As a Social Web architect and an open source advocate I frequently write, think, and promote the notion and ideals of the Open and Social Web. My work in the areas of user-centric control (identity, privacy, data portability, and rights), federated Social Web models, future-of-money projects, and W3C standards groups has shaped my views presented here.

Soon after publishing my 4-part smartup series (almost a year ago), I began to think about key parts of what has become this article. I’ve had bits and pieces of this article jotted down in various places. Over the past three months, the ideas have coalesced into a cohesive framework. With a recent and lengthy process of helping a potential smartup try to find its foundation, I’ve been motivated to assemble, clarify, and share my views on what I call the layers of the smartup stack.

If you’ve carefully read my previous installments in my smartup series you will have discovered–in part–the message that is expressed here. This next installment in the series seeks to clearly present the framework of the smartup stack.

Smartups are Socially Transformative

Smartups look to operate beyond the stale disruptive technology mantra; the smartup vision is not simply a paradigm shift. Instead, smartups are best described as innovating at the intersection of technical, social, and cultural evolution. As such, well thought-out and executed smartups are revolutionary entities. They are socially transformative ecosystems.

The power that a corps of ecosystem partners can bring to your smartup’s success cannot be emphasized enough.

The layers of the smartup stack embrace the uniqueness of each smartup while recognizing the interconnectedness of the greater community. In this regard, smartup’s do not build software. Smartup’s create ecosystems. Like an ecological food web, your smartup can be viewed as an organism that is linked to and interdependent upon other organisms and system services. This mindset requires a broader view of your smartup’s role in society. A smartup’s ultimate goal is to create greater value than is captured.

No matter the grand vision of a given smartup, all smartups share the same DNA at their foundation. They are tech-reliant, Internet-obligate companies. If you need some convincing of this fact, please see my article, Putting the Tech Back into Social Web.

The Layers of the Smartup Stack

Whereas technology is at the center of the smartup stack, you will see in this article that smartups are greater than the sum of their technologies. As we explore each additional layer of the smartup stack, the focus shifts more and more to the outside. Greater emphasis is placed on the social, economic, and cultural frameworks. This will help integrate your vision into the real world. It will help bridge your metaspace creations with their meatspace participants.

Layers can connote horizontal levels upon which other material is placed or stacked. But in the view presented here, layers are rings that surround and bind to any lower and higher concentric-ring partners.

It is practically impossible to singularly architect and build each of the smartup layers without regard to their immediately contiguous layers. However, I will present each layer as if it were a well-defined and self-sufficient entity. The reality is that at all stages of building out your smartup stack, the interconnections to and interdependencies on other layers (inner and outer) must be carefully explored and considered. This is one reason (among many) why your smartup must have in-house technological expertise from the start.

As mentioned above, smartup’s do not build software, they create ecosystems. They recognize that there is great benefit to being linked to and interdependent upon others in a larger system. As many of the system services are outside of a smartup’s immediate control, a smartup must architect its ecosystem to work in symbiotic harmony with the greater Web community.

To that end, a smartup leverages and relies upon open source tools and open Web standards. As we will discuss in the section about the outermost smartup stack layer, smartups also give back to the Open Web movement in order to embrace an ecosystem approach.

The Inner most Layer: the Technology Platform

As mentioned above, technology is at the very core of every Internet-obligate smartup. The center of the smartup stack, then, is the technology platform. There are four pieces that comprise the technology platform. As previous smartup articles discuss two of these pieces in depth, I will not present much additional detail about them.

Each piece of the tech platform layer relies on Open Source tools and standards where ever possible. Although a smartup creates its own technology in aggregate, it leverages code libraries, tools, and standards to help make the process of building out their platform quick and efficient.

At this stage you will be proportioning your smartup’s time between product iteration (which means more coding), marketing your MVP, and customer development. Although you must find the proper balance between these three activities, the primary focus of this process is on building out your smartup’s foundational technology platform.

Here are the four pieces of the tech platform:

1. Schemaless Backend
2. Semantic Web / LOD Stack
3. Responsive Codebase
4. Modern Web Standards

Schemaless Backend

I’ve written an entire smartup article on the virtues of NOSQL versus SQL, so I will not repeat anything here except to say that some smartups may need to use an RDBMS as well for part of their overall data warehousing needs. The main point is that smartups are big-data players and as such they need to utilize the best technology for modeling, capturing, and managing that data. NOSQL databases are, by and large, the preferred choice.

Semantic Web / LOD Stack

I’ve also written an entire smartup article on the Web of Data. Suffice it to say that Semantic Web technologies, which some prefer to refer to as Linked Data technologies, enable the linking of data and allows for the serendipitous discovery of new connections with other datasets.

Smartups understand the value of and participate in the Web of Data. Smartups realize that data is the unit of exchange on the Web, not documents. Instead of Hyperlinks being the engine of exchange, it is Hyperdata. Data is the energy, the food, exchanged between participants in the Social Web. Semantic Web technologies facilitate the flow of information between “habitats”, between communities.

Responsive Codebase

This is the most generic-sounding piece in the tech platform layer. I will not delve too much into this piece of the tech platform layer as it deserves its own full-length article (perhaps the sixth installment in my smartup series).

There is not one preferred or recommended framework, language construct, or codebase that all smartups use. Different smartups use different code-creating tools. They pick those that they are most comfortable with and that serve their particular tech needs. However, there are some clear trends and, therefore, advice that can be offered to each smartup.

The broadest bit of advice is that Internet-coding technologies are evolving to catch up with and meet the needs of a more data-intensive world. Although a smartup CTO should use tools with which he or she feels comfortable, that does not mean that they can be complacent, that they should not spend time exploring and learning some of the newer options.

For instance, a smartup will choose an object-oriented coding style versus a procedural-coding style. But that does not mean that all smartups have to code in PHP, Python, or Ruby. There are some promising, new, convention-breaking language platforms that are the current rage in the Web dev world. One of these is NodeJS—a highly-scalable, high-concurrency, event-driven framework.

