Social Networks have been a world-wide phenomenon and their proliferation poses a pressing interoperability and usability challenge to both web users and service providers. Web users have different social networks accounts and utilise them in different ways depending on the context. For example, more friendly chat on FaceBook, more professional on LinkedIn, and a bit daring interaction on Hi5. Maintaining these multiple online profiles is cumbersome and time consuming and locks in the web user to a service provider. Also, sharing information and user-generated content is particularly challenging due to the obscure nature of privacy and rights management on social networks and the lack of awareness and transparency of such policies. The W3C Social Web Incubator Group (XG) has been investigating these challenges with the purpose to define a number of new standards that can address the needs of the social web users and balance the needs from the servicer providers. This talk will look at the social profile portability needs and the policy (privacy and rights) directions needed to break down the “walled gardens” of social networks. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/)

1. October 6 - 9 2009
Sydney, Australia
Opening up Social Networks:
Breaking down the Walled-
Gardens
Dr Renato Iannella
Principal Scientist
renato@nicta.com.au
@riannella

2. Forrester - Future of the Social Web
Era of Social Relationships • Community context:
affiliation with those who
share similar interests
Era of Social Functionality • Location-based context:
mobile or consumer-
specified location and
Era of Social Colonization time.
• Social context: influence
from trusted peers
Era of Social Context • Behavioral context:
consumer actions on the
Web or network
Era of Social Commerce • Preferences context:
what consumers say they
want

3. W3C Social Web
Incubator Group

4. W3C Social Web
W3C Social Web Incubator Group
• http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/socialweb/
• March 2009 - March 2010
Deliverables
• Requirements and Use Case
• SNS Platform Functionality
• Technical + Final Report
W3C Policy Languages Interest Group
• http://www.w3.org/Policy/pling

5. W3C Social Web
Use Case help to drive Task Forces
• Privacy
• Portability Architecture
• Context

6. Architecture
Distributed & Portability Focus
Profile Relationship Search
Services Services Services
Authorisation Authentication Security
Activity User Generated Location-Based
Streams Content Services
Messaging Communications

7. Architecture
Technology Roadmap...
• OpenSocial
• XMPP
• GoogleWave
• FOAF
• Atom/RSS
• vCard
• Semantic Web (RDF, OWL, RDFa)
• SKOS

8. Policy Commons

9. [ Real ] Use Cases

10. Chewy Wong and Virgin Mobile

11. E-Society Issues

12. Facebook & Media

13. Driving Change

14. Challenges
Scalability + Walled Gardens
Illustration by David Simonds <http://www.economist.com/business/
displaystory.cfm?story_id=10880936>
= “Profile LockDown”

15. Challenges
Policy Expectations

16. Profile Aggregators
Home For Users For Developers Login Register
Cliqset for Developers
Cliqset is an open platform for creating and exchanging social information. As a secure repository for
social data, Cliqset gives developers the tools to easily create, retrieve and manipulate social information
across applications and services on behalf of their users.
Unlike other social APIs, Cliqset isn't interested in
competing with you for user attention. We provide you
with complete user-authorized control to not only read but
also create content and manipulate social identity
information. Cliqset is designed to create open interaction
between the users' social information and the developer
application. This allows you to create software taps into
the existing social information created and refined across
all Cliqset-enabled applications. We've built the back-end,
you build the front-end.
As a developer you interact with Cliqset through the most
robust set of RESTful social APIs currently available.
Through these APIs you have the ability to search for,
create, retrieve and manipulate all aspects of a social
identity, including profile and contact details, activities, 3rd
party services, relationships and messaging with many
more to come.
At its heart, Cliqset is very much a user-centric system
based on the idea that the user owns their information, not the service. Subsequently, any and all access
to social resources requires user authorization and Cliqset supports a number of authorization
technologies including OAuth, Basic and user pre-shared keys.
Once you're up and running, Cliqset then helps you to promote your service by broadcasting events and
changes triggered by your users across their social graph, keeping their friends in the loop on what
they're doing and driving traffic directly back to your site.
Let's work together to build the next generation of the open web. Let's break down the walled gardens
around social identity and build something better.

