I published a blog post at Social coding commons that delves into the opportunities for the ActivityPub API to enable something of a paradigm shift to the fediverse, to what I call the Prosocial web, a fediverse of apps and services. Part of the article provides an overview of current activities in the ecosystem.
On the fediverse I announced the post in this toot (boosts appreciated):
#Fediverse today consists of apps and app platforms. It is entirely app-centric.
Since fediverse (luckily) didn't attract much corporate attention yet, it is dominated by #FOSS culture, where people on the #SocialWeb are all "users" that are dependent on FOSS developers to serve their needs. Every dev focuses on their app features first and #interoperability second, leading to a patchwork of poorly integrated apps, and a janky overall experience. The app delivery model is not much different than Web 2.0.
A paradigm shift is possible, to a #SocialNetwork of apps and services, a service-oriented #fedi. The efforts around the #ActivityPub API can be the enabler of this shift.
In this new paradigm devs introduce solutions to a unified #SocialNetworking space, delivering new services to participants on the network. On top of a robust Protocol Layer they model social use cases in the Data Layer, integrating with services and building blocks already available.
The major challenges the fediverse faces are all social in nature. The tech is not holding us back. Imho the developer ecosytem is too tech-focused, following tech-first approach. "Build it and they will come" in FOSS projects, "Spec it and they will build" in the standardization process. A focus shift to solution-orientation for development, and service-orientation for the fediverse, can bring the paradigm shift.
If there are changes or additions you'd like to see in the article, the drop me a line and I will consider them.
I published a blog post at Social coding commons that delves into the opportunities for the ActivityPub API to enable something of a paradigm shift to the fediverse, to what I call the Prosocial web, a fediverse of apps and services. Part of the article provides an overview of current activities in the ecosystem.
On the fediverse I announced the post in this toot (boosts appreciated):
Paradigm shift to the Prosocial web
The major challenges the fediverse faces are all social in nature. The tech is not holding us back. Imho the developer ecosytem is too tech-focused, following tech-first approach. "Build it and they will come" in FOSS projects, "Spec it and they will build" in the standardization process. A focus shift to solution-orientation for development, and service-orientation for the fediverse, can bring the paradigm shift.
If there are changes or additions you'd like to see in the article, the drop me a line and I will consider them.