Another major smartup trend that epitomizes the Responsive Codebase mantra is moving as much of the processing away from the server side as possible (Web-1.0 and 2.0s thick-server approach). The focus is on creating what are referred to as fat- or thick-client applications. In other words, the browser or mobile device handles considerable more of the processing, relying a lot less on the server.

Another trend is the use of light-weight code libraries. When properly utilized, they allow a smartup to react more quickly and be nimble in their coding practices. As an example, one light-weight code library that my newest smartup uses is JSON-LD. It brilliantly facilitates cross-piece integration and as such can be categorized as falling into both pieces two and three in the tech platform layer.

A final smartup trend is preferred data formats. According to a recent report, 55 percent of all new APIs have support for JSON and a staggering 20 percent of new APIs support only JSON. This demonstrates the quickly-growing trend of utilizing JSON as a preferred data format (see slides 22 & 23). It also indicates that for data interchange, the reliance on XML is fading fast.

Modern Web Standards

Smartups support, adopt, and utilize Web standards. HTML5 and CSS3 are currently among the two most important Web standards. There are of course other standards, whose utility will vary among smartups, but these two should be utilized by all smartups.

The Second Layer: User-control and Economic Engine

The next layer of the smartup stack contains two sublayers that interconnect via their direct connections with the technology platform. Once again, this illustrates the importance of the technology platform as being a fundamental, foundational layer to all smartups.

These two sublayers are:

1. User-centric Rights & Control
2. Future-looking Economic Engine

User-centric Rights & Control

As I have written much about user-centric control over identity, privacy, usage rights, and data portability in the past, I will gloss over most of the details. If you’re interested in learning more about my viewpoints on these topics, simply search my website.

All smartups believe in and understand the importance of returning as much control over data as possible back to the users. They realize that it not only makes sense from the standpoint of being good social stewards, but also it makes good business sense as well.

With support from the smartup’s tech platform, users have significant power over each piece of data that they contribute, that they generate. Further support for users’ rights and control can be provided through novel, user-friendly legal contracts.

Future-looking Economic Engine

I’ve been interested in future-of-money projects and theories for sometime—particularly in how technology, specifically Internet tech, is leading to a revolution in how value is exchanged. This is why I am a charter member of the newly-announced W3C Web Payments Standards Community Group.

I believe that new micropayment frameworks and economic models are essential to not only the healthy growth and long-term viability of a truly Social Web, but also to our greater global society. The future of money and of economic self reliance rests in the emergent properties of the social-driven superorganism. Centrally-controlled currencies will eventually give rise to decentralized currencies and instead of tightly controlled and regulated markets, self-regulation via distributed command and control processes will become the norm.

Smartups are on the bleeding edge of this economic revolution. Smartups thus play an important part in helping to push new payment frameworks and economic models. They are intimately involved in evolving economic models and understanding the need for a universal payment mechanism for the Web—a mechanism that will facilitate the proliferation of alternative currencies, friction-less payments, crowdfunding, and general value exchange.

One payment framework that my smartup will be leveraging is PaySwarm. It is described as, “an open standard that enables web browsers and web devices to perform micropayments and copyright-aware, peer-to-peer digital media distribution.” I believe that PaySwarm can become one of the central pillars to any smartup’s future-looking economic engine.

The Third Layer: the Smartup Social Engine

This layer integrates with the innermost two layers of the smartup stack. The focus is more on the user interface (UI) and the user experience (UX).

When combined with the first two layers, this layer comprises what can best be described as the Smartup’s Social Engine. It is the internal platform that contains any intellectual property (IP). It is the fully-functioning application that provides the smartup’s unique product and service offering.

Although basic UI/UX considerations were made during the initial MVP testing, proving, and refinement phase, it was a Lean UI and Lean UX process. The Social Engine Layer is where a smartup spends considerable time perfecting its full-blown UI and UX. Issues such as tight integration with the the User-centric Rights & Control and Future-looking Economic Engine sublayers are addressed. Issues with proper social interaction flow are addressed.

At this level in the smartup stack, the focus begins to shift more toward the outside, toward the physical usage of the service, and not its technical underpinnings. Toward that end, pathways with which others can interact, integrate, and extend the smartups services are developed and engineered. These become the domain of the next layer.

The Fourth Layer: Outward-facing Connections

A key vision of the smartup model is to encourage and enable outside parties–3rd-party developers and other smartups–to contribute to and expand upon your smartup’s vision. To bring that goal to fruition, a smartup makes anywhere from one to three of the following sublayers available to outside parties. How many sublayers are offered depends on the type of smartup and its overall needs and vision.

The three possible sublayers of the fourth smartup stack layer are:

1. Smartup API Access
2. Smartup Open Source SDK
3. Smartup Standards Group

Smartup API Access

By and large, the vast majority of smartups publish a set of APIs that allow outside parties select access to their datasets. As discussed in the final layer section below, the use of APIs by outside parties can be a major catalyst in a smartup’s growth and success.

Smartup Open Source SDK

The Software Development Kit (SDK) sublayer is more accurately termed an Application Development Kit (ADK) sublayer. The notion behind this sublayer is that there are core codebase modules that may very well be primed for open sourcing. We will see below in the discussion of the final layer of the smartup stack why open sourcing some (or all) of your smartup’s codebase can significantly accelerate the development and evolution of your platform.

Smartup Standards Group

This sublayer is the least-frequently encountered sublayer in the smartup world. The purpose of this sublayer is to standardize key pieces of a smartup’s platform.

Above, in the second layer section, I briefly mentioned PaySwarm. That is a perfect example of a smartup opening up some of its work, exposing their efforts to the open standards process. The newly-announced W3C Web Payments Standards Community Group will focus its efforts around core working technology—mainly PaySwarm.

If your smartup has key technologies that could benefit the greater Social Web by becoming a part of an open standard, then you are encouraged to offer up as much of your technology as possible to make that happen.