17. Profiles

18. Profiles Utopia
Researcher Animal
Freedom
Citizen
Personal Social
Mi5 Secret Agent

19. Profile Profile Profiles!

20. Sharing the Profile Pie
Family
Personal
Friends
Social
Citizen
Work

21. Profiles Meets
Policies

22. Qld Social Networks

23. Profiles and Policies
2.3 By submitting any information, concepts or other materials, including but not limited to images,
Keywords Advanced Sign In
videos, stories, recordings and/or comments (collectively, the “User Content”) whilst visiting the Share
Terms of Use Latest stories
My Story Website, you Story’ website
‘Share My automatically grant to the State, its affiliates and sub-licensees a royalty-free, A Saturday night. 6
perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, sub-licensable, transferable right and licence to do any act
Terms of Use
young people in a car –...
Respect
comprised in the copyright or other intellectual property rights in the User Content and to use the User
You agree that access to and use of this website shall be strictly in accordance with, and governed by these
legally binding Terms of Use in their unaltered form. If you do not accept these Terms of Use you must exit Enough!
Content in any manner and in all media (whether now known or later devised) throughout the world in
this website immediately. Use of this website, or access to any of the content on this website constitutes
your acceptance of these Terms of Use. It was real, not like in the
movies
perpetuity, without compensation, restriction on use, attribution or liability. This includes the right to edit,
The expression these “Terms of Use” includes:
the terms and conditions set out below;
Wheelchair bound
adapt, modify, change, add to, detract from, reproduce, distribute, communicate to the public (online, by
the Share My Story Website Community Guidelines ; I WAS A DRINK DRIVER
email, or otherwise), publish, prepare derivative works of, display and perform the User Content in
the Share My Story Website Privacy Policy ; (part 3) my court case
the Share My Story Website Copyright page ;
Hurrying and got
public, to use the User Content for any purpose, including but not limited to commercial purposes, and
the Share My Story Website Disclaimer page
In these Terms of Use:
somewhere to go!
to authorise any other person to do any of those things.
I miss my son Jeff two
years later
the expression “the State” means the State of Queensland (including Queensland Transport);
the expression “Queensland Transport” means the Queensland Department of Transport;
the expression “Kaltura” means Kaltura, Inc, the State’s subcontractor for video services; and RSS Twitter
headings are for convenience only, and do not affect the interpretation of these Terms of Use.
2.7 If you have any moral rights (or similar rights) in respect of User Content that you submit, you
1 Agreement Show you care
consent to the State and all other persons using the User Content from time to time in any way it wishes
1.1 The "Share My Story Website" [www.sharemystory.qld.gov.au] is owned by the State of
or they wish (even if that use is contrary to those rights), including making material alterations thereto
Queensland and operated by Queensland Transport.
6,264
1.2 These Terms of Use may be revised by Queensland Transport from time to time. Please
and exploiting them with or without attribution. Immediately on such moral rights beginning to exist, you
refer to clause 5 below.
Click here if you support
waive those rights in perpetuity, to the maximum extent permitted by law. If any other person has moral
1.3 You are not granted any rights in or to the Share My Story Website other than the
limited right to use the Share My Story Website according to these Terms of Use, and any this website and the belief
that there is power in
Terms of Use that Queensland Transport may adopt from time to time.
rights in respect of User Content that you submit, you must ensure that they agree to the above (in
2 Your use of the Share My Story Website
sharing.
respect of their moral rights) before you submit the User Content.
2.1 You agree that you will use the Share My Story Website in accordance with these Terms
of Use and that you will not use the Share My Story Website for any unlawful purpose.
User Account Information
2.2 You may be required to create an account (“User Account”) before you can
access certain parts of the Share My Story Website, or submit User Content

24. FB - Opt Out

25. More Policies

26. Policies!

27. Codifying Policies...
Research has shown that privacy
policies tend to intensify privacy
concerns rather than engender trust.
One way to combat this dichotomy is
to redesign their content, language,
and presentation format
Irene Pollach
What’s Wrong With Online Privacy Policies?
COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM, September 2007

28. Key Challenges
Policy Expression
• how to unambiguously define the terms and
conditions of a policy
Policy Transparency
• how to ensure all parties are aware of the policy
and its implications
Policy Conflict
• how to detect potential incompatibilities
between dependent policies
Policy Accountability
• how to track policy exceptions and obligations

29. FaceBook Use Case

30. Billie

31. FaceBook Terms

32. FaceBook UI

33. Billie

34. Accountability

35. People

36. Policy Interoperability

37. Privacy Options: FB and Flickr
Expression
Transparency
Conflict
Accountability

38. People Constraints
Only the content owner (ie no one else)
Specific (named) friends and colleagues (both
allowed and not allowed)
Family members
All direct friends or colleagues
Your second level friends or colleagues (ie
friends of friends)
All Groups (that the content owner is a member
of) or some Groups
Everyone (ie public)

39. Summary

40. Social Web Challenges
Meet User needs
• Balance the complexity of managing partial
profiles with the benefits
• Intuitive user interfaces
• Get Privacy right!
Meet Platform needs
• Promote open interoperable standards
• Develop open source testbeds
• Large scale deployments

41. Summary
Distributed Partial and Multiple Profiles
User in Control with Policy-based access and
obligations
Current Social Network technologies (eg FOAF,
OpenID…) are lacking these features
Standardisation track via W3C
• New extensible Profile information model
• New Social data obligations model
• New distributed service protocol mechanisms

42. SNI2009
http://spin.nicta.org.au/SNI2009