What It Means to Federate the Social Web

Have you heard about the concept of federating the social Web? If not, it is, essentially, the idea of expanding the social experience beyond a specific social network.

According to Monica Wilkinson, the Engineering Director at Socialcast, the concept has emerged since users want to have the same type of experiences all over the Web.

“No matter where you go, you want to bring your friends with you and have social contacts,” she said.

For example, if a user checks in on Foursquare, it shows the activity on Twitter as well. It, ultimately, helps users connect with more people, which give them more information to help as they make decisions.

As a business solution in this space, Socialcast connects people and applications together to meet business goals. It is an enterprise activity stream engine that helps to fulfill internal goals within a business. It also serves as a brand-monitoring tool.

Socialcast also integrates into sites such as Microsoft’s SharePoint and Salesforce in order to bring employees together on projects and systems. The tracking aspect of the service gives businesses valuable insights and data about their goals.

Because the idea of federating the social Web is still new, there are multiple possibilities. At this point, the communication is very unidirectional. Going back to the Foursquare/Twitter example from above, a user cannot respond on Twitter and have the comment appear on Foursquare.

For this reason, Wilkinson believes a 2-way communication model is the next step. Socialcast is working in this direction and hopes to reach its goal to allow information to truly flow.

How does the concept of federating the social Web benefit your business?

There are 2 Comments. Add Yours.

Amberen
April 5, 2011 at 3:28 am

Why is the word “Federate” used in the title of this post?

I ask that because, to me, the word federate means federal, and so, when I saw the title of this post, I was like, “Oh no…now the government wants to take over social media?”

But now, from watching the interview, I see that it seems to be something different.

So, this SocialCast…it seems to be a move to try to syndicate everything, from Twitter to GoWalla to..you name it..into one place altogether?

It’ll be interesting to see how people are supposed to monitor the constant influx of new data, especially if there’s a lot of buzz or talk on the net about your company’s products or services.

The question will be, “What do we pay attention to?”
- Abby Johnson
  April 5, 2011 at 10:51 am
  
  Companies such as Socialcast are calling the idea of expanding social experiences beyond any one network “federating the social Web,” so that’s why the word “federate” was used in the title.