Social Software Alliance

We propose a trade group of social software developers and other interested parties who work together to create and promote open standards for the social software community.

http://www.socialtext.net/ssa/index.cgi?Call_For_Discussion_2003_04_16

Email list archive

Happening for Apr18'2013 (3pm EDT) http://www.socialtext.net/ssa/index.cgi?Happening_2003_04_18

The SocialText gang seems to be at the center of this...

Why might I be interested in getting involved? InterOp

  • forum for pushing some Wiki Standards to strengthen the WikiWeb

  • work with other wiki folks to make wiki more popular (both as personal writing tools and as Collaboration Ware)

  • tracking what non-wiki formats/APIs should be added to wiki to participate in the BlogWeb .

"Attended" the happening. Made my intro page http://www.socialtext.net/ssa-edit/index.cgi?Bill%20Seitz

== What should the Social Software Alliance do, and why? ==

Core question: what risks to InterOp exist if they do nothing?

  • Microsoft/AOL will enter the marketplace with both WebLog authoring tools and an RssAggregator, and do weird things that other tools on both ends don't support (Embrace And Extend).

  • standards get promoted which are patent-bound.

  • good new specifications don't get picked up in the marketplace (quickly enough)

How might a BigCo game whatever system is in place?

  • Astro Turf: skew perceived weight of opinions through volume of messages by employees and PR flacks who fail to disclose their association

  • Follow a standard but in a meaningless way - MsWord XML.

What are some approaches that would be fast and low-overhead but maybe offer some benefit?

  • collect opinions on standards and compliance with them.

    • run a Topic Exchange server - a page for each standard, then sub-page for each vendor based on their support of the standard?

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