Let's start with some definitions: what is a "network", what is a "collaborative tool", who are "scientists" and what does it mean "social"? What current sites, services and pieces of software count as "social networking tools for scientists"? Just those emulating Facebook? Databases? Journals? - Bora Zivkovic

All good questions, maybe we can have a first hack at them tomorrow at BBC/online here? - Cameron Neylon

I was thinking about writing a blog post about it, but had no time this week and will be in NYC while you guys are at SciFoo, so perhaps we can chat here and then post later on our blogs? - Bora Zivkovic

Great points by Bora - we don't even think about how these things are defined, we just parrot the buzzwords - Neil Saunders

Just don't say "social media" for scientists, or you'll be able to hear me scream from Seattle - Deepak Singh

This is a central problem of all sites that implement social features, not just science sites, most of which are hopelessly web 0.9. Hence the rise of things like Facebook Connect and Google Friends. The best that we can hope for is that developers employ things like openID and better yet shared (professional) profiles like from epernicus.com. - Todd Harris

The contrary view would be that there are already significant efforts underway in standardizing this, and effort would be better spent in writing software and/or building communities - Nick Lothian

I think centralisation and decentralisation are inevitable ebbs and flows of computer systems. For a network to hit critical mass it needs to either manage to be a strange attractor for an interesting group, or offer enough new functionality (like FriendFeed) to bring people in who are already doing things elsewhere. - Richard Akerman

@Neil this is why I thought focussing on the existing sites might be useful rather than taking some grant philosophical position. @Bora I think chat here and/or on Google Doc and then update as we go around. Question as to whether it is worth putting this up as a session at BBC/SciFoo as well? - Cameron Neylon

I second what Nick said. The open social graph will happen, science networks really shouldn't be doing their own thing too... OTOH microformats and FOAF being available along with hashed email addresses would help. - Euan

@Euan @Nick I agree absolutely, that's why I'm pushing for adopting more widely used platforms, while looking at useful features and what people actually use. - Cameron Neylon

I think we should start supporting the standards and APIs that already exist, mainly the standard features that every social networking site needs. Those that don't will probably be left behind. - Martin Fenner

@Cameron - what do you mean by "adopting more widely used platforms"? Platforms as in standards? Or platforms as in software products? I agree with adopting standards, but not about software products (I'm somewhat biased, as I develop a product in this space). I don't think the market is ready for product consolidation yet - there are still too many new features being created, which makes it hard to pick winners. Plus, there's the whole hosted offering (Ning etc) vs installable software debate to consider. - Nick Lothian

@Nick good questions. I didn't mean software products because I don't think the right ones exist, but standards certainly. As for installable versus hosted my personal view is that something along the Wordpress model is a good route. There will be plenty of people with the skills and wish to deploy locally and plenty without the skills or resources to do it. In the end though I don't see this as a single product but as a platform. Essentially that means a data standard and tranport mechanisms of some sort. - Cameron Neylon

@Cameron Well that's easy then. HTTP+Atom+XFN+The OpenSocial REST APIs and datamodel+OpenID+OAuth - Nick Lothian

In terms of open standards/transports, it might make sense to also discuss XMPP Publish-Subscribe/Jabber (http://www.xmpp.org/). There's been some recent discussion on how it may be a better fit for some social applications than HTTP/ATOM. I found this presentation instructive: http://www.slideshare.net/rabble... - Fitzgerald Steele