== The Social Web ==


Hi, I'm Alexandre Bertails, and I work for the World Wide Web Consortium, also known as W3C. We standardize the technologies for the Web.

I'd like to share with you my understanding about how Social Media work today, and see if we can improve them, and how.

In order to be social,
  I need an identity.
Well, I should say my identities,
  because I have many of them.
Most of my family and friends know me as https://www.facebook.com/bertails.
Others refer to me as https://twitter.com/bertails 
  but more and more people use https://plus.google.com/u/0/113752617540329959979/ .
Fewer people would use my wikipedia identity http://wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bertails
  or the one on Foursquare https://foursquare.com/bertails

Hold on. That is crazy!
Why the hell so many identities?
Can't I use my real identity, http://bertails.org?

Ok, let's say I have an identity that I can share,
  now I need a Social Network to interact with.
Let's see.
I have hundreds of friends on Facebook,
  then hundreds of followers on Twitter,
  then Google Plus, LinkedIn...
I have no way to unify my relationships through all the different Social Networks...
Because for them, people only exist for their own service.

And what about the usage?
According to Wikipedia,
  Social Media are all about sharing content.

If I want to do microblogging,
  I'll go on Twitter.
For my favorite places,
  it will Foursquare.
I'll create and update collaborative content
  on Wikipedia,
share videos
  on Youtube,
pictures
  on Facebook,
and udpate my resume
  on Linkedin.

It's like every Website put me in a silo,
  and I can't escape from them.
  because they own
    my "identity",
    my "social network",
    and my content.

The least we can say is that   -- as a user --   I don't have much control.

So let's see how we can improve that.

Having that kind of Websites is not what we want.
My point is that we can already use the Web ITSELF to leverage social media.
We call it the Social Web.

Actually, I'm sure that you have already identified a pattern
  in your usage of Social Media on the Web,
  but you're maybe not fully aware of it yet.

Have you realized how we speak about things   -- or resources --   on the Web?
We refer to them as HTTP URIs, Uniform Resource Identifier.
That's good, because we are ALREADY able speak about
  Web content like Videos, Pictures or Websites,
  but also people AND things

For example
  the video you are currently watching has its own URI, look at the URL bar in your browser
  also, Wikipedia is a easy way to refer uniquely to abstract concepts
    for example the page for Barack Obama, to speak about Barack Obama as a Person

So remember: ONE concept EQUALS ONE HTTP URI.

But that's not enough,
  we need *just* a bit more
  in order to describe RELATIONSHIPS between THINGS on the Web.
For example:
  Alex    http://bertails.org/alexandre#me
  knows   http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows
  Eve     http://tastet.org/eve#me
  and then, I could say that every person that I know can comment on the Videos I share

That's a new kind of content,   it's DATA.

So we need Data on the Web,
  that can be UNDERSTOOD by both
    Humans
    and Machines,
  through SHARED vocabularies.

And guess what, it's already out there
  it's called Linked Data http://linkeddata.org/
  it's taking off in many areas, but not yet for Social Media,
  mainly because of the lack of tools and infrastructure.

So, how does it work?
I'm glad you ask.

To understand, just think about your Web browser:
  you give it a document as an HTTP URI
  it gets the document
  it displays it so that you can read it,
  and from there, you discover new documents by following the links

That's the Web of Documents as we already know it.

Linked Data   -- and here more specifically the Social Web --   is very similar.

Let's assume that your identity is just an HTTP URI.
And under this URI, instead of a document,
  we put Data that can be processed by a machine.
This time, the machine -- we can call it Linked Data browser --
  will get the data
  process it to extract the interesting bits of information
    you could use that information to authenticate yourself against this identity
    or learn more about your social network
  because here again, you can follow links, and know for example
    about the friends of your friends.

We have already standardized a vocabulary to express these relationships,
  it's called Friend-of-a-Friend,
  or FOAF http://www.foaf-project.org/

FOAF is fully decentralized,
  that means that you can share and link data from different Websites.
You have control over the data that is shared,
  either to other humans,
  or to machines.

To summarize,

  with existing Social Media
  users don't have control over their identity
  neither they have control over their own data
  
  existing Social Media don't use the full potential of the Web

  on the other hand, Linked Data lets you put Data on the Web
  there, people, content and things are identified using HTTP URIs
  Your identity, your social network, and your data
    are all linked together using the FOAF vocabulary.

  You no longer ask for permission to use a particular service,
  instead, *you give* permission to People and Machines
    if they want to access your data,
  you say how, and you say what data.

That's why I think that the Social Web *is* the future Social Media.