One Social Web

A lot of the hype this week has been about Google Buzz, and for good reason: Google tends to do internet projects very, very well. But the project that has me most excited is the much more ambitious One Social Web.

One Social Web aims to decentralize the social internet by allowing all social networks to interact. Buzz, Facebook, Twitter and all the other social sites we use really should be able to talk to each other and we should be able to keep in touch with friends no matter where they decide to share their lives. What OSW does is create the framework to allow this, which is a wonderful development.

The purpose of onesocialweb is to enable free, open, and decentralized social applications on the web. Its protocol can be used to turn any XMPP server into a full fledged social network, participating in the onesocialweb federation. The suite of extensions covers all the usual social networking use cases such as user profiles, relationships, activity streams and third party applications. In addition, it provides support for fine grained access control, realtime notification and collaboration.

OneSocialWeb promises to make our social networks seamless. There will be no more hopping between Twitter, Facebook and Buzz, because we will have one interface to carry on all our online social interactions. I’ll get your updates no matter where you post them, and that will make the web a richer place.

For more commentary on OneSocialWeb, I recommend taking a look at “Storytlr Founders Announce Ambitious One Social Web Project“, which was posted at Lifestream Blog.

P.S. Yes, I am a happy user of Google Buzz; I just want it, Twitter, Facebook and every other site I use to be plugged into a bigger world. If you’d like to follow my buzzing, visit my Google Buzz profile.

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