 Jul 2007 (PDT)

== See also ==

* [[user-interface]]
* [[hcard|hCard]]
* [[xfn]]

== Notes ==
[[events/2007-07-28-portable-social-networks-meetup|2007-07-28 Meeting]] between Daniel Burka, [[User:Tantek|Tantek Çelik]], Eran Globen, Brian Oberkirch at Ritual Coffee Roasters, San Francsico, CA.
* discussed portable social networks, problem statement, goals, design patterns, recipes

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social-network-portability