GRUPPO TELECOM ITALIA May 2012 Università di Bologna
Federated (Mobile) Social Networking
• The past, present & future of the next generation of social communications
Telecom Italia /Innovation & Industry Relations – Laurent-Walter Goix laurentwalter.goix@telecomitalia .it Table of contents
► Part 1: Introduction to the Social Networking topic, current trends & issues
► Part 2: Technical overview of the Social Network “standards” landscape
► Part 3: Internal “Research & Prototyping “activities Part 1: Introduction to the Social Networking topic, current trends & issues The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking Source: http://makemesocialblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/where-were-you/ May 2012 The FbkFacebook story
The new communication ppgaradigm, the “wall”, is introduced in September 2006
http://mashable.com/2006/09/05/facebooks-facelift-mini-feeds- and-news-feeds/
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 4 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Fundamental #1: what is the “wall” about?
• For its owner, the “wall” (and its usual settings) can be considered
–As the history of private/public activities (social, but potentially SMS sent, calls, etc)
–As a privacy filter when propagating information (based on followers/circles/lists) The “wall” (or stream) is an always-on virtual presence on the Internet
• For a viewer
–Access to *authorized* content anytime, anywhere (without being seen, no real-time constraints)
–Notification settings The “wall” is a new way of communicating: asynchronous, indirect
• The wall may only be a virtual artifact
–But, the wall centralizes and dispatches content & communications (no peer-to-peer) Who cont ro ls ttehe “wall” cont ro ls ttehe user,,t th ecoe comm uni ty,adtty, and th ebuse busin ess
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 5 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012 Exampl e: tex ting fri end s vi a SMS vs through a “wall”
Replier Replier
Sender Sender
SMS (Direct, explicit) Wall (Indirect, implicit)
Initial message Dashed black lines are based on user’s explicit audience selection Replies Dashed red lines are based on user’s knowledge of initial recipients GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP(usually not known) 6 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Fundamental #2: what is “federation”?
•SdiSending emails !...
–Users who own an email account from one provider…
•…can send emails to users on other providers!
•And reply, forward, etc
•Federation is a “web-based” name for interconnection
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 7 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Mobile (Federated) Social Networks? • ...MbilMobile NtNetwor ks ! X –6Bn+ users worldwide
–Native federation (interconnection) across operators
•For voice, video, sms, mms services
BUT nowadays… X
–Address book (“social” component) is decentralized Æ on SIM / device
–Only an “explicit” communication mode is supported (recipients are well identified)
–Most of the communication services offered through mobile networks are “real-time”
Mobile Social Networking is an additional way of communicating provided to our mobile subscribers, on the same network, reusing their existing identity and friends to share their social experiences.
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 8 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012 The market around us
• At the end of March 2012, FbkFacebook announced 901 Mn users worldwide (nearly 520Mn active daily), with 50% monthly active through mobile
• Twitter reached 580 Mn users in May 2012 (140Mn active)
• GlGoogle+ reached 100Mn users in Apr il 2012
• 87% of consumers in the U.S. access at least one social network regularly (68% in 2008), and more than 50% do so from a smarthtphone or a tblttablet (eVoc Insi ght s, January 2012).
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 9 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Web Sociale = Web 2.0?
