This week’s issue of the excellent Digital Web Magazine leads with an article I’ve written about Distributed Social Networking, published under the title Portable Social Networking: Building Blocks of a Social Web

It’s an overview of distributed social networking in a microformats context, explaining how XFN and hCard gives us most of what we need to start exposing users to the benefits of having information made available between different social sites.

As well as explaining how to go about publishing these things and explaining what the first iteration of consumption could be, I’ve also tried to emphasise how important it is to guide users into this interconnected world gently, since many won’t appreciate that their information is quite so public.

It’s a little lengthy, but I hope it gets people thinking about the possibilities.

At BlogTalk back in March and again at BarCamp London 4 last week I did a session on the foundations of Distributed Social Networking; a simple guide through the basics of describing ourselves and social relationships with XFN and hCard and how they can be pulled together to do some first-step but useful things.

I’m not totally sure the slides are useful by themselves, but I’ve had a few requests so I’ve published them, with the limited speaker notes I’ve been working from. I’m releasing them to you under a Creative Commons Attribution–Non-Commercial–Share Alike UK license. Note that I am totally willing for the deck being reused commercially (if you wish to re-use them for a paid engagement, or wish to republish or modify a slide into a graphic for publication), but I do insist that you seek my explicit permission first, beyond the scope of the CC license; I simply wish to reserve the right to decline.

• Download static PDF
• Download Apple Keynote Presentation