support multiple group in Social API Activity Stream Service

[Li Xu]

Hey, all

We have a use case that require defining multiple group. Please see the use case below:

User would like to get all the status update for all the persons in his/her network group and all the status updates of all the people and communities he's following.
@friends would be the first user group -- indicates all the persons in user's network group
@all would be the second user group -- indicates all the people and communities he's following.

We thought about using the rpc batch approach. However it would be more efficient to resolve the merge of results in a lower api level.

Please advise.

thanks,
li

[Mark W.]

This is a great use case! It's one of the reasons we are looking to revamp the REST APIs, and, potentially the JS as well. It would be nice if group was just another query param or "field" that you pass in. 

I'm up for exploring this more...

[Li Xu]

yes, that will be nice if it could be just query param or "field".

On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 11:20 AM, Mark W. <weitze...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is a great use case! It's one of the reasons we are looking to revamp the REST APIs, and, potentially the JS as well. It would be nice if group was just another query param or "field" that you pass in. 

I'm up for exploring this more...

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[Ryan Baxter]

Would spaces help here?

A community is essentially a space, so wouldn't we want to just get
all the status updates for that space, or all spaces?

On Feb 3, 2:09 pm, Li Xu <leeg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> yes, that will be nice if it could be just query param or "field".
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 11:20 AM, Mark W. <weitzelm.w...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is a great use case! It's one of the reasons we are looking to revamp
> > the REST APIs, and, potentially the JS as well. It would be nice if group
> > was just another query param or "field" that you pass in.
>
> > I'm up for exploring this more...
>
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > "OpenSocial and Gadgets Specification Discussion" group.
> > To view this discussion on the web visit

> >https://groups.google.com/d/msg/opensocial-and-gadgets-spec/-/QTE8zYg...
> > .

[Li Xu]

Thanks for pointing out the space concept. I thought about it, it looks like the use case still fit Group better....

Copying the doc link here...
http://docs.opensocial.org/display/OSD/Space+Proposal
Space is a concept different from Group concept of OpenSocial.
Group is a way to tag people (collection of friends, relatives, etc). It is very similar to a circle concept of Google+. People in such group do not know that they are in the group, it is not the place shared with several members. Space represents another concept - a place where group of people gathered together for some activity: University course, collaborative project, event organization, discussion thread, etc. Every person in a space is aware about other participants. Imagine a group or an event on Facebook or discusion thread in google groups. If we add a gadget there it will be shared by people in that group or event. This is a Space concept.

In our usecase, both are collections tagged by the current user. One is friends, the other are people/communities current user is following.

For REST API perspective, I like the query parameter or fields, it has the flexibility.

[Ryan Baxter]

After going back and reading your post I noticed you said "...people
and communities
he's following". If following different from being a friend with a
person, or belonging to a space? The spaces proposal uses the terms
"participants" when referring to people within a space. I am not sure
if a participant is the same as following. I think we need to be
clear on what it means to "follow" something in the OpenSocial spec.

On Feb 6, 11:03 am, Li Xu <leeg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for pointing out the space concept. I thought about it, it looks
> like the use case still fit Group better....
>
> Copying the doc link here...http://docs.opensocial.org/display/OSD/Space+Proposal

> *Space* is a concept different from *Group* concept of OpenSocial.
> *Group* is a way to tag people (collection of friends, relatives, etc). It

> is very similar to a circle concept of Google+. People in such group do not
> know that they are in the group, it is not the place shared with several
> members. Space represents another concept - a place where group of people
> gathered together for some activity: University course, collaborative
> project, event organization, discussion thread, etc. Every person in a
> space is aware about other participants. Imagine a group or an event on
> Facebook or discusion thread in google groups. If we add a gadget there it

> will be shared by people in that group or event. This is a *Space* concept.

[Craig McClanahan]

On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 6:39 PM, Ryan Baxter <rbax...@gmail.com> wrote:

After going back and reading your post I noticed you said "...people
and communities
he's following".  If following different from being a friend with a
person, or belonging to a space?  The spaces proposal uses the terms
"participants" when referring to people within a space.  I am not sure
if a participant is the same as following.  I think we need to be
clear on what it means to "follow" something in the OpenSocial spec.

In the emerging Jive notion of a "space" (we call them social groups), there are several distinguishing characteristics:

* A person is a "member" of a social group or not.

* Membership can be (depending on group type):

  - Requested and immediately granted.

  - the result of accepting an invitation from a group member or admin.

  - Requested and subject to moderation by a group admin.

  - Not possible to request (secret group), must be invited.

* Encompassing at least two privilege levels (admin versus regular

   member).

* Revokable (kicked out by an admin, or voluntarily leaving).

This is a potentially much richer concept than a binary relationship like "following".  Therefore, my two cents is we should consider belonging to a "space" to be orthogonal to any notion of being part of an existing OpenSocial group like "followers" or "friends", which is more about the relationships between two people (instead of the relationship of a person to a space).

Craig McClanahan