Data portability and relation management in social web applications
©2008
Bachelorarbeit
56 Seiten
Zusammenfassung
Inhaltsangabe:Introduction:
Recent years have witnessed the great popularity of online social networking services, in which millions of members publicly articulate mutual friend- ship relations. Social network services have become a major application in the internet. Correspondingly the number of provider such social net- work services has multiplied and accommodates estimated 272 million users worldwide (Universalmccann, 2008). The mass adoption of social networking websites points to an evolution in human social interaction. These sites let the user create an identity namely their profile, which they fill with personal information. These identities can then be searched and relationships among the users can be made. A user can make friends virtually and by that creates his own social circle, that is why it can also be regarded as a reflection of the real world. Most of the users are part in more than one social network, which creates problems in terms of identity and relation management. At the moment there seems to be no consolidation among the services, but a further fragmentation and by that also a fragmentation of information.
In the real world people can be easily identified, but this is not possible in the internet as there is no physical contact. People using assumed names as an identifier which may be different on every platform. On top of this it is difficult to manage all the contacts which are spread over several services. At the moment the social network services do not o er ways to get the data out of their platforms to reuse it somewhere else. The use of separate networks may be wanted by the users regarding order and different roles they can slip into. In spite of these aspects there is an increasing demand for reusing and sharing the contact data to be able to manage the online friendships. To overcome the disadvantages of fragmented data central storage has to be established.
In combination with exchange mechanisms it would make data reusable, which means all the social networks the user is part of could be synchronised. This is especially useful when entering a new network. It is like moving into a new city and already know some people. Inevitable for such a scenario is that the information of the social networks are portable and that the user can be uniquely identified. There are e orts to achieve this goal, but up to now only partial problems have been solved. An overall concept seems not possible at the moment due to […]
Recent years have witnessed the great popularity of online social networking services, in which millions of members publicly articulate mutual friend- ship relations. Social network services have become a major application in the internet. Correspondingly the number of provider such social net- work services has multiplied and accommodates estimated 272 million users worldwide (Universalmccann, 2008). The mass adoption of social networking websites points to an evolution in human social interaction. These sites let the user create an identity namely their profile, which they fill with personal information. These identities can then be searched and relationships among the users can be made. A user can make friends virtually and by that creates his own social circle, that is why it can also be regarded as a reflection of the real world. Most of the users are part in more than one social network, which creates problems in terms of identity and relation management. At the moment there seems to be no consolidation among the services, but a further fragmentation and by that also a fragmentation of information.
In the real world people can be easily identified, but this is not possible in the internet as there is no physical contact. People using assumed names as an identifier which may be different on every platform. On top of this it is difficult to manage all the contacts which are spread over several services. At the moment the social network services do not o er ways to get the data out of their platforms to reuse it somewhere else. The use of separate networks may be wanted by the users regarding order and different roles they can slip into. In spite of these aspects there is an increasing demand for reusing and sharing the contact data to be able to manage the online friendships. To overcome the disadvantages of fragmented data central storage has to be established.
In combination with exchange mechanisms it would make data reusable, which means all the social networks the user is part of could be synchronised. This is especially useful when entering a new network. It is like moving into a new city and already know some people. Inevitable for such a scenario is that the information of the social networks are portable and that the user can be uniquely identified. There are e orts to achieve this goal, but up to now only partial problems have been solved. An overall concept seems not possible at the moment due to […]
Leseprobe
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Sören Weber
Data portability and relation management in social web applications
ISBN: 978-3-8366-2327-8
Herstellung: Diplomica® Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, 2009
Zugl. Universität Bremen, Bremen, Deutschland, Bachelorarbeit, 2008
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Abstract in deutscher Sprache
Diese Bachelor-Arbeit besch¨aftigt sich mit der Synchronisierung von so ge-
nannten sozialen Netzwerken. Dieser Typus von Internet Applikation erfreut
sich immer gr¨oßerer Beliebtheit, was dazu f¨uhrt, dass die Benutzer mehrere
Identit¨aten, sowie eine Freundesliste pro Netzwerk zu verwalten haben. Da-
raus ist das Bestreben entstanden Daten portabel und damit wiederverwend-
bar zu machen, um z.B. nicht mehrmals eine Beziehung zu der gleichen Person
zu bekunden.
Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen gibt es zahlreiche Projekte und Technologien,
die bereits Teilfragen dieser Problematik l¨osen. Dabei gibt es noch offene
konzeptionelle Fragen wie grunds¨atzlich mit diesem Problem umgegangen
werden soll. Auch sind die Techniken teilweise nur f¨ur sehr spezielle Anwen-
dungsf¨alle bzw. noch nicht f¨ur einen professionellen Einsatz geeignet.
In dieser Arbeit sollen die aktuellen M¨oglichkeiten genutzt und einige dieser
Technologien verwendet und zu einem Gesamtsystem zusammengestzt wer-
den. Dieses System besteht aus einem zentralen Identit¨atsanbieter, der als
zentraler Speicherort f¨ur die Kontaktdaten fungiert.
¨
Uber Schnittstellen
k¨onnen Kontaktdaten mit dem sozialen Netzwerk ausgetauscht werden wodurch
sich das Beziehungsmanagement f¨ur die Benutzer verbessert.
Abstract
This Bachelor-Thesis deals with the synchronisation of social network ser-
vices. This type of internet application enjoys great popularity which results
in new challenges for identity and relation management. On one side the
user has to manage different identities and on the other side a friendslist per
social network service. From this efforts arose to make data portable and
reusable for example in order to avoid re-declaring friends on every site.
To accomplish this goal numerous projects and technologies have been de-
veloped, which already provide partial solutions for this problem. The basic
conceptual question however how to deal with the problem generally is still
open. Moreover some of the techniques are only suitable for special use cases
or else not ready for a professional use. In this thesis some of the existing
standards shall be used to tie them together to one total system. This sys-
tem consists out of a central identity provider, which functions as a central
storage for the users contact data. By utilising interfaces this contact data
can be exchanged with the social network service and by that improves the
relation management for the users.
CONTENTS
Contents
List of Figures
iii
1 Introduction
1
2 Social network services
3
2.1 Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3
2.2 Present SNS usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4
2.3 Relation and identity management in SNS . . . . . . . . . . .
5
2.4 Present data portability and its problems . . . . . . . . . . . .
9
2.4.1
Political situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9
2.4.2
Technical situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3 Current data portability solutions
14
3.1 Microformats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.2 XRDS-simple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.3 OAuth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.4 RDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.5 OpenID plus Attribute Exchange Extension . . . . . . . . . . 20
4 Concept for a SNS metadirectory
22
4.1 Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.2 Concept description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5 Development of the prototype
26
5.1 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.1.1
Functional and data description . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.1.2
System architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.1.3
Interface description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
i
CONTENTS
5.1.4
Usage scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5.1.5
Data model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
5.2 Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
5.2.1
Data design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
5.2.2
Architectural and component-level design . . . . . . . . 31
5.2.3
Interface description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.3 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.3.1
Setting up the OpenID server and the SNS . . . . . . . 36
5.3.2
Attribute Exchange - Fetch Message . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.3.3
Processing the FOAF data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5.3.4
Attribute Exchange Store Message . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.4 Appraisal of results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
6 Summary and Outlook
42
References
44
A Appendix
46
A.1 Source code digest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
ii
LIST OF FIGURES
List of Figures
1
hCard example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2
XRDS-simple example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3
Concept overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4
System Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5
Use Case1 - Synchronise Contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
6
Use Case2 - Update Contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
7
Use Case3 - View Contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
8
Entity Relationship Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
9
FOAF format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
10
Component diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
11
Sequence diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
12
Build Fetch Request (SNS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
13
Process Fetch Response (SNS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
14
Process the FOAF-data (SNS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
15
Build Store Request (SNS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
16
Process Store Request (Identity Provider) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
iii
1 INTRODUCTION
1
Introduction
Recent years have witnessed the great popularity of online social networking
services, in which millions of members publicly articulate mutual "friend-
ship" relations. Social network services have become a major application
in the internet. Correspondingly the number of provider such social net-
work services has multiplied and accommodates estimated 272 million users
worldwide (Universalmccann, 2008). The mass adoption of social networking
websites points to an evolution in human social interaction. These sites let
the user create an identity namely their profile, which they fill with personal
information. These identities can then be searched and relationships among
the users can be made. A user can make friends virtually and by that creates
his own social circle, that is why it can also be regarded as a reflection of
the real world. Most of the users are part in more than one social network,
which creates problems in terms of identity and relation management. At
the moment there seems to be no consolidation among the services, but a
further fragmentation and by that also a fragmentation of information.