Web Sociale != Ʃ ( club sociali ) Il problema dei walled garden
Principali limitazioni:
1. Portabilità del ‘grafo sociale’ 2. Comunicazione inter-community 3. Controllo e ppyrivacy
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012 TdTowards a ““li”regulation” of SilSocial NNkietworking
Standardization initiatives, and the web industry, are focusing on solutions (protocols, data models & architectures) for social network interoppyerability In this context, increasing care is given to tackle data privacy issues from a technical perspective, in particul ar with respect to discovery, sharing and deletion of users’ data In January 2012, Viviane Reding, Vice-President of the European Commission, EU Justice Commissioner has announced her commitment
to give back users the control over their Source: http://ec.europa .eu/justice/data -protection/minisite/ • Youpersonal will have data: an effective "right to be forgotten" so that you can remove your personal information from any site if you so wish; • Web operators must provide 'privacy by default'. The default settings for all services should be the most privacy-friendly; • You will have the right to know how your personal data will be used and where your consent is required, you must give it explicitly; • You will be able to move your personal data from one service provider to another more easily ("data portability”); • Organizations processing your personal data must inform you as soon as possible if your data has been compromised; • Your personal data will enjoy the same level of protection if it is transferred outside the EU as applies within the EU - vital in this age of instant global dataGOIX flows. Laurent-Walter / II.RP 11 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012 From SN Aggregation to Federated SNs
•Social Network Aggregation services are popular entry doors to the social activities of users having multiple accounts over the Internet
•Aggregates messages, status feeds, content and friends from various standalone Bob’ Bob’’ SNs
•Used when providing valuable features , e.g.cross-posting (outbound) Bob
•Federated Social Networks are the future of the Social Web
•Users can communicate with each other across domains through global identifiers having only one account
•User data portability is easier: users can choose their favorite social network and migrate Bob •Provides major scaling & robustness of the overall Social Web (no single point of failure)
•This concept is becoming an important industrial trend supported by large players
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 12 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
The concept of Federated Social Networks
http://www.w3.org/Talks/Deck/identity/Social-Web- Landscape.png GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP Part 2: Technical overview of the Social Network “standards” landscape The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
State-of-the-art of the SN standard community (1/4) CtlCurrently the main community in itiati ves reltdlated to SilSocial NNtketwork standardization and interoperability pertain to 2 different areas
Client-server interoperability (intra-domain) Federation / interworking (cross-domain)
OpenSocial is a popular specification for both Web APIs and Device /Jav ascript APIs for interactions between client applications and servers (intra-domain) OStatus (and its “variants“, e.g. Diaspora [1]) is a specification emerging as reference for SN federation
In various cases such specifications are backed up by (and/or being discussed within) standardization bodies, and by one or more open source projects implementing and contributing the specification (e.g. Apache Shindig, Status.net) [1] https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Diaspora%27s-federation-protocol
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 15 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012 State-of-the-art of the SN standard community (2/4) W3C & IETF
• W3C is focused on server-to-server federation aspects through the Federated Social Web (FSW) Group [1]
–This is mostly a discussion group where developers from various initiatives around federated social networks (and protocols) can exchange ideas.
• In January 2012, W3C a lso launc he d the PbSbHbbbPubSubHubbub [2 ] an d the OStat us [3] Community Groups to discuss in details the evolution of such specifications
• A W3C Social Business Community Group [4] has also launched in February 2012
• Some activity has been undertaken within IETF APPSAWG wrt Social Networks, mainly through high-level lightweight frameworks addressing discovery of user information
–Host-Meta RFC6415
–WebFinger I-D (personal draft from Cisco & Google) [5]
–Enum Service for mapping phone numbers to Social Networking accounts [6] [1] http://www.w3.org/community/fedsocweb/ [2] http://www.w3.org/community/pubsub/ [3] http://www.w3.org/community/ostatus/ [4] http:// www.w3 .org /commun ity/ socbizcg/ [5] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-jones-appsawg- webfinger-04 GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP [6] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-goix-appsawg- 16 enum-sn-service-01 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012 Stat e-of-the-art of the SN st and ard commun ity (3/4) OpenSocial Foundation
• De dica ted to Soci al Ne twor king s tan dardi zati on
–Initiated by Google (“iGoogle Gadgets”)
–Current board members are IBM, MySpace, GoogleGoogle,, Yahoo!, Jive + 2 community representatives (including OStatus founder)
• Goal: enable developers to create “Social Apps” write once, run everywhere
–Focused on client-server interactions (Web API) as well as Device APIs towards 3rd party applications (or web “gadgets ”).
