Digital Homes and Communities are driven by a core tech stack, and a set of APIs supporting standard use cases.
Tech Stack: REST APIs
The common tech stack across digital home and community standards is the REST and JSON API standards. How companies deliver these standards is not dictated by the Digital Home Initiative: only the ability to exchange APIs in REST / JSON format.
Digital Home Use Case Epics
DHI has a number of core use case Epic categories that must be supported by anyone operating with this standard:
- Directory: The Directory is comparable to Microsoft's Active Directory and single-sign-on concepts, defining people, what they have access to, and what they can do. 'People' include myself and others (e.g. children, aging parents) that I want to store information about that will be treated as Personally-Identifiable Information PII or otherwise confidential.
- Post [aka tweet, snap, insta, etc]: Posts are any content posted to a Social Network SN that is not directed to a set of people. DHI defines Posts abstracts that are portable and can be shared within a Digital Community and across multiple SNs.
- Message: Messages are posts except that they are directed to a set of people, and can be part of a conversation (block chain) of multiple messages
- Voice & Video: DHI proposes standards enabling seamless connectivity
- Community (Friends, Groups): DHI's Digital Communities define my friends as someone in my Directory that I've given rights to, and may include 'Family' (advanced rights, legal relationships), 'Friends' (moderate rights, no legal relationships), and 'Colleagues' (minimal rights). A Person's Digital Community can be organized by Groups, which also can be shared among those in my Community.
Specialty Social Network Use Cases
The Digital Home Initiative recognizes that social networks will continue to develop advanced use cases that demonstrate their value as a brand. The intent is not to stop that or to standardize that.
If you want to enjoy the specialty features of Twitter, you will need to join Twitter.
DHI minimizes the PII impact of joining a new site by enabling you to connect your new profile to your Directory: e.g. “my Twitter account has single-sign-on/SSO authentication and authorization access to my Directory and Digital Community on FB”
DHI Use Case Samples
DHI Use Cases
Directory Use Case Stories
- As a social media consumer, I can choose where my ‘Digital Home’ resides (I choose FB, you choose Twitter or MeWe); I can also pack up my digital home and ‘move’ to another SN (portability)
- As a social media consumer with my DH on one SN, I can signup for other SN sites using my DH SN as a ‘single-sign-on’ origin
- As a social media consumer, I can accept ‘friends’/connections’ from any SN (my DH on FB, yours on Twitter) without needing to sign up for the other SN
- As a social media consumer, I can store industry-standard PII fields in my directory that can be shared across SNs with ‘time-to-live’ time periods set to expire on external SNs
- As a social media consumer, I can build my Personally-Identifiable Information PII in my Directory
- As a social media consumer, I can see the universe of data collected about me, and ability to define what I consider PII
- As a social media consumer, I want my Directory responsible for protecting my PII
- As a social media consumer, I want a log of all foreign advertising and SN access to my directory, profile & PII, including status of ‘leases’ of that information to entities
Post Use Case Stories
- As a social media consumer, I can create posts in any of my subscribed SNs, and an abstract of that post is made available to my Digital Community regardless of the SN they reside in via my Digital Home
- As a social media consumer, comments I post are treated as ‘posts’ and abstracts are available through my Digital Home. Comment Posts by others are excluded from my Digital Home and Digital Community
Message Use Case Stories
- As a social media consumer, I can create messages in any of my subscribed SNs, and an abstract of that message is made available to my Digital Home. The abstract will include links to any MIME-encoded attachments which could be retrieved in my Digital Home messaging area if desired. For example, in Twitter I send a direct message to Jimmy. The abstract of that message is sent to my Digital Home on FB.
- As a social media consumer, I can send a message to anyone in my digital community, with the full message being sent as normal to anyone on the SN I originate the message from (e.g. Twitter users receive normal direct message), and an abstract of that message will be sent to any friends on external SNs (my FB friends will get an abstract of my Tweet).
Voice & Video Call Use Case Stories
- As a social media consumer, I can initiate voice and video calls within my digital community regardless of the home SN of my friend: e.g. I am on FB, Robbie is on MeWe, we can call each other.
Community Use Case Stories
- As a social media consumer, I can accept community/friend requests from any of my subscribed SNs
- As a social media consumer, I can designate a friend request as minimum 3 different strata: ‘Friend’, ‘Family’, ‘Colleague’
- As a social media consumer, when I subscribe to a new SN attached to my Digital Home/Directory, I can be prompted to extend my directory to connect to my existing community members accounts on that SN (e.g. “I am on FB, I create a Twitter account hinged to my Directory on FB, I am prompted to connect on Twitter to all my FB friends already on Twitter, results of those connects remain on my Directory on FB but are also enabled when I am in Twitter)
- As a social media consumer, I give ‘time-to-live’ leases/rights to access my Digital Community relationships on my Directory to external SNs (e.g. “I am on FB, my Twitter is connected to my Directory on FB, Twitter has a 7-day lease to my digital community information, which by default will be renewed until I shut down access in my Directory on FB; when shut down, Twitter must purge those relationships”)