Object types & properties to map concepts from popular SNs

[Laurent-Walter Goix]

Hi all,

i am studying how to map info from popular SNs into AS (a challenge in
some cases to get a meaningful activity other than "post note"...) and
got some doubt for which i'd like your feedback.

In FB you can like a page (aka fan pages), but i couldn't find any
object type truly mapping the "page" concept. it may be as generic as
a "collection", or going into the page category semantics one could
map this to "application" or other existing object types, but
obviously the list of such categories (not a url of course) is endless
and very far from the concept of objectType philosophy-wise...
This concept of category, which is also used in foursquare for example
to categorize places, seems to be missing from the schema. again the
objectType (in the 4s case "place") has other intentions than
supporting such categorization, and even a namespaced-objectType
wouldn't probably do the job on its own as we're missing ontologies to
describe inheritances.
Maybe the new "types" proposal (for abuses) could be generic enough to
accomodate this here as well to describe "categories", but one could
also think about a "category" property to be introduced for this
purpose.
goign back to the FB "page" example, this could be introduced as new
objectType, further using the "category/types" property to better
characterize them...

have anyone else be analysing these mappings deeply as well? what
would be the best way of doing this?

any suggestion is more than welcome!
thanks
walter

[Martin Atkins]

It's worth noting that it's fine to have an object with no type at all
if you can't determine what the type is. Consumer code should then use
its "unknown type" fallback behavior.

That is how I'd handle the general idea of "a page" (whether a facebook
page or just any random page on the web); a page is often a
representation of some object but it's not always possible to figure out
what kind of object it is, so just naming the object and giving its URL
is enough information to drive most activity streams consumption use-cases.

[James M Snell]

Several notes... see below...

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 6:25 AM, Laurent-Walter Goix
<laurentwa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> i am studying how to map info from popular SNs into AS (a challenge in
> some cases to get a meaningful activity other than "post note"...) and
> got some doubt for which i'd like your feedback.
>
> In FB you can like a page (aka fan pages), but i couldn't find any
> object type truly mapping the "page" concept. it may be as generic as
> a "collection", or going into the page category semantics one could
> map this to "application" or other existing object types, but

+1 to Martin's comment that objects used within an AS do not strictly
require an objectType. At the very least, objects should contain a
displayName property but everything else is largely up in the air.

> obviously the list of such categories (not a url of course) is endless
> and very far from the concept of objectType philosophy-wise...
> This concept of category, which is also used in foursquare for example
> to categorize places, seems to be missing from the schema. again the
> objectType (in the 4s case "place") has other intentions than
> supporting such categorization, and even a namespaced-objectType
> wouldn't probably do the job on its own as we're missing ontologies to
> describe inheritances.
> Maybe the new "types" proposal (for abuses) could be generic enough to
> accomodate this here as well to describe "categories", but one could
> also think about a "category" property to be introduced for this
> purpose.
> goign back to the FB "page" example, this could be introduced as new
> objectType, further using the "category/types" property to better
> characterize them...

The concept of a "page" or a "wall" is common, but without additional
context tends to not be overly useful. Another concept we do not
capture yet is that of a "profile".. which seems odd to me as well.

>
> have anyone else be analysing these mappings deeply as well? what
> would be the best way of doing this?
>
> any suggestion is more than welcome!
> thanks
> walter
>

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