The Final Layer: the Smartup Ecosystem

This last layer is perhaps the most difficult one to describe in a few paragraphs. The goal is to freely offer unrelated, 3rd-party smartups and developers tools that they can leverage to help build out, evolve, and expand upon your smartup’s original vision. At the same time, the access that you provide to your smartup’s datasets and technology allows them to create their own paths to success. This is what I term a smartup’s ecosystem.

The sublayer offerings in the fourth layer enable the creation of a motivated, loosely-organized team of volunteer coders that can and will help expand upon and evolve your technology—at least that part of your technology to which you allow 3rd-party access. The power that a corps of ecosystem partners can bring to your smartup’s success cannot be emphasized enough. This is why the ultimate goal of each smartup should be to create more value than is extracted from the ecosystem.

As an example, think of what happened when Automattic–the original makers and copyright holders of WordPress–open sourced the codebase. This led to the eventual, very-large ecosystem of WordPress theme shops, plugin developers, and consultants. It also allowed for Automattic to gain an exceptionally cheap (as in cost) and talented labor force which it continues to use to this day to help it build out the WordPress codebase. That is one of the powers of crowd-sourced software development via open source practices.

Twitter is another great example of the virtues of creating an ecosystem. In its early days, Twitter not only welcomed, but strongly supported and encouraged 3rd-party developers and startups to help expand their ecosystem. They published a rigorous set of APIs that allowed for developers to gain access to many of the datasets Twitter captured. In return, the 3rd-party developers were able to create new features and services that augmented the Twitter experience. This led to a number of successful companies that seemed to pop up over night, swirling around the core of Twitter.

Without these ecosystem partners, Twitter may very well not have succeeded. Unfortunately, as Twitter continues to struggle with figuring out how it can monetize its success, it has cracked down on their ecosystem partners in recent months, making many of them wonder if they can trust Twitter anymore. Twitter’s brilliant ecosystem strategy may be coming to a close.

Facebook was also an early creator of an ecosystem of developers. They offered limited API access, created their Open Graph ontology, and even open sourced a few of their key technologies. However, for the most part, Facebook required (and still does) that the apps of 3rd-party developers live within the siloed confines of the Facebook universe. Facebook is not a proponent of the Open Web, Open Standards, or user-centric control.

Of course, neither Automattic, Twitter, or Facebook are considered smartups. Although they do support–each to differing degrees–some level of open source involvement with their projects, they fail the smartup test with respect to many of the other smartup stack layers detailed above.

Conclusion

You don’t build a startup, you build a company. Whereas the word startup is an enticing concept, it is nothing more than a brand, it connotes nothing more than the early stages of a company. Each stage has its own specific needs and foci. Smartups are no different in this regard.

As mentioned above, many Internet-based startups do not transcend their technology but smartups have a vision beyond their technology. Even so, smartups recognize that–as Internet-obligate entities–they cannot divorce themselves from their technological foundations.

A smartup first builds a strong, foundational layer of technology upon which it then layers on additional functional components. Each of these components–also called sublayers–help push the smartup closer to its vision. To fully actualize its vision a smartup must create the conditions that enable, encourage, and support a system of ecosystem partners. In unison with its ecosystem partners, a smartup works toward providing services that empower users to pursue some of their passions and fulfill some of their goals.

Past Smartup Series Articles

Part 1: Web 3.0: Powering Startups to Become Smartups

Part 2: Web 3.0 Smartups: the Social Web and the Web of Data

Part 3: Web 3.0 Smartups: Moving Beyond the Relational Database

Part 4: Web 3.0 Smartups: the New Web Business Space

</Smartups Series Part 5 of 5>

How to Get Me Involved in Your Smartup

Interested in getting me involved in your smartup? Please see my 7-by-7 rules.

As I began to compose a response to Nova’s query, it soon became clear that I had too much to say for a blog comment and decided that it was more fitting to write an article for my own site and then simply point Nova to it.

The Rights of the Internet and of its Users

If I were to attend the e-G8 Forum, what is the one big question that I think needs to be answered? Simple. Who owns the Internet?

If I were to attend the e-G8 Forum, what big issues would I push? Simple. I would stress two things: Global Internet democracy and Internet user rights.

What do I mean by global Internet democracy?

I’m not talking about a political movement to ensure that all peoples of the world are granted freedoms that those of use who are fortunate to live in real democracies experience—although that is of course vital to our survival as a species. Instead, I’m talking about the Internet being granted its own rights and freedoms—freedoms to grow, to prosper, to evolve unencumbered by corporate or governmental red tape as if it were its own emerging metaphysical entity.

The Internet has become our global data ecosystem. It is an evolutionary force in the speciation of humanities’ communication and computation infrastructure. As a result of the ease with which data of all types flows around the global, and with the increasing connections made to this data on a daily basis, our species is on the verge of seismic and profound changes.

In just a few decades, the Internet has grown like a developing nervous system, transcending national boundaries, shrinking geographic distances, dissolving geopolitical barriers, and binding many of us together into a single, global network. If allowed to continue its course unshackled by shortsighted power players, then it may become humankind’s most powerful, liberating, unifying, and transformational force.

What do I mean by Internet user rights?

With the recent net neutrality setbacks, discussions of the United States creating its own Internet kill switch, and the Commerce Department’s National ID initiative, informed netizens are right to be concerned about the future of their Internet freedoms.

In a free society, we should strive toward letting individuals, not governments or corporations, be in control of their personal data—an issue made painfully clear by the lack of real data portability among the Web-2.0-styled closed social nightclubs. We should advocate for the Internet rights of user-centric identity control, data ownership, and net equality for our data packets. These should be considered sacrosanct rights for all the Earth’s netizens.

There are a few promising projects in the works that address these issues. For example, the Freedom Box Project is working to create small, cheap, open-sourced personal servers that will return “power to the users over their networks and machines, returning the Internet to its intended peer-to-peer architecture”; the Diaspora Project offers users a distributed version of a Facebook-like social network; and the WebID protocol is creating an open distributed identity standard. These projects, and others in this space, need to be nurtured and given the liberty to proceed without regulation.

