hash/bang tags for updates for example during events?

[elf Pavlik]

Hello,

Writing from DrupalCamp in Berlin where I presented topic of FSW and have mentioned current works on getting OStatus into drupal. I also realize more and more that I need to deepen my understanding of microblogging experience in federated setup!

So a question comes, if for example now participants of DrupalCamp use twitter #dcb11 for posting updates: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23dcb11 how it can work using OStatus?

Would using a group for that make sense? Can group can have its webfinger which one can use like: !dc...@drupalcity.de ? (UI wise after using it first time later it could have some autocompleate...)

Hope to see in on one of next gatherings that we use OStatus instead, or at least in parallel with, twitter =) But we need to have working hashtag alternative, hopefully before fsw2012 ;)

Please share you comments, Thanks!
=)
~ elf Pavlik ~

[Astro]

elf Pavlik wrote:
> Writing from DrupalCamp in Berlin where I presented topic of FSW and have mentioned current works on getting OStatus into drupal. I also realize more and more that I need to deepen my understanding of microblogging experience in federated setup!
>
> So a question comes, if for example now participants of DrupalCamp use twitter #dcb11 for posting updates: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23dcb11 how it can work using OStatus?
>
> Would using a group for that make sense? Can group can have its webfinger which one can use like: !dc...@drupalcity.de ? (UI wise after using it first time later it could have some autocompleate...)

Yes, that would be one way it could work. It's probably not
user-friendly enough for the masses who are used to centralistic
providers with a flat namespace.

Alternatively: just look at the Web! While we use unambiguous
identifiers at a technical level, users look up content via search
engines. Who expects this to change?

You can build something easily with Superfeedr's track API.</ad>

Astro

[Nils D.]

I think the problem with a search based approach is,
that it's hard to decentralize (as you said) and hard to disambiguate
(when searching for "fsw",
I have a specific topic in mind - however other topics may have the
same abbreviation ...).

I thought about it some days ago and I came up with an approach like
follows
(merely based on the "mention" of OStatus, rather than on a group
approach).

Let's say user Alice is on the domain example.org (boring!) and
watches a TV-Show called "FunnyTV" or something.
She writes a post meantioning "#funnytv". The post is automatically
annotated with
something like "<atom:category term="funnytv"
scheme="topic:fun...@example.org" label="#funnytv" />"*

User Bob is following Alice and is a subscriber to her feed.
His system at "example.com" registers the topic "funnytv" as
"fun...@example.org".
When Bob is using the hash tag "funnytv", his posts are annotated with
"<atom:category scheme="topic:fun...@example.org" (...)/>". And -
like the "mentions" processing,
the fun...@example.org is notified of the new post.

So - topic:fun...@example.org is kinda webfingerable. When having a
separated scheme from "acct:" this could even
work for lrdd.
By Webfingering the topic, a user then can discover the feed with
aggregated posts (see below).

If Bob is using more than one topic, there may be more feeds notified
by his post (more atom:categories).

User Carol isn't following Alice and isn't following Bob. But she also
likes "funnytv". So she writes a post
annotated "<atom:category scheme="topic:fun...@example.net" (...) /
>", because she's at example.net.

Bob is a subscriber to Carol.
Because Alice used "funnytv" first, this topic is already registered
in his system - so there's a topic clash.
(Based on Social Network Analysis it's pretty likely that users are
watching the same TV shows
if they are structurally similar btw. ;))
His system SHOULD notify the topic (Salmon) endpoints (discoverable in
the XRD of the topic),
that there is another feed on that topic.
So example.org then knows there is a feed for "funnytv" at example.net
and example.net knows there's a feed for "funnytv" at example.org.

Bob SHOULD subsequently use the hash tag he first registered to.

It's up to the topic endpoints how they deal with the clash.
The servers could aggregate the lists of the other endpoints
(by simply subscribing to their feed (PubSubHubbub) - easy!).
Or they could present links to alternative feeds dealing with this
topic in the feed as well as their XRDs.

Topics may "die" after a while. So user Alice could say "all topics I
introduce and register will only be active for 3 days" until
revivication by registering (so naturally it could be possible that a
topic would stay a long time).

If Carol has just a small machine and has not the power to accept all
topics on "funnytv", she could delegate this
to a topic server, that allows for registering the topic, for example
"example.biz".
Anytime Carol initializes a topic, her post is annotated with
"<category url="topic:{topic}@example.biz" />".
(I don't know if it would be necessary to first signalize
"example.biz" that Carol want's to use a
new topic ... haven't think about it yet.)

In short: After webfingering "topic:fun...@example.org" it should
serve something like

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<XRD xmlns="http://docs.oasis-open.org/ns/xri/xrd-1.0">
<Subject>topic:fun...@example.org</Subject>

# Alternatives
<Link rel="http://topics.example.org/topic"
href="topic:fun...@example.net" />

# Feeds
<Link rel="http://topics.example.org/feed"
type="type="application/atom+xml"
href="http://example.org/topic/funnytv.atom" />
<Link rel="http://topics.example.org/feed"
type="type="application/rss+xml"
href="http://example.org/topic/funnytv.rss" />

# Salmon for new posts and notifications of alternatives
<Link rel="salmon"
href="https://example.org/salmon-topics" />
</XRD>

Advantages:
- If a topic server dies, there may be others with the same or similar
information. Truly decentralized.
- A conference could introduce a new topic, say "topic:f...@w3c.org",
and all participants who subscribed to this
event would automatically adopt this topic (good UX!). The server
could treat this special,
would not allow foreign clashes and could serve the feed for a long
time (like a group feed).
If there is a conference on Federated Social Web there would be no
problem to separate "#fsw"
from other informations with the same abbreviation (at the moment
not possible on Twitter).
- Other than group feeds, there is no need to subscribe ... they are
rather "ad-hoc".
- A user has not to be aware of the topic's host, so typing "#fsw"
should be enough (in most cases).
The interface would be purely twitter-like.
- Pretty close to the current OStatus setup.

What do you think?
Best regards,
Nils

P.S. Why webfinger-like addresses instead of urls?
- There is a clear technical as well as semantic distinction between
the domain and the topic. This is not
that clear with something like "http://example.org/topics/funnytv".
P.P.S. Sorry for the long post.

* I may totally misuse the category element ... don't know.

On 19 Sep., 14:19, Astro <as...@spaceboyz.net> wrote:
> elf Pavlik wrote:
> > Writing from DrupalCamp in Berlin where I presented topic of FSW and have mentioned current works on getting OStatus into drupal. I also realize more and more that I need to deepen my understanding of microblogging experience in federated setup!
>

> > So a question comes, if for example now participants of DrupalCamp use twitter #dcb11 for posting updates:http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23dcb11how it can work using OStatus?