When is the social web not the social web? When it is THE social web

27 September 2024

A few days ago, a group called the Social Web Foundation was launched. A coming together of “leaders of the open social networking movement“, the foundation aims to make “connections between social platforms with the open standard protocol ActivityPub.” Rather than me reinventing the wheel, here’s the Wikipedia definition of ActivityPub:

ActivityPub is a protocol and open standard for decentralized social networking. It provides a client-to-server (shortened to C2S) API for creating and modifying content, as well as a federated server-to-server (S2S) protocol for delivering notifications and content to other servers. ActivityPub has become the main standard used in the fediverse, a popular network used for social networking that consists of software such as Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube.

In short, ActivityPub allows individual, separate, decentralised social networking platforms, to “talk” to each other. Therefore someone on, say, Threads can (in theory) interact with another person on Mastodon. Threads and Mastodon are two different entities. The ActivityPub protocol means the Threads member does not need a Mastodon account, and vice versa. The Threads member will be able to interact with the Mastodon member, almost as if they were on the same platform.

Here’s the Social Web Foundation’s wording of what I just said:

The “social web”, also called the “Fediverse”, is a network of independent social platforms connected with the open standard protocol ActivityPub. Users on any platform can follow their friends, family, influencers, or brands on any other participating network.

The foundation, in the same sentence, is also proposing that the fediverse, the current conglomeration of independent social platforms, be referred to as the social web. Perhaps by now you’re saying to yourself: “remind me again; who are these Social Web Foundation people?”

You wouldn’t be the only one. When I first heard about the foundation, it reminded me of a group (I think) of people calling themselves fediverse.info. About a month ago, they proposed the use of a typographic symbol, an asterism, as a symbol of none other than the fediverse. I had no problems with the suggestion, but I wondered what sort of mandate they had to make such a proposal.

As I wrote then, there was very little information on the fediverse.info website as to who they were, and why they thought they were in a position to make the suggestion in the first place. The fediverse.info group may be made up of some of the most respected people in the fediverse, but you’d never know that from their webpage.

The foundation, on the other hand, is a little more transparent. At least in terms of membership. Their team page identifies Evan Prodromou, Mallory Knodel, and Tom Coates, as core members. What’s not so clear, is why they think they’re in a position to suggest the fediverse be renamed the social web. Unless you accept this rather dubious, and astonishing claim, about Prodromou:

Evan [Prodromou] made the first-ever post on the social web in May 2008.

Prodromou’s background is impressive. Not only did he co-write the ActivityPub protocol, he once worked for Microsoft, and in 2003 founded Wikitravel, a now defunct a web-based collaborative travel guide. He’s doubtless scored a few firsts during his career, but the first-ever social web post claim is problematic. Twitter, for instance, was founded two years earlier in 2006. If Twitter then is not a social web platform, what is?

Actually, there are a number of answers to that question, says fLaMEd, webmaster (a title often used in the nineties, by people who operated and published websites, in the absence of the yet to be devised term blogger) and writer, at fLaMEd fury:

Have you heard of blogs, guestbooks, forums, instant messaging, email?

Email has been around since the early 1970’s. Almost forty years before 2008. And if having a social exchange via email isn’t an instance of the social web, what is? Of course, email isn’t social in the same way that, say, a public, there for all to see, Twitter/X feed is.

Enter then some of the earliest websites, of which fLaMEd fury, online since 1996, is among. And this website, disassociated, online since 1997. I’ve written about my own experiences of this social web.

During the late 1990’s, I made the acquaintance of numerous webmasters, designers, and writers. Some were overseas, but many were in Australia. We communicated in a number of ways. Through the online journals of our personal websites, where we referenced each other, in true IndieWeb style. Or by writing in each other’s guestbooks.

Before long, about eight of us had established an email group, and in 1999, our “social web” interactions culminated in the establishment of the (now off-line) Australian Infront, a group of web creatives working to elevate the perception of Australian web design. Through the Infront’s discussion forums, and face-to-face social gatherings, we brought potentially thousands of local, and international, designers together. Try telling anyone involved that wasn’t social web, because something called ActivityPub didn’t then exist.

There’s nothing new about the social web, it’s been there almost as long as the internet has. But I suspect the Social Web Foundation is going to stay the course, and press ahead with its efforts to rename the fediverse the social web.

But Prodromou has one other claim to fame. In 2007, he founded a company called Control Yourself, which developed Identi.ca, a Twitter/X like microblogging platform. I was an Identi.ca member for a short time in 2008. Was Identi.ca, I wonder, the “social web” platform that Prodromou made this purported “first-ever” post from?

If so, then I think clarification is in order. Instead of saying “Evan made the first-ever post on the social web in May 2008”, perhaps it is more accurate to say he “made the first-ever post on the Identi.ca platform in 2008.”