Collective and Connective Intelligence versus Myopic Dissonance

In my article, The HyperWeb: it’s All About Connections, I make an important point about the dangerous possibility that the Internet’s full potential might be purposely curtailed as a result of the myopic desires of a few power players:

Just like natural speciation, the continued evolution of the HyperWeb is not guaranteed. As with all evolutionary processes, advancements (innovations) may stop at a certain point.

The Web is a democratizing force that can help redistribute wealth and power. That is antithetical to most large companies interests—and a number of countries as well. Apple, Twitter, Facebook–and of course the phone and cable companies–want as much control as possible. They are fighting for control of the Web, not for the health of the Web.

It’s possible that for political, societal, or economic reasons–or some combination thereof–that the HyperWeb’s evolution may be curtailed. For instance, due to myopic business leaders, scared political leaders, or an uneducated, apathetic citizenry, humanity’s journey on the HyperWeb may not progress past Web 2.0 or Web 3.0.

The emergence of a truly Social Web will require not only policies that guarantee and protect the Internet’s freedom to grow, but also an informed netizenry that fights for its rights and freedoms. To date, neither of these prerequisites have been met.

The key message to communicate to the G8 leaders is that the world is struggling to become a global community and that a healthy, unfettered Internet may be our best insurance policy toward bringing that vision to fruition.

It is crucial that governments and corporations establish programs and invest in infrastructure that enable and ensure distributed services from identity, to micropayments, to unfettered mesh networks. It is critical that governments propose policies and enact laws that ensure user-centric ownership and control of personally-created and contributed data.

Let the people’s voices and data be freely heard and transmitted across the Internet. Let no one nation or corporation put up barriers to the Internet’s evolution no matter what the consequences may be to outdated notions of sovereignty.

Who should own the Internet? No corporation, no government, no organization, no individual. Instead, like the Earth, it should own itself.

My Related Articles

1. How the Death of Net Neutrality Effects You
2. Goodbye Google Old Friend: It’s time for the Open-Source Internet
3. Thinking Outside the Privacy Box
4. Regaining Control of Privacy and Identity: It’s up to Each Individual

Whereas Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, and other ventures are social platforms, they are not the Web. These entities are only part of the Web—although it’s looking more and more “like” Facebook wants you to think that the Web equals Facebook.

The Web is currently not social. The social-media-driven Web is the metaspace analogy of meatspace nightclubs.

Each of these internally-focused social networks might have a globally-distributed data center, but all the activity occurs within the walls of their private social clubs. The activity in one social club is predominately isolated from the others. The activity does not freely spread throughout the Web. The conversations do not flow throughout the Web. They flow within each proprietary network with a very limited trickle of “conversation” allowed to the outside Web. Of course, this trickle is allowed out to encourage more people to come in to their closed clubs.

There is a monumental difference between social networking occurring on the Web and the Web being Social. Social creatures frequenting social networks does not make the Web inherently social. Why is this the case?

In my article, A Flock of Twitters: Decentralized Semantic Microblogging, I state:

With their closely-guarded data silos, social networks are not full participants in the Web, they are not participants in the interconnected data ecosystem. So, unlike an ecological web (think of a food web), the Web-based Internet is not as much of an intact web as it is a land of social network islands that punctuate an ocean of truly connected websites.

The Social Web, on the other hand, is a fully functioning and healthy ecosystem were all data are globally connected.

There is no disputing the fact that social is a big part of the current Web. Web 2.0 is the realm of social media, but it is also the web of exclusive, social clubs. Web 2.0 is about companies “doing” social media via cloistered social islands (called “networks”) more than it is about making the Web itself a social space.

The Web is currently not social. It’s the metaspace analogy of meatspace nightclubs. It’s filled with private social silos, which are antithetical to the Web’s vision. Each private social island is an internal network consisting of tightly-controlled infrastructure that offers its own vision of how humans should connect and interact.

Web-2.0-style closed social nightclubs are not the epitome of the Social Web. Their existence is a indication of how much further the Web has to go before it will become a Social space.

Metaville: a Non-social City of Social Stadiums

To better understand some of the points presented above, let’s look at the fictitious city of Metaville. In this analogy, the city of Metaville represents the current state of the not-social Web.

Metaville is a city with millions of residents. From the outside, it might look like a regular, American city. People regularly gather in a number of the city’s stadiums. In those stadiums, they socialize, sharing stories, pictures, minutiae of their daily lives.

The owners of each stadium are furiously growing the size of their stadium to make room for more people to join the conversations occurring inside of their stadium. Membership is often free but the two requirements are that the vast majority of your conversation must remain inside the walled colosseum and that you have little control over what the stadium owners do with your conversations.

There are a few upstart, niche arenas struggling to grab people’s attention, but even these smaller gathering spaces mimic the rules of the big stadiums.

Is the city of Metaville social? Well, there are pockets of social activity spread throughout the city but all of that activity occurs in stadiums with each stadium primarily isolated from the others.

Learn more about the differences between the Social Web Versus Social Networks

It is true that social activity occurs within Metaville. But when people leave one stadium and go to work, to home, or even to a different stadium (some of the residents of Metaville are members of more than one stadium), they leave their friends and conversations behind. Yes, sometimes they will check back in with their friends in a given stadium and sometimes they’ll get a ping from a friend within a stadium, but they don’t take their friends and conversations out of the stadiums. When they join a new stadium, they have to assemble a new set of friends, start a new conversation history.

Conversations do not happen in the streets of Metaville, or at cozy little cafes and diners. Conversations do not happen between a resident currently in his house with another resident currently in her condo. Practically all of the conversations occur within the exclusive domain of the stadiums. Sure, a resident at home can chat with one currently located in a private stadium, but the totality of that conversation is made possible by the propriety infrastructure that each stadium offers its members—and even then the conversation still takes place within the stadium’s system.

