Social web
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The Social Web refers to two different, yet related concepts. The first is as a description of web 2.0 technologies that are focused on social interaction and community before anything else. The second is a proposal for a future network similar to the World Wide Web.
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[edit] The social web as a current description
The social web is a term that can be used to describe a subset of interactions that are highly social, conversational and participatory [1].
Examples include Twitter, Facebook, and Jaiku.
The features of social web applications include:
- Expressing and developing identity (especially for youth).
- Relationships
- Trust
- User-driven and generated sites and content
[edit] The Social Web as a future network
The first is an open global distributed data sharing network similar to today's World Wide Web, except instead of linking documents, the Social Web will link people, organizations, and concepts.
The use of the term in this context was introduced in a July 2004 paper called "The Social Web: Building an Open Social Network with XDI" published in the PlaNetwork Journal by members of the OASIS XDI Technical Committee.
The Social Web paper explains how the introduction of a new protocol for distributed mediated data sharing and synchronization, XDI, could enable a new layer of trusted data interchange applications. The key building blocks for this layer are I-names and I-numbers (based on the OASIS XRI specifications), Dataweb pages, and link contracts.
Perhaps the best analogy for the Social Web is the worldwide banking and credit card system. This infrastructure has evolved over centuries to facilitate the global exchange of a very sensitive form of data — money — by establishing a common means of exchange among trusted third party service providers — banks. The Social Web takes the same approach for exchange of private, sensitive information by establishing a common means of exchange among trusted third party service providers — i-brokers.
The Universalization of the Virtual Identity Virtual Rights, a new Legal Entity: the Virtual Identity, and a new Fundamental Right: Not to have or have a Virtual Identity are also closely related to the Social Web.
Earlier uses of the term include:
- In 1998 the term "Social Web" was introduced in an article by Peter Hoschka in a related context to describe the shift from using computers and the web as simple cooperation tools to using the computer as a social medium.[1][2]
- In 1955 the term "Social Web" was introduced by Arthur C. Krey in the essay collection History and the Social Web published by the University of Minnesota press.
