The Evolution
of the Social
Web
Dan Donald // BarCampBrighton3

Our identity
is in splinters
We’ve created profiles for everything we use on
the web with any kind of interaction or setting of
preferences
It’s only natural our data is stored in data silos,
there has been no other way
So until recently we’ve had no cohesive sense of
identity, although many have tried

Social
networking
Actually making relationships between profiles a
feature is what changed the game.
It’s persuaded us to think about who we are on the
web.
As sites become platforms, the field continues to
evolve quickly

Where do we
go from
here?
Open source projects hoping to push things
forward
Along with this comes more understanding of
what it means to have a social web

What am I
talking
about?
There’s a few things we need to consider:
• Identity
• Relationships
• Privacy & security
• People!

Identity
Projects such as OpenID are enabling a
single identity
oAuth is allowing sites to grant access if
authorised from an existing account (no
password anti-pattern here!)

Issues?
• Who do you trust?
• As we use our identity host/providers more,
there’s more value in online identities
• We’ll have a smaller raft or out of date
profiles!
• With value comes issues of security/fraud
• Import/export of identity related data

Who are
you?
Social networking started off with the ‘flat-
friends’ model
- Wow – I have over 1000 friends!
We’re complicate beings with elastic
relationships

Relationships
We gain contacts and the nature of
relationships evolve (or devolve)
The depth of relationships vary over time
Those who we’re in contact with a lot in a
particular medium might not be
representative of the depth or relationship

What are
friends?
In the beginning ‘friends’ was term for a
connection to another profile
Maybe now we realise that this isn’t viable
Our concept of friends on the web has lead to
an upheaval in our understanding of privacy
How can we manage this better?

Personas
We’re a lot of things to a lot of people
Some of us like to be just ‘us’ no matter which
context
In reality, we have different sides of ourselves
that we choose to share in different social
contexts
Maybe this is a way of easily separating
aspects of our lives?

Sharing is
good
What information should we not share?
We should know who we’re sharing this with!
It’s a new kind of understanding

Hitting the
mainstream
For all of these ideas to work, it needs to be
very straightforward
It’s not about technology, although a
technological solution is needed
The web will change

Recap
• Identity – OpenID
• Easier and safer log-ins – oAuth
• We can better represent ourselves online
• We can have more control
• Got to be for the non-techies
What about the developers?

What about
developers?
As things mature, we have the building blocks
to make every site social
Events like dConstruct to show how to do this
Build on top of existing standards & APIs
The web then has a social layer – part of an
open platform to build on

Context &
Community
Two changes across the socialised web
Provide context to our relationships
As sites become more social, aspects of
community are implicit
Community breeds conversation!

Scenario
• When creating a new site, build in methods
for people to use social data (Facebook
Connect / Open Social)
• Allow people to interact with your data; to
discuss and share it, make their mark on it
• Engage with your audience as a community
• Use existing channels to take your content
to the people

The end.
Thanks for listening…
…any ideas or questions?