So the city of Metaville is actually not social. It is a place that has many stadiums within whose walls friends gather and conversations occur. But when a person leaves the stadium, their friends do not and cannot follow them. When a member leaves a stadium, a security guard inspects their belongings to make sure that very little is removed from the stadium.

In the realworld, in our meatspace, this is not the way life works. Our friends can come with us and even join us outside of the stadiums. Our friends can come over to our house, or we can chat with them in cafes, or on the streets, or in parks. We are not prevented from being social where ever we go.

Metaville is the model of the current Web. It has some very large pockets of social activity but the conversations and friendships do not readily travel outside of the stadiums.

This metaphor could be expanded further. Instead of Metaville being populated with a bunch of closed stadiums, it could be Metastate populated with closed cities whose citizens rarely leave to visit other cities, or Metacountry whose closed states have tight boarder-crossing restrictions, or Metaworld with closed countries tightly controlling and limiting the flow of information from its citizens into neighboring countries.

When you look at life in Metaville, you will see that the current Web is no more social than one stadium full of people, that the cafes and diners of the Web are ghost towns, that the stadiums of Metaville are more like dictatorial countries.

But All is Not Dark in the Streets of Metaville

There are a few glimmers of light shinning through the streets of Metaville, a few efforts that are counter to the Web-2.0-styled stadium construction. These efforts are focused on helping to create a truly Social Web, at allowing conversation to happen in the cafes and diners of Metaville, and allowing users to take their conversations and friends with them no matter to what unchartered locations of the city they may wish to travel.

Companies like Status.net, the startup Diaspora, and the research project SMOB all are diligently working at bringing federated services to the Web. There are also some of us that are working on innovating new, foundational technologies that will allow for distributed social interactions across the Web and offer truly user-centric identity control. For instance, instead of the limitations and non-user-centric aspect of OpenID, there is a group of us working at offering a truly user-centric identity protocol called WebID.

The Not-so Fine Line

You might think there’s a fine line between calling the Web a space filled with private social clubs and a Social space itself. You might think that it is not a big deal to call the current Web social. But for Social Web Architects, such as myself, the differences and distinctions are large, not small.

Social Web Architects are fighting for the rights of individuals to own and control their data, to have powerful yet easy to use identity and privacy tools, to freely and easily carry on conversations throughout the Web—not just within the walled sanctums of a few snooty nightclubs. We are building technologies that will link data and allow for the serendipitous discovery of new connections with other datasets and with fellow human beings—no matter where on the Web those connections and people may lay.

The Social Web is the metaspace actualization of a user-centric controlled, globally-connected conversation space across the Web. In essence, the mission of Social Web Architects is to bring the Web’s vision to fruition.

For a vision of the Web’s evolutionary epochs, and humanity’s race toward a Social Web, see my HyperWeb article.

Fortunately, the Web is constantly evolving. What it is experiencing now are the natural growing pains of an adolescent platform. Many of the current social-media nightclubs will eventually give way to a more open, user-centric ecosystem. I believe that they will have little choice as humanity inexorably races toward a truly Social Web.

Outside Resources

For two additional (one differing) perspectives on this issue, see Dave Winer’s, What I mean by “the open web” and and Stowe Boyd’s, Messiness At Scale.

My Related Articles About the Social Web

1. It’s Time for Blogging to Evolve
2. Flowing Your Identity Through the Social Web
3. My five-part series, Web 3.0: Powering Startups to Become Smartups
4. Apple’s Ping Versus the Social Web
5. How the Death of Net Neutrality Effects You
6. Goodbye Google Old Friend: It’s time for the Open-Source Internet
7. Thinking Outside the Privacy Box
8. Regaining Control of Privacy and Identity: It’s up to Each Individual

There are differing software tools, protocols, and specifications in the Privacy 2.0 and Identity 2.0 realms. There are also differences between how corporations address privacy policy and identity management. But these are just semantically-packaged terms used for the convenience and profit of startups, conference organizers, rights advocates, and the gurus who coined the terms.Identity is not your OpenID, WebID, Facebook, or Twitter account. Those are simply identifiers, of which a user may have many different ones across the Web

The reality is that, when looking at these supposedly disparate issues from the viewpoint of the individual, the differences disappear. And when looking at the topics of privacy and identity, in my opinion, the only viewpoint that matters is that of the individual.

So, privacy management tools and protocols are nothing more than identity management tools and protocols. Why is this the case?

Defining Identity

In David Kirkpatrick’s book, The Facebook Effect, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg states that “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.” What Zuckerberg is actually saying is that having two accounts on Facebook, or any other social network, is a problem. Whereas this can be a real issue, Zuckerberg makes the same mistake that most people make—conflating a user’s account with their identity.

Identity is not a username and password combination. Identity is not your OpenID, WebID, Facebook, or Twitter account. Those are simply identifiers, of which a user may have many different ones across the Web, one for each social network site. In fact, as mentioned above, it is possible that a given individual might have more than one account, more than one identifier, at a given social network. These alternate accounts (referred to as alts for alternate “identities”), are just another aspect of the individual’s overall identity. Alts are not separate identities—no matter how much the owner of an alt identifier tries to make it.

The IdentitySpace is that part of a user’s identity graph that they personally generated. It is the subset of their identity graph that they create, and therefore should own and have sole access to controlling.Now, even if a user has carefully selected to join only those sites that offer the option to register via OpenID Connect, their single OpenID is not their identity. It is just an identifier. So, OpenID Providers are not identity providers, they are identifier providers.

What is identity on the Web, then? Identity is your presence strewn throughout the Web. It is the sum total of all your verified activity on the Web (blog, forum, and social network posts, video, music, and photo uploads, etcetera), your associated interactions with others, and their comments about and interactions with you. That makes up what can best be thought of as your identity graph.