–Provides specifications and reference open-source implementations (Apache Shindig)
• http://www.opensocial.org
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 17 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012 Stat e-of-the-art of the SN st and ard communit y (4/4) Open Mobile Alliance (OMA)
•Industry forum founded June 2002
–Over 130 members from across the mobile value chain
–Operators, terminal and software vendors, content and entertainment providers
•“Mobile Social Network” (MobSocNet) Enabler
–End-to-end framework for interoperability between (mobile) clients & servers and federation of social networks
•Main functionalities
–Publication and sharing of media, activities & follow-up actions
–Network API for integration with external applications
–Reuse of MSISDN identity (phone number)
–Da ta portabilit y
–Chat, IM, Presence, Gaming, etc are out of scope
•Goal is to reference existing industry standards with limited profiling
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 18 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Social Network specifications and…the Web Industry
• The biggest players from the Social Web industry are driving the specification work
–IBM
•Author of RFCs and other web specifications (eg. ActivityStreams, OpenSocial)
•Leading spec and reference open source implementation work in OpenSocial (Board member)
•Mostly interested in Social Entreprise
•Early adopter & participant in most specifications (often partially standard) in official APIs or “alpha” stage
•Leading some specifications (eg. PubsubHubbub, Salmon) also in the area of federation
“We are not using OpenSocial-compliant APIs, but we are using lots of the technology that was developed as part of OpenSocial, including OAuth 2.0, Portable Contacts and JSON schema, to power Google+ platform. As we define the Google+ APIs, we are paying close attention to the future direction of the OpenSocial APIs, and converging wherever possible. “ [1]
–Facebook, Microsoft, MySpace
•Authors of the ActivityStreams specifications (data format for representing activities)
[1] http://groups.google.com/group/google-plus- developers/browse_thread/thread/74f76bc960b8b894/b888adde 3dcaf664?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=opensocial#b888adde3dcaf664 GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 19 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012 Social Networking ecosystem (not exhaustive)
Gateway
SN1 SN2 Federation SN Platforms
Devices
Apps
Users alicew charlie alice@sn1 bob@sn2 GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 20 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Requisiti di un Web Sociale federato Obiett ivo: Approssi mare quanto più i sociilal network monoliliitici!
Vincolo: Usare degli standard aperti! (altrimenti si rischia che ogni social netw ork distribu ito div enti u n altro walled garden) Identificazione: formato ((,URL, email-like,,) XRI)
Identity Discovery LRDD/XRD YADIS/XRDS
Profilo Utente: i dati devono essere esposti e condivisi in maniera da essere compresi non solo da umani ma anche da agenti software esterni. hCard FOAF Portable Contacts
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 21 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Requisiti di un Web Sociale federato
Autenticazione: l’accesso a dati remoti, richiederebbe una forma di cross- autenticazione (single sign-on federato).
WebID (FOAF + SSL)
Flussi di attività: è necessario formalizzare le attività svolte dagli utenti per agevolare l’interoperabilità.
Informazioni in tempo reale: ricevere i flussi di attività degli utenti remoti in tempo reale. WebHook (notifiche PUSH)
Unificare le conversazioni: problema della frammentazione delle conversazioni distribuite. Salmon
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 22 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Tecnologie coinvolte (1/4) ¾ Come identificare e interagire con gli utenti remoti su ogni piattaforma?
• URLÆ si associa ad una cosa, un posto, un documento, quasi mai una persona • EMAILÆ si associa sempre a una persona (altre informazioni?)
Informazioni su un individuo (formato XRD):
WebFinger: • Pagina di profilo • Sintassi • Feed delle attività email • Chiave pubblica(RSA) • Avatar • Nickname • … [email protected] Identity Discovery
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 23 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Tecnologie coinvolte (2/4) ¾ Flussi di attività (()eventi sociali)
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 24 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Tecnologie coinvolte (3/4) ¾ Ricezione/Invio dei flussi di attività in tempo reale.
