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?