When we talk about privacy control on the Web, then, we are not talking about the ability of users to totally control their identity graph. Obviously, a given user can theoretically control only part of their identity graph. Why is this the case? Because each user can exert only so much control over what someone on the Web thinks and says about them. That part of their identity graph is controlled by others.

So what are we trying to accomplish by allowing users partial access to and control over their identity graph? What kind of privacy, identity controls can reasonably be provided to users?

The IdentitySpace: Privacy and Identity in a Semantic World

From a user’s perspective, identity control on the Web is about offering fine-grained control over the data that they personally generate. It is not about offering tools to control their entire identity graph, to control the subset of their identity graph generated by others.

The IdentitySpace is that part of a user’s identity graph that they personally generated. It is the subset of their identity graph that they create, and therefore should own and have sole access to controlling.

Do users have any options for managing that part of their identity graph that is created and controlled by others? Yes. It is called reputation management and there are some fee-based services that offer users some concrete means with which to do just that. But in a free society whenever two or more people are involved in creating an identity graph, it will never be possible for each individual to be able to control their entire identity graph.

This last issue is where a user’s Web of Trust (WOT) can help. By carefully choosing with whom a user interacts, they can build a network, a web, of trusted individuals. This web of trusted individuals can more easily vouch for the user’s reputation than a more loosely defined network of associates. This Web of Trust can also be used as part of an authorization framework that utilizes FOAF+SSL and WebIDs.

In my perfect Web world, the IdentitySpace would be a global, distributed, decentralized dataspace which any one person, corporation, or government could access. The ACLs of each unique IdentitySpace–the datasets created, owned, and controlled by an individual user–would determine what subset of data a given query would return and how and where that data could be used. Individuals would be free to release more of their data for use, or restrict its consumption.

The key here is that users remain in control of their primary, personal data no matter where their Internet journeys and sojourns may take them. While a user would have little control over what other people may post about them, they would maintain control and ownership over the data that they personally generate. They would control their IdentitySpace.


There are existing ontologies and protocols in the Semantic Web stack that can readily be adopted to offer users the fine-grained identity management that they desire. A wonderful summation of these technologies can be found here.

My Related Articles

1. Flowing Your Identity Through the Social Web
2. Web 3.0: Powering Startups to Become Smartups
3. Repackaging the Promise of the Social Semantic Web
4. Regaining Control of Privacy and Identity: It’s up to Each Individual
5. Privacy in the Facebook Era

See Also:

A thought-provoking presentation on open source, freedom, privacy, and identity. It’s by Eben Moglen, the founder, Director-Counsel, and Chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center.

However, there is one comment that Robert makes at the end of his piece that demonstrates that we in the Social Semantic Web space have a ways to go to get our message across. He states that:

If Facebook wants to be trusted it must make a privacy contract with its users that will have real consequences if Zuckerberg throws it under the bus. I don’t know what that looks like. This is why the alternatives to Facebook just don’t matter either. They all could break their privacy contract with us. Even Google or Microsoft could and we all know it. So, we’re just going to have to live in this new world where privacy is a myth.

As someone who is tapped into the pulse of the InterWebs, Scoble’s statement was somewhat of a shock. How can Robert Scoble not have heard about the promise of distributed social networks powered by the Semantic Web? How can he not understand some of the virtues of a fully-actualized Social Semantic Web?

What he states is true only for Facebook alternatives that offer more of the same—the closed data silos that remain under the control of an entity other than its users. What he fails to mention are those proposals that will put each user back in control of their own identity, privacy, and data. The only way that a privacy contract could be broken in that scenario is if a user breaks it with him or herself.

There are a number of us Semantic Web / Linked Data folks who are working on bringing this ideal to fruition. As an example of one such proposal, see my article, A Flock of Twitters: Decentralized Semantic Microblogging. Another recent proposal that has received significant attention is diaspora.

User-centric, distributed platforms like these will remove the issue of who owns our data and who decides its fate as it will be each individual who controls, who owns their data. These platforms will be the next evolution of the Web. As I conclude in my article, A Flock of Twitters:

It’s time to return to the original concept of the Web-based Internet—an interconnected, decentralized and distributed, open and independent cacophony of individuals who control their own Webspace, operate their own communication channel, and freely communicate with others without having to worry about a central point of failure…The only way [for that to happen] is by leveraging the power of the 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.

Related Articles

The Semantics of the Semantic Web: Don’t Confuse the Concept with the Movement
Thinking Outside the Privacy Box
Regaining Control of Privacy and Identity: It’s up to Each Individual
Privacy in the Facebook Era
Flocking To the Stream

Personal freedoms, control over one’s privacy, and the ability to manage one’s identity on the Web have never been in more jeopardy. With Facebook’s continued war on personal privacy, the day when a user no longer has any rights to control their own data is closer at hand. The question is, How should society respond?

Of course, Facebook–or any other corporation–is free to offer services and manage their user base in anyway that benefits their stakeholders—as long as they do not break the laws under which they are obligated to operate. Individuals have the freedom to decide whether or not they agree with Facebook’s policies, in particular as they pertain to privacy and the use of their personal data. They can choose not to use Facebook, Twitter, or any other Social Web network.

I have no issue with corporations making a profit, I am a businessman myself. My argument is that society should not feel comfortable when a few individuals (or in this case a single person) make broad, sweeping decisions about how an individual’s data is managed.

Society should not be complacent or apathetic when a large corporation like Facebook continues to assail personal privacy on one front while purporting to be the de facto provider of Web-based identity on the other. Free societies should strive toward assisting individuals to gain control over their personal data.

Currently, there are inherent barriers to providing users with an easy-to-use mechanism that grants fine, granular control over personal data on the Internet and Web. Most users have their personal data strewn throughout myriad, disparate data silos, across different closed social networks. This makes it difficult to create tools that offer users an efficient and effective way to manage their data, to manage their on-line identity.

Some of the initiatives that open a user’s data up to other applications and networks–the Open Stack, for instance–begin to address this issue. But, as long as users’ personal data remains effectively siloed in government and corporate databases, this vision will not be obtainable.