Efficace: PUSH COMET Provider Consumer Clien t
Efficiente: PubSubHubbub: Provider
• Notifiche PUSH • Modello Publish/Subscribe HUB
Consumer
Consumer
Consumer
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 25 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Tecnologie coinvolte (4/4) ¾ Unificare le conversazioni distribuite I commenti da parte di utenti remoti, vengono inviati, tramite notifiche di tipo PUSH, alla sorgente, su specifici endpoint HTTP POST /salmon-endpoint HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com Content-Type: application/magic-envelope+xml ------
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 26 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Existing (main) Social Network specifications at a glance Name Description Supporters Referenced by
OpenSocial client-server social interactions (Web API) and related IBM, MySpace, Google, OMA MobSocNet device API (web gadgets/apps) Yahoo!, Jive, Moodle OStatus Federated (server-server) social interactions W3C,,p Diaspora OMA MobSocNet
ActivityStreams Data format for social activities Google Buzz, Google Reader, OStatus, (actor verb object [target]) Superfeedr, Gowalla, OpenSocial MySpace, Windows Live, Facebook, IBM WebFinger “Profile discovery” based on user@domain identities Gmail (alpha), Yahoo!, AOL OStatus, (IETF) OExchange Salmon Securely distribute follow-up actions related to an activity Google OStatus
PubSubHubbub central hub to intermediate feed subscribers from Google, most of feed OStatus publishers aggregators & clients Portable protocol & data format for user contacts information Plaxo, Google Contacts Ostatus, Contacts OpenSocial XRD Data format to describe resources through indirect links Host-Meta, (OASIS) (OpenSocial), OpenID Host-Meta Metadata description of hosts & resources (IETF) WebFinger
OExchange weblink sharing on social networks (e.g. “Share” button) Twitter, bit.ly, AddThis & 300+ OMA MobSocNet GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP other SNs 27 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
The equilibrium of Social Network specifications
OMA Mo bSoc Ne t
OSilOpenSocial OMA PhPush OStatus OExchange
ActivityStreams
WebFinger Portable Contacts OpenID
Key Standardized at W3C W3C Community Group Salmon Host-Meta Standardized at another body Standardization candidate Independent standard group Public standard PubSubHubbub No standards body Known IP issues XRD/S GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 28 Part 3: Internal “Research & Prototyping” activities The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Teamlife: una Social Network prototipale
Portale User-Generated Content Funzionalità social (tag, commenti, voti) e mobile (SMS, MMS)
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
TeamLife & OStatus
•Funzionalità Server-side (PHP/MySQL): • Ricerca di utenti remoti + ricerca utenti della piattaforma (WebFinger) • Gestione interazione HUB (sottoscrizione, messaggi PUSH) • Gestione messaggi Salmon (in entrata e in uscita)
•Funzionalità Client-side (HTML/JavaScript/CSS):
utente remoto
Ricerca utenti remoti Delegazione (re-tweet automatico)
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Teamlife & OpenSocial
– OpenSocial support provided by Apache Shindig Open Source project
• REST (& RPC) API and data formats (ActivityStreams, PoCo)
• Example Social Gadgets (web applications)
– Native iPhone Application “Ensieme” prototyped internally
ÅGadget
Native Æ
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP 32 The value of Federated (Mobile) Social Networking May 2012
Risultati ottenuti
Prima: mobile web, client proprietari
Dopo:
mobile web, client federati
GOIX Laurent-Walter / II.RP Conclusions
► Social Networks (SN) have introduced a new paradigm of communication / content exchange between users
► The related ecosystem is growing fast, driven by the Web/Entreprise industry and moving towards standardization and regulatory institutions
► Federation is the future of the Social Web that will create entire new business opportunities based on interoperable communities of all kinds
► Although widely used from mobile devices, SN services are not using mobile assets and are not yet designed for mobile network infrastructures
► Some issues still need to be addressed, in particular towards user privacy
Standards are the key driver for enabling wide interoperability and mobile- friendliness of future social networks In parallel, research is needed by industries and academia to investigate open issues over the next years