It is the technologists of each new Social Web creation who will decide if open data and user-centric identity control is important to their platform. If they can see some technological benefits to adopting SemWeb protocols and envision solid business benefits in implementing such, then users will be the beneficiaries.

At this current stage in the SemWeb’s evolution, it is imperative that we convince the technologists of the benefits. It is equally important that we learn how to better craft a more general message so that a broader audience will begin to understand why they should care and ask (even demand) for such technologies.

Both of you have (i believe) inadvertently hit on a key point here, all the current social services deal with ‘Users’ and ‘User Accounts’ – whereas we are primarily dealing with a layer above (or below) that, namely the Person.

Each Person has multiple User Accounts – so what we are doing can tie everything together, without interfering with it, people can adopt and still use Facebook, Twitter, everything else, and slowly migrate across as and when suits.

Each Person has 1 or more User Accounts, each User Account has a username and password as we do now. Where the personal identification comes in, is if a Person has FOAF+SSL, then they can link their WebID to their UserAccount, and ‘identify’ themselves rather than ‘logging in’; it’s an optional layer atop what is already on the web.

And slowly but surely, as the benefits of personal identification and open data become apparent, so will the benefits of Privacy, IdentitySpace and decentralisation.

Twitter, Facebook et al still have an important role, and can easily adapt and change with the web. It’s up to them to seek, invent and adopt new business models that match the changing web, and I think we can rest assured that they will – even if they don’t they’ll simply do a myspace whilst yet unknown entities take over the pack.

Best,

Nathan

ps: I might be sounding preachy, apologies!

I must admit I swayed at going in to anything remotely technical, and eventually decided in the wrong direction I fear.

Admirable work, and very glad to see semweb being crafted towards a broader audience.

Keep up the good work, I’ll be subscribed from here on for sure!

Best,

Nathan

Thanks for the comment. You are correct that convincing the closed-data-silo owners to open up their data stores to user-centric control will not be an easy task. In fact, it may not be possible at all. Huge fortunes are at stake for the few who control the majority of user-generated content.

I believe that we are at a juncture where users might have to purposely decide to “write off” large swaths of their identity graph–more specifically their IdentitySpace–and move their activities to new Social Web spaces that allow for user-centric ownership and control. The Facebooks, Twitters, Google Buzz’s of the Web will become relicts of an older, less enlightened InterWeb time. Of course, for this to happen, these new Social Web spaces need to materialize and Web citizens need to realize the virtues of breaking away from the current behemoths.

Thanks for the comment. You’re spot on in your point about SSL and the role it plays in ensuring an additional privacy layer. I thought it best to keep my post to higher-level concepts and not delve into the equally-important technical considerations and benefits.

One of my goals of late is to try and craft my messages to a broader audience, providing those users who wish more details with resource links to more in-depth technical descriptions. As I conclude in my article, Repackaging the Promise of the Social Semantic Web:

The promise of a fully-actualized Social Semantic Web is to firmly place the control of one’s identity and privacy back into the hands of the Web’s citizens. If our work in making that dream come to reality is going to succeed, we must better craft our message, we must better communicate the virtues of a user-centric, user-controlled Social Semantic Web.

I’m trying to do just that by describing SemWeb benefits in a more general context.

The key point being that which you mentioned almost immediately; there is no Privacy without Identity, and unless you manage your own IdentitySpace you have no Privacy.

The only additional point I’d personally like to add to this fine post, is to point out the crucial role which SSL plays in this.

With FOAF+SSL, whenever you are ‘identified’ all communications happen over https, which means all information you send and receive is encrypted across the wire, and further, limited to direct communication between yourself and the other party, who are also identified. This ensures that when you are identified all information sent and received remains private in transit, further ensuring privacy.

There are many other benefits, out of scope for this reply though.

Thanks for this post, really good read!

Nathan