As the Web matures and new technologies such as Semantic Web protocols and tools become available, solutions to the proverbial Privacy 2.0 and Identity 2.0 debate are possible. Whether corporate adoption rates of those solutions will be sufficient to make them viable is unclear. This is were the wishes and desires of a free society come into play. If there is a sufficient cry to adopt new identity-management protocols, then perhaps we can effect change.

In my article, “A Flock of Twitters: Decentralized Semantic Microblogging”, I offer one such path to a user-driven, user-centric identity management and privacy solution. It does not rely on corporate adoption but instead puts the power back in the hands of individuals.

But there are other solutions that offer great business opportunities to companies that truly listen to users’ concerns over the usurpation of their personal privacy and identity. In the coming decade, those companies that build new interfaces and provide new services that facilitate user-centric identity and privacy management will find their visions rewarded. There is plenty of room for both open source and proprietary solutions in this space.

Whereas Facebook has shown great acumen at growing their small business into a global behemoth, it has lost sight as to the roots of its success—their users’ trust. If the Web’s citizens take a stand and demand that their personal privacy and identity remain their domain, and not the domain of corporations or governments, then companies like Facebook could very well end up being a relic of a Wild-west Web, a bygone time where anything and everything was acceptable in the name of profit.

It is up to society, to the Web’s citizens, to decide how the issue of privacy and identity will turn out. If only a few voice their opinions, if only a few are cognizant of this crisis and its negative ramifications, then Facebook and other corporations will decide how privacy and identity are managed.

If you think privacy and identity are too important to let the few decide how they are managed, then it’s time for you to act. Write about it on your blog, tweet about it, retweet my article, do whatever it takes to get those who trust you in your various social networks to take note, to listen, to understand, and to ultimately act.

UPDATE: April 20, 2011: With Facebook being credited with facilitating the Middle East uprisings and their desires to move in to China, it appears that they may be bowing to pressure to curb free speech in certain parts of the world.

UPDATE: May 8, 2010: Jeff Jarvis published an interesting article on this topic. See Confusing *a* public with *the* public.

…as the number of streams continue to increase and as the flow rate of each stream picks up, people will grow tired of having to subscribe to, having to join yet-another-stream phenomenon (YASP). Does the Web truly need additional stream providers each with their own data silos? Is there a user-centric solution to this rapidly growing, overflowing-stream issue that puts YASP to rest once and for all?

This article answers these two questions in great detail but the succinct preview version is as follows:

1. The Web does not need additional stream providers each who exert significant control over a vast number of individuals, each who require their users to have a separate new user account (a new digital identity)
2. The Web does not need additional closed data islands (data silos)
3. The Web does need a means with which each individual can create, maintain, and control their own identity, efficiently and effectively manage stream conversations, and therefore not be beholden to a few, large data-silo stream providers
4. The only way to accomplish point three is for the emergence of a distributed, decentralized, Open Source microblogging ecosystem that leverages the power of the Semantic Web

Table of Contents

Since some of the following may be too generic for more advanced readers, I’m providing this Table of Contents to help readers navigate to those parts with which they may have the most interest. The first four sections are a general review of the problem and solution. The rest of the article provides my detailed thoughts on this issue.

• A Web of Damned Streams
• A Flock of Twitters
• Why Decentralized?
• Why Semantic?
• Evolving Nova’s Stream Concept
• A Drop of An Idea
• Channeling Your Stream, Seining Your River
• The MicroBlogOcean
• Social Web Versus Social Network
• Anatomy of a Drop
• Some Technical Thoughts
• Some Early Players in This Space
• Conclusion

Although you should feel free to skip ahead, doing so might result in missing a crucial connection.

A Drop of An Idea

In keeping with the metaphor of a flowing body of water, I envisioned a water-cycle like flow from a single idea to an ocean of open discussion. Therefore, I call my model of a decentralized microblogging ecosystem the Meta-Hydrological Model.

With that concept in mind, you can think of a single idea posted by a user as a drop. Just as a user of Twitter adds to a conversation by posting a tweet, and a user of FriendFeed or Facebook makes what is generically called a micropost, a user in this new conversation ecosystem posts a drop. So a drop is equal to a tweet is equal to a micropost.

Here is a simplified, graphical representation of the Meta-Hydrological Model (also called the Meta-Flow for short).

Click to see full size

The aggregation of all of a given user’s Drops is that user’s Stream. Viewed in this way, if a Stream is what a single user produces, then the River is the confluence of disparate users’ Streams. I’ll describe this in more detail later.

Within each user’s Stream, ideas might coalesce into specific topics. I call these Channels (Stream Channels). Channels are Drops that are grouped under a specific topic to form substream categories.

The final part of the Meta-Hydrological Model is what I call the MicroBlogOcean (MBO). The MBO is the sum total of all microblogging activity in the global conversation ecosystem. It is all the conversations, represented by all the Rivers.

Below is a natural, visual representation of this model as seen from space.

Satellite image of the Amazon River delta from NASA's Landsat GeoCover Program

The MicroBlogOcean

As mentioned above, the totality of all microblogging activity is called the MicroBlogOcean (MBO). In this global conversation ecosystem, Drops are constantly being pushed to and pulled from the MBO cloud.

To provide and manage the myriad MBO services, a new type of SaaS model needs to be created. I call this software-based service a Confluence Hub. A confluence is the point where two or more bodies of water meet. Therefore, a Confluence Hub is the place where Drops sent by various users meet up, are processed, and wait for further action.

Notice User has only subscribed to User 3's Channel. Click for full size

This is how the process works. A user’s client sends a Drop to the closest Confluence Hub where an amalgamator combines them for transmittal to all that user’s subscribers. The Drops are organized by Channels, if any, and cached. If a Confluence Hub (CH) is down, then the Drop is automatically rerouted to the next closest hub.