In the real world people can be easily identified, but this is not possible in
the internet as there is no physical contact. People using assumed names as
an identifier which may be different on every platform. On top of this it is
difficult to manage all the contacts which are spread over several services. At
the moment the social network services do not offer ways to get the data out
of their platforms to reuse it somewhere else. The use of separate networks
may be wanted by the users regarding order and different roles they can slip
into. In spite of these aspects there is an increasing demand for reusing and
sharing the contact data to be able to manage the online 'friendships'. To
overcome the disadvantages of fragmented data central storage has to be es-
1
1 INTRODUCTION
tablished. In combination with exchange mechanisms it would make data
reusable, which means all the social networks the user is part of could be
synchronised. This is especially useful when entering a new network. It is
like moving into a new city and already know some people.
Inevitable for such a scenario is that the information of the social networks
are portable and that the user can be uniquely identified. There are efforts to
achieve this goal, but up to now only partial problems have been solved. An
overall concept seems not possible at the moment due to technical crudity
and the difficulty to bring the different interests of users and social network
services in line. Nevertheless there are existing standards that can be com-
bined to one concept. This thesis will first analyse the needs and existing
solutions in order to develop a prototype which is able to synchronise contacts
in social networks.
2
2 SOCIAL NETWORK SERVICES
2
Social network services
2.1
Definition
To outline the problem field first the term 'social network service' (in the
following 'SNS') has to be defined. SNSs are a representative of social me-
dia, which arose from the Web 2.0 movement
1
. Social media means online
applications, platforms and media which aim to facilitate interaction, coll-
aboration and the sharing of content (Richter and Koch, 2007). SNSs can be
defined with different viewpoints. "Social networks refers to systems, that
allow members of a specific site to learn about other members` skills, talents,
knowledge or preferences" (McKinsey, 2008). To be more general a social
network is "an online location where a user can create a profile and build
a personal network that connects him or her to other users" (Lenhart and
Madden, 2007)
SNSs are based on interaction between the users which implies a web-based
application as it is only applicable in an online environment and can differ
in their services. They all have in common, that a user has to sign up for
an account to be able to create a profile. Such a profile contains different
information depending on the structure of the network, but in most cases at
least basic personal data like name, address and birth date. In combination
with a chosen nickname or an e-mail address the profile depicts the users
identity in a SNS. These contents provided by the users are also called social
objects. These objects plus the connections of the users among each other
1
Definition of TechEncyclopedia (http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/): Web 2.0
is not a specific technology; rather, it refers to two major paradigm shifts. The one most
often touted is "user-generated content," which relates more to individuals. The second,
which is equally significant, but more related to business, is "thin client computing."
3
2 SOCIAL NETWORK SERVICES
constitute a SNS (Wagner, 2007).
The goal of such a service is to let the users build and maintain their indi-
vidual social network. Based on the 'population' of users different kinds of
interaction are implemented. The most basic one is that people can make
friends with each other and by that creating a contact list. This inter-
connection between user profiles creates a network which is called social
network in this context. Usually profiles can be searched, so that it is easy
to find people who already participate. In addition the inhibition level to
confirm a friend request is quite low as the friendship is quickly established
virtually and by that a user can build a wide network very fast. This of
course highly depends on the number of users who are already there. The
more people are member, the higher the motivation for potential users to
actually sign up. Furthermore, with a large amount of members network
effects become an interesting aspect of social networks.
