Ross Mayfield kicks off the Social Software Alliance with a call for discussion about the purpose and scope of an alliance to create and promote open standards for the social software community.
We propose a trade group of social software developers and other interested parties who work together to create and promote open standards for the social software community. Social software blends tools and modes for richer online social environments and experiences. Some examples of social software are weblogs, wikis, forums, chat environments, or instant messaging, and related tools and data structures for identity, integration, interchange and analysis.
Social software is a dynamic and constantly evolving environment, rich with possibilities to create better connections between people. With a growing number of active developers, we need a central nexus to help drive the process of coordination and interoperability between different developers' products.
The alliance will:
- aid discovery of developers working on synergistic projects and standards
- assist in shaping open standards that mesh well with other alliance and Internet standards
- help promote each standard to gain wider adoption
The fast-paced nature of the social software space now argues for developing light-weight, easy-to-implement standards, following the Internet tradition of rough consensus and running code, but perhaps moving faster than the larger standards bodies.
I'm currently trying to make time to build some simple, light-weight tools around these "light-weight, easy-to-implement standards". I find that coding is a useful way to think through non-technical as well as technical issues - it gives me a focus to ask and answer questions about why something should work this way rather than that, about how the tool reflects, accommodates and enhances different modes of interaction. Much like I find writing is a useful way to structure and probe my own thinking (although I still do most of that with pen and paper rather than online).
I don't expect to be publishing production-quality code, so I guess I'll fall into the category of "other interested parties", supporting the development of "richer online social environments and experiences..... to create better connections between people".
7:27:18 PM 
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