Thanks for the comment and in expanding the concept to the mobile platform!

However, Stauts.net might be a good example of what I call a Community Stream Server in my article above. If users could also create their own solo instances of Status.net on their website–an instance that would only serve their posts and would not allow for other user signups–then that might be the start of the system I detail above. Of course, the Semantic Web stack is another, very important piece that needs to be added.

I have my account on Kvitre.no, but can still follow all norwegians who reside on identi.ca, and they can follow me back.

Thanks for the comment. Privacy is finally coming along fine. The final issue now is with WPMU’s big merge with WordPress. WP 3.0 is currently expected to be released sometime between mid April and May 1.

A few days ago, the core WP team announced the freeze of further enhancements in the WP 3.0 codebase. ( http://wpdevel.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/today-is-feature-freeze-noon-eastern-ti/ ). This means that I can now use the WP 3.0 trunk to finishing updating my BP Privacy Component.

The past several months have seen a whirlwind of changes in BP and WP. It has been very difficult to develop a stable privacy plugin. Once one thing was fixed, another got broken by a change in either BP or WP. So, I decided that I had no choice but to wait for the WP 3.0 freeze. Now that that has occurred, I’m putting in the time to upgrade. So, it will be ready when WP 3.0 is officially released.

March 1st has come and gone. Any insights as to the status of BP Privacy?

Thanks for the information and article link. Your article is very interesting! As I mentioned above, I think one of the key pieces of technology that could help bring this vision to fruition is the use of a graph DB for part of the system. This is obviously a place where Neo4j could be leveraged to provide a much-need, user-centric solution.

the http://www.linkedprocess.org project is using XMPP and total decentralization of the data sources to cope with this kind of infrastructure. Some of these thoughts remind me of the scenarios where inidviduals or systems own their data and then provide a processing and access format infrastructure for others, have blogged a bit more on that under http://www.internetdagarna.se/track/media/social-computing-or-let-the-bots-talk

Cheers,

/peter

That’s an interesting idea to create a graphic showing Drops being filtered based on Channels. I’ll see what I can do!

I’ve responded in more detail to both you and Alex below.

Thanks for your comments. I appreciate your input and additional insights.

I can’t believe I failed to see the sioc:follows property in the SIOC specifications. The sioct:Microblog and sioct:MicroblogPost classes are great additions to the Types module.

I do still wonder whether the FOAF specs need to be extended. The foaf:knows property is not sufficient in capturing the nuanced relationships in microblogging networks. Although, using foaf:Person with sioc:follows I guess does properly classify the relationship. I will amend the section above to include this thought.

Regarding the Anatomy of a Drop section, it is a first attempt at creating a sufficiently viable Drop architecture. Although the concept of decentralized semantic microblogging is rather simple, there are numerous details that need to be worked out. One of those is how each Drop (micropost) should be encoded.

I would love to develop this idea into a more concrete, workable platform. If the Social Semantic Web is to be fully realized, I believe something along these lines is vitally needed. I believe your SMOB platform is a fantastic start.

I completely agree with one of your initial comment, re. “But what if a user who was interested in what you had to say could simply subscribe to your microblog, in essence subscribe to you?” and this is actually the reason of the new SMOB architecture, based on decentralised hubs that anyone can install to publish updated and that can be subscribed to. While SMOB can be used as a Twitter client, directly subscribing between hubs creates this new network of distributed hubs, that interact together independently of major microblogging services.

Then, the ocean feature can be provided with services such as Sindice that aggregate all distributed SMOB contributions so that you can built new services on it.

Regarding the models, there’s actually a sioc:follows property in SIOC, that is used for the purpose you describe. We’re also using it in SMOB, so that such links are created each time you follow someone and each time someone is following you – once again these links appear in both hubs so that you control everything in your own microblog client. You may also check some classes of the SIOC Types module, where we introduced sioct:Microblog and sioct:MicroblogPost to represent these messages, and implemented in that way in SMOB.

Talk soon

I like the move from a model that subscribes to users to one that allows you to subscribe to topics from the people you follow. It’d be cool to see the extension of the pictures you have that show those drops being filtered based on the channels identified in the Stream Management Layer.

A short note: sioc has a follows property that links User(Accounts) to other User(Accounts); we also have the MicroblogPost and Microblog classes but they by no means fulfill all the requirements in your Anatomy of a Drop section – normally, we’ve modelled based on existing systems, but I think this could require a new semantic model on which a new decentralised microblogging platform could be built.

Great article – it deserves more coverage!

John.

Thanks for your comment.

The point is that the Web–as a manifestation of human activity, thought, and interaction–does not need a few big players deciding how issues such as data ownership, privacy, identity, and communication should be offered up and controlled. The Web should provide a means, a mechanism, whereby individuals can decide what they want and need, and how best to accomplish that. One way to offer that is by the concept I outline in this article.

As I state in my article, Privacy in the Facebook Era:

There are compelling reasons why opening up personal data to the world is desirable. But it should not be up to governments or corporations to make that choice on behalf of their citizens and users. In a free society, it should be the citizens who drive the push toward more open data, not a few elite power players who force the issue.

I hope you feel better soon. I look forward to your more detailed thoughts!

I hope to comment more when better.

John.