This concept is the common basis of all SNSs and specific services are built
on top of that. Further services are for example message exchange, virtual
notice boards, photo exchange, discussion groups etc.. By this time there are
hundreds of SNSs which differ from each other in the type of services and
topic
2
.
2.2
Present SNS usage
"Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of
wider economic, social and cultural development. If you are online you are
using social media" (Universalmccann, 2008). This statement points out the
2
http://mashable.com/2007/10/23/social-networking-god/
4
2 SOCIAL NETWORK SERVICES
importance of social media which can be proved on the basis of the repre-
sentative survey from Universalmccann (Universalmccann, 2008). According
to that 82.9% of the internet users have watched videos online, 72.8% are
reading blogs online and regarding SNS usage the survey reveals that 57%
have joined a social network, making it the number one platform for creating
and sharing content. Furthermore there is also a trend identifiable. Whereas
in September 2006 only 27.3% of the worldwide internet users had a profile
on a social network there are now over 57% using such services (Universalm-
ccann, 2008). The growth rate is therewith by far the highest comparing to
other categories of fields of application. In 2007 compete.com
3
determined
that over 30% of the site views of the web are caused by SNSs with the major
ones leading the way. The biggest social network MySpace
4
has now over 114
million users (Universalmccann, 2008), but the success is not only limited to
one service. There are 16 other SNSs with over 15 million users plus many
smaller ones (Universalmccann, 2008). There is also the phenomenon of niche
social networks. In the face of the all encompassing large social networks a
raft of more niche and sometimes exclusive networks are emerging (Univer-
salmccann, 2008). These facts emphasise the need for data synchronisation.
As a result of this survey it is stated that "Social networks are today the
main platform for sharing content and have increasingly become the means
to manage social relationships."
2.3
Relation and identity management in SNS
Due to the high popularity to manage social relationships with the help of
SNSs there is a high demand to extend the possibilities to take advantage of
3
web analytics company, available at: http://www.compete.com
4
popular social networking website, available at: http://myspace.com
5
2 SOCIAL NETWORK SERVICES
the data and the need for a new kind of relation management emerged. In the
abstract SNSs provide on one side the functionality of identity management,
so to express certain aspects of the own person. On the other side SNSs
provide relation management, precisely managing and maintaining contacts
(enhanced address book) (Breslin and Decker, 2007).
In the real world identity representatives or identity proxies (Becker, 2006)
are used to identify people. This can be a passport, drivers license but also
personal attributes like age and origin (Windley and Randal, 2005). There
is however no physical contact in the virtual world, so that these different
views on the identity do not exist in this context and other identity proxies
are necessary. Usually a user of a SNS chooses an alias or nickname which
is used as an identifier for this specific service. This however read little into
the real person behind. In addition many users choose different nicknames
which is also used to slip into various roles.
The relationships made on a social network can be viewed in terms of nodes
and ties. The persons are the nodes and the ties can be viewed as social
interactions or relations between the actors (Koch et al., 2007). That is why
the unity of relations is also called social graph (St¨ocker, 2007). As soon
as someone is part in more than one social network, he is member of two
different social circles. In network A he will have a different contact list than
in network B. There will be differences, but also cut sets, which results in a
duplication of the social graph. Using the platforms is therewith different to
the real world where the user is central. SNSs however are not a group of peo-
ple, but just a representation and the SNS just function as a tool (Vanasco,
2007). This leads to a confusing mix of diverse online contact points one
6
Details
- Seiten
- Erscheinungsform
- Originalausgabe
- Jahr
- 2008
- ISBN (eBook)
- 9783836623278
- DOI
- 10.3239/9783836623278
- Dateigröße
- 590 KB
- Sprache
- Englisch
- Institution / Hochschule
- Universität Bremen – Informatik
- Erscheinungsdatum
- 2008 (Dezember)
- Note
- 1,3
- Schlagworte
- netzwerke identität
