Understanding Federation: An Analytical Framework for the Interoperability of Social Networking Sites

TL;DR

This paper introduces an analytical framework to evaluate interoperability across social networking sites, revealing significant disparities and areas needing standardization and improvement.

Contribution

It proposes a novel framework for analyzing SNS interoperability and compares seven technologies, highlighting fragmentation and potential areas for standardization.

Findings

Disparity and fragmentation in SNS interoperability solutions

Consensus exists on object IDs, but profile representation lacks standardization

Room for improvement in privacy controls and data synchronization

Abstract

Although social networking has become a remarkable feature in the Web, full interoperability has not arrived. This work explores the main 5 paradigms of interoperability across social networking sites, corresponding to the layers in which we an find interoperability. Building on those, a novel analytical framework for SNS interoperability is introduced. Seven representative interoperability SNS technologies are compared using the proposed framework. The analysis exposes an overwhelming disparity and fragmentation in the solutions for tackling the same problems. Although there are a few solutions where consensus is reached and are widely adopted (e.g. in object IDs), there are multiple central issues that are still far from being widely standarized (e.g. in profile representation). In addition, several areas have been identified where there is clear room for improvement, such as privacy controls or data synchronization.