The success of social networking sites like Friendster has proven that the Web can be a powerful means of establishing and developing both personal and professional connections that might not otherwise have been made. But the Internet itself is a network that could provide these benefits without the need for such centralized, proprietary services. How can "social software" based on open standards be built? And how can it be done securely, in a way that respects users' privacy?

Planetwork's "Identity Commons" initiative, which grew out of its "Augmented Social Network" proposal, is one approach to this challenge. Just two months ago the initiative launched its "early registration program."

Identity Commons offers a few basic benefits that are similar to what Microsoft "Passport" meant to do years ago, including the ability to use a single sign-on to a variety of Web resources and automatic fill-in of Web forms that require personal data. But more important, it holds the promise of such features as: generation of network maps that enable communities to more effectively understand their own membership, collaborative filtering services based on knowledge and reputation databases where contributors can also control their own level of anonymity, and enabling of group formation around common interests and affinities with reputation attributes for trusted communication.

Other such initiatives are likely to emerge from work on the "Semantic Web," a project led by Web pioneer Tim Berners-Lee, which aims to make Web data more easily machine-processable so that more meaningful connections among data can be made. RDF (Resource Definition Format) is the key, XML-based, technology for this ambitious project. One RDF-based application, "FOAF", for example, aims to describe persons, their attributes, and their interconnections with other persons described using the same format.

Both projects are in their incipient stages and likely to appeal mainly to early adoptors, but both point to a future Web which connects not only computers, but people.

For more on social software:

• Some of the leading exponents of social software offer commentary on the Many-to-Many Web log

For more on the "Semantic Web":

• Wikipedia offers a good overview, including a mention of FOAF.