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Verified against w3.org group pages, W3C specifications API (version histories), WG charter, w3c/socialwg meeting notes to 2026-10-09 on 2026-10-15.

W3C Social Web Groups

The Social Web standards emerged from over a decade of W3C work. This page documents the groups involved in their development and maintenance.

Timeline Overview​

GroupPeriodStatus
Social Web XG2009-2010Closed
Social Interest Group2013-2016Closed
Social Web WG (1st)2014-2018Closed
Social Web CG (SWICG)2016-presentActive
Social Web WG (2nd)2026-2028Active

Social Web XG (2009-2010)​

Started: April 6, 2009

The Social Web Incubator Group was W3C's first formal effort to understand and standardize the emerging Social Web landscape.

Key Resources​

  • Final Report — Identified six core frameworks: Identity, Profile, Social Media, Privacy, Activity, and Decentralized Social Networking
  • Wiki — Requirements and use cases
  • Charter
  • Mailing List

Strategic Recommendations​

Proposed Identity in Browser support, Profile Data Coordination, Semantic Web Integration, Privacy frameworks, Federated Social Web Support, and W3C Process Opening (Community Groups).

Social Interest Group (2013-2016)​

Coordinated messaging around social at W3C and formulated strategy for social business and federation.

Resources​

Deliverables​

  • Use-case and Requirements Report
  • Social Architecture Report (survey of technologies)
  • Social Vocabularies (ActivityStreams, RDF)

Social Web Working Group (2014-2018)​

Chairs: Arnaud Le Hors (IBM, previous), Tantek Çelik (Mozilla), and Evan Prodromou (e14N)

Produced the core Social Web standards in use today.

Resources​

W3C Recommendations Published​

  1. ActivityPub (January 23, 2018) — Decentralized social networking protocol
  2. Activity Streams 2.0 Core (May 2017) — JSON-based syntax
  3. Activity Streams 2.0 Vocabulary (May 2017) — Social activity terms
  4. Webmention (January 2017) — Notification mechanism
  5. Linked Data Notifications (May 2017) — Notification delivery
  6. Micropub (May 2017) — Content publication protocol
  7. WebSub (January 2018) — Push notifications (formerly PubSubHubbub)

Social Web Incubator CG (2016-present)​

Chairs: Johannes Ernst and Dmitri Zagidulin (W3C group page). Zagidulin announced on 2 October 2026 that he is stepping down; the group is looking for a second co-chair.

Continues and extends development of vocabularies, formats and protocols for the distributed social web.

Resources​

Meetings​

Dates are on the SocialCG calendar. In 2026 the CG and WG hold joint meetings; minutes are in w3c/socialwg.

Active Task Forces​

ActivityPub API, Data Portability (LOLA), HTML Discovery, E2EE, Forums, Geosocial, Groups, Handles, HTTP Signature, Remix, Trust and Safety, Website — see the CG's task force list and the SocialCG page. The Test Suite task force is inactive.

Key Repositories​

Social Web Working Group (2026-2028)​

Chair: Darius Kazemi (group page)

