A Social Web
What’s going on, Internet? This week me and others across the web noticed the Launch of Social Web Foundation. This is from the camp who’ve developed ActivityPub. ActivityPub is the protocol that enable social media clones like Mastodon, and Pixelfed to operate.
Up until now, this has been known as the ‘Fediverse’ but now they want to rebrand this as “the social web”. Over on the team profiles under Evan Prodromou’s bio they claim that the social web began in 2008.
Sometimes called “The Father of the Fediverse,” Evan made the first-ever post on the social web in May 2008.
This is amusing because I’ve been using the web to be social since I got online in 1996! I’ve even been social on the web on this very website (a very different website) back in 2000!
The web was wild back then…
I think I’m a bit annoyed at this as the web doesn’t need social media to be social. It’s been social well before social media. Have you heard of blogs, guestbooks, forums, instant messaging, email? I agree with everything Bix wrote in Holy Hell, The Social Web Did Not Begin In 2008.
I don’t think I’m upset at their mission which is to grow the ‘Fediverse’, but did they have to take the term ‘social web’? This doesn’t sit well with me and gives me similar vibes when the crypto crowd started throwing ‘web3’ around.
The social web is something that exists as the spirit of the web along with the small web, the indie web and the open web.
And you can’t have the web without websites. Laterz.
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