Last week (June 5-7th, 2025), the Fediforum unconference was held online, with keynote speakers and open sessions for attendees to present demos of new products and discuss topics related to the “open social web”. There have been many posts about the open social web, and how this technology or that protocol is part of the “open social web”. I felt it would be good to step back for a moment and try to understand what the phrase “open social web” means.

To begin, I will look at the word “open”. To me, the opposite of this word is “closed”. Dave Winer recently referred to Twitter and Facebook as “closed” systems, and referred to Unix as an “open” system. I think this comparison is in the context of “open for people to develop for the platform and use it however they want”. In this context, Mastodon and WordPress are open systems, in that the code base is “open source“, meaning available for users/developers to modify and improve, and to run their own copy of the software. Another content of the word “open” could also include the ability for users of a platform/software stack to interact with other users of the web outside that platform/software stack. A common complaint about Twitter and Facebook is that users cannot link directly to other locations on the web within a post. This is a “feature” of a “silo”, where “users” are “trapped” (note the use of quotes in this sentence – links to these topics are left as an exercise for the reader). Another possible context for an “open” system could be the ability/possibility for a person or company to purchase the platform and take it in a different direction (Twitter).

Next, I want to examine the use of the word “web”. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, linking is a basic tenet of the World Wide Web. If a system/platform/application that operates on the Web does not allow linking, that system/platform/application is not supporting the World Wide Web. Dave Winer has also captured some other fundamental features of writing on the web, which includes links. However, the link is the fundamental feature. If an application does not allow linking, is it really part of the World Wide Web, or is it just a “silo” service trying to trap users into staying on its platform because of the network effect.

Finally, we come to the word “social”. To me, being “social” means communication with others. This communication can occur in real life or online. Going back to the services/applications, my view of “social media” is it is a way for a person to broadcast messages to many people, and to have interaction/communications with many people. Tools/applications/platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Mastodon, Bluesky, and many more are facilitating this type of communication. Some people interact with a small group of people. Some people seem to want to have as big an audience as possible. When a person has an account on a service/application/platform which indicates that millions of people are reading/watching/monitoring the messages from that person, this communication approaches the reach of so-called “mass media” (think TV/radio/cable networks). Whether this is good or not, I do not know. However, this is the social media world that exists today. All of the tools mentioned in this post have a “social” aspect to their publishing. For blogs, use of RSS provides a way for people to “follow” authors without the “instant” feedback of Twitter/Facebook/etc, but it is a social application. There are ways to speed it up (see The Feed Network for some examples), but it does not have to be that way. Also, the abundance of social media platforms can bring fatigue (see essays by Molly White and Mandy Brown).

In all of this, it is important to remember that different people use tools in different ways for different purposes. For some people, the “open” part of “open social web” is the most important. For many people, having the ability to have “social” interactions with many people and to do it in an easy way is the most important. Finally, as Doc Searls righteously points out about podcasting (but also applies to the Web): “Nobody owns it, Everybody can use it and Anybody can improve it. That means anybody and everybody can do wherever they want with it. It’s theirs—and nobody’s—for the taking.” I think people should keep this in mind when starting to find fault or criticize how people or groups are innovating in web technologies. Let’s work on making great things!