An aggregate is a collection of items that are gathered together from different sources. The role of the client-side aggregator then, is to poll, to query the primary Confluence Hub Server (CHS) of each user Stream to which a user is subscribed, pulling the resultant dataset into their River on a predefined, regular interval.

Only the content the User wants gets through. Click for full size

So, whereas a user’s Drop is pushed to the closest, active Confluence Hub, the Drops of each user that they follow are pulled into their River from the MBO cloud.

Using our hydrological-based metaphor, Drops are created and stored on each owners’ site. This means any Drops that are de facto responses to someone else’s Drop are contained within disparate sites across the Web. Whereas the user’s client would cache all incoming Drops (in their River) and the application might even have an option to save a discussion to disk, the original Drop remains located in the owner’s Stream.

The Meta-Flow concept is not a perfect analogy to a natural hydrological flow. Whereas Drops do travel to Confluence Hubs, copies of those Drops are pulled into each subscribing-user’s client to form their unique River. The MicroBlogOcean therefore contains multiple references to the same original Drop and the Rivers actually flow out of the MBO rather than into it.

Although I personally believe this hydrological-based metaphor does a sufficient job of breaking down and describing the component parts of the overall decentralized microblogging ecosystem, for purposes of user understandability, the terms may need to be replaced with a more generic, globally-recognized nomenclature. Although, what is more globally recognizable than the water cycle?

Social Web Versus Social Network

When talking about the Semantic Web, it’s important to differentiate between social networks and the Social Web. These terms are not synonyms. In fact, the Social Web is not even the sum of all social networks.

Why is this the case?

Today’s social networks are nothing more than the famous walled gardens of the Web—as was previously discussed.

With their closely-guarded data silos, social networks are not full participants in the Web, they are not participants in the interconnected data ecosystem. So, unlike an ecological web (think of a food web), the Web-based Internet is not as much of an intact web as it is a land of social network islands that punctuate an ocean of truly connected websites.

The Social Web, on the other hand, is a fully functioning and healthy ecosystem were all data are globally connected. In my view, the only way to bring to fruition the promise of the Social Web is to embrace the Semantic Web.

The term Social Semantic Web is often used to differentiate between the current social-network based Web and a truly connected Web of Data. Since I believe that the Social Web requires the Semantic Web, I view the two terms as synonyms.

What might a truly connected Social Web look like?

I use this image as a graphical representation of what an open, fully linked, global Social Web would look like (see the caption for the actual description of the image). Imagine that each end point is a user creating their Drops that freely flow down their Stream, into their River, finally ending up in the MBO cloud. Each node, the point were multiple Streams converge, would be a Confluence Hub Server.

This image is a tracing of all the Internet traffic circa late 2006. It is licensed under a Creative Commons License (by-nc-sa/1.0) and created by http://opte.org/

Where would the big social networks appear on this graph?

Twitter would be a single point in this image with a few tenuous tendrils extending out representing the limited access that Twitter allows to their data silos via their proprietary APIs. There would be no lines representing conversations between users as the totality of conversation all occurs within the walled-off Twitter space.

The same holds true for Facebook, Google Buzz, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, and many of the other social networks. The lines connecting these services would be nothing more than gossamer strands representing the brute-force pushing of limited duplicate content between these data silos.

You might be thinking that conversations regularly occur between users of these platforms. For instance, I can choose to show my latest tweets on Facebook or LinkedIn, I can choose to display my latest Facebook or LinkedIn status updates on Twitter, and so forth. But these are not conversations. They are just snapshots of conversation that are occurring within other data silos.

Anatomy of a Drop

A Drop contains more than just the visible content, more than just the human-readable layer. A Drop is a packet composed of several layers, each providing additional metadata that makes the management and discovery of data more feasible.

Click to see full size

Content Layer: that part of the Drop that is actually intended to be seen by humans; also referred to as the droplet

Metadata Condensate: when the Drop is being assembled, different metadata layers are aggregated together, which are then deposited into a super-metadata layer. This layer encodes all the supporting data that makes extensibility, management, delivery, and discovery of the user’s Drop possible.

The Metadata Condensate layer is composed of five sub layers:

Rich-media Layer: pointers to associated audio, video, or picture files

Semantic Layer: the machine-readable, semantically-marked up metadata

Rights Layer: the granted usage rights for the Drop

Using the proposed Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data as a model, Drops, Channels, and even entire Streams could be marked with usage rights

Security Layer: WebID to tag Drop to specific user; whether Drop is public, private

Stream Management Layer: unique Drop ID; time stamp; GIS metadata (location-based tagging for mobile microblogging); Channel tag for grouping Drop content (allows filtering by other users); whether Drop is to be broadcast to all, a specific user group, or to one specific user; Drop broadcast delay; Drop time decay (a finite lifespan for Drop if desired); client metadata (whether Drop was sent via Web client, desktop client, via a CHS service, etc.)

Semantifying the Drop addressees several key issues that hinder current microblogging platforms. First, by providing a mechanism where machine-readable metadata can be effectively and efficiently associated with Drops, this unlocks each micro data silo, opening it up to outside services to access via query. Second, organizing, grouping, classifying Drops into Channels allows for meaningful filtering of users content. Third, by using a FOAF+SSL backed WebID, privacy and identity management across the MBO becomes possible.

Whereas users can still add tags (via micro and nanoformats) when composing each Drop–and maybe even some basic html markup, like the “a” link tag–the real benefit accrues from the automatic encoding of semantic metadata into the Drop.

Additional ontological encoding could occur on each Drop via a Semantic Interface Options box on the Drop composition panel.

It’s important to note that although each individual user will have the right to determine how much of their microblogging content is shareable across the Web and even with whom it can be shared, in concept, if a user is wishing to participate in the global microblogging community, it is assumed that they will wish others to see what they have to say.

This is just an initial concept of the structure of a Drop. It may be that one or more of the Metadata Condensate layers (or parts of a given layer) should be included under the Semantic Layer.