Getting Started
Welcome to the oSocial project
In a nutshell, oSocial lets you see your social data in an open, portable way and we are working on secure methods to allow friending between social networks ; and this without any new registration.
oSocial can be seen as Meta Social Network - a way of joining together existing social networks by connecting profiles from different sites.
It is also a place to test new ideas such as
- How do you free and open up social networks?
- How do you create links between profiles?
- How do you visualise and navigate the connections between profiles?
oSocial goals and missions
- Free the social data on your social network, and put it back under your control.
- Export your social graph in different formats.
- No boring registration or login process.
- To make a technology that allows people to be friends with anybody, regardless of which social network they are on (and without having to create multiple accounts).
- Link your profiles from different social network and group friends.
- Let you choose whether your profiles and friends list are private, public or secret.
- Access, spread and publish your social data with open formats.
For more details and discussions on Data Portability challenges, you can also read this InfoWord article where they speak about Data Portability and the oSocial network project.
It is built with an OpenSocial application on top of social networks where a Google OpenSocial API implementation (container) is available.
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Installation & User Guide
To join oSocial Meta Social Network
Depending of the social network:
Instructions to install an OpenSocial application
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Technology & Openness
Google OpenSocial API
The oSocial Network is produced and feed with an OpenSocial application which can be installed by users into their profiles on social networks where a Google OpenSocial API implementation (container) is available.
The application post social network data to oSocial.net Web site where data are stored, aggregated, published and controled by users.
Open Formats and Standards
In line with the principles of Data Portability, oSocial uses Open Formats and Standards wherever applicable.
- FOAF (an acronym of Friend of a Friend) is an extension to RDF. Wikipedia definition: A machine-readable ontology describing persons, their activities and their relations to other people and objects. Anyone can use FOAF to describe him or herself. FOAF allows groups of people to describe social networks without the need for a centralised database."
- XFN (XHTML Friends Network) is a simple way to represent human relationships using hyperlinks.
- hCard (short for HTML vCard) is a microformat ; a simple, open, distributed format for publishing and representing people, companies, organizations, and places.
- Used within OpenSocial API : OAuth is an open protocol to allow secure API authentication in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications.
- No used yet: OpenID is a free and easy way to use a single digital identity across the Internet, a decentralized single sign-on system. It can be an option for a user to connect to its oSocial profile page to control private and secrets social data.
- No used yet: OpenSearch is a collection of technologies that allow publishing of search results in a format suitable for syndication and aggregation. It can be a way to expose oSocial profiles search.
- APML, OPML and RSS can also be Open Standards used to encapsulate data.
- Finally we try to follow the very nice DataPortability Best Practices for Site Developers.
Security, Privacy and Authentication
One of the challenge of oSocial project is to give a security access to data, to give the user the control of data privay and this without any registration.
These features will be done in 2 ways.
- Use the OpenSocial OAuth feature to avoid spoofing and to trust data and ensure queries are legitimate.
- Give the user the control of the data within the OpenSocial application within social networks. Secret and temporay links will be generated for users to control and manage social data.
Finally we can also add an option with an OpenID identification process.
Browse and Visualize Social Graphs
oSocial propose some solutions to visualize and to browse social graphs.
Tools and scripts tested:
The final goal is to offer different solutions and options for visualization and navigation features.
It will be available from oSocial.net and directly from the OpenSocial application into social networks.
Public data to feed these visualization tools and solutions will be also available so that others can work on the visualisation process and play with social graph data.
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Roadmap & Plans
Main accomplishments were to port the OpenSocial application to available social newtorks with an OpenSocial implementation (hi5, Ning, Orkut and MySpace) so it can be tested and so that we have now few thousand of profiles listed. We have also worked on some visualization tools and on implementing some open formats to publish social data (microformats and FOAF).
Next features:
- To be able to export friends list in different format (csv,...).
- An OpenID implementation to better manage privacy policy and to control data.
- With the OpenID identity, to be able to make link between 2 registered profiles from 2 different social networks.
- With the OpenID identity, to be able to add friend to a profile from 2 different social networks.
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External Links
Communities
Articles
Discussions
Related Projects
- DiSo project
"a social network with its skin inside out" or "an umbrella project for
a group of open source implementations of these distributed social
networking concepts" and the Google Group
- The GraphSync project
- OpenContacts.org
"is a proposal for a model for sychronizing contacts between services.
The goal is for web-aware services, such as social sites, address books
and instant messengers to be able to share contact lists and details
seamlessly without user intervention."
Events
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Note & Contact
The OpenSocial application and the oSocial Web site are at "beta" level while we work on adding more features. If you want to give us your opinions, ideas, or an offer of help, please email victor@osocial.net.
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Meta Social Network
- Home
- Join!
- News
- About
In Orkut sandbox (example). Click here to install the oSocial application in Orkut.
In hi5, you can find and install the oSocial application here, it has been approved by hi5 and it can be found in hi5 applications gallery.
In MySpace, you can find and install the oSocial application here, it has been approved by MySpace and it can be found in MySpace applications gallery.
In Facebook, you can find and install the oSocial application here, it has been made with OpenSocket and approved by Facebook.
means that this profile has used oSocial and has friends, otherwise the profile comes from a relationship.
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- Contact and Discuss