Social Networking Challenges Identified by Industry Leaders in W3CWorkshop

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Report Highlights Need for Interoperable Distributed Social WebFramework

Contact Americas, Australia--

Ian Jacobs, <ij@w3.org>, +1.718.260.9447

Contact Europe, Africa and the Middle East--

Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94

http://www.w3.org/-- 3 February 2009 --Participants in W3C'sWorkshop onthe Future of Social Networkingannounced a number of importantobservations in areportissuedtoday:

• By enabling users to share profiles and data across networks, social networking sites can grow further and open possibilities for adecentralized architecture for the Social Web.

• Contextual information, especially for mobile device users, can significantly enrich the social networking user experience.

• Many users remain unaware of theimpact of social networking on their privacy.
• Though growing rapidly, social networking sites (especially their business models) are hampered bylack of interoperabilityand could benefit from micropayment solutions.
• Many social networking sites have yet to take into account the special requirements ofusers with disabilities, and users on mobile devices.

The report, issued by the fifty-five organizations that participated inthe 2-day Workshop, also suggested asnext steps

for W3C to create anIncubator Group

for further discussion on thistopic.

"Now is the time for the diverse social network actors out there to worktogether and resolve barriers to industry growth and stability," saidDominique Hazaël-Massieux, W3C'sMobile Web InitiativeActivityLead. "All social networks users, and especially young people,expect the richest possible social experience, but with full mobility,accessibility, and privacy."

W3C welcomes interest in discussions about how W3C can build communityaround social networking interoperability. Interested parties can use the

public-social-web-talk="public-social-web-talk">publicmailing list

or contact Dominique Hazaël-Massieux <dom@w3.org>.

About the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

TheWorld Wide Web Consortium(W3C) is aninternational consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, andthe public work together to develop Web standards and guidelines designed toensure long-term growth for the Web. Over 400 organizations are Members ofthe Consortium. W3C is jointly run by theMIT Computer Science and ArtificialIntelligence Laboratory

(MIT CSAIL) in the USA, theEuropean Research Consortium for Informatics andMathematics

(ERCIM) headquartered in France andKeio University

in Japan, and has seventeenoutreachoffices worldwide. For moreinformation seehttp://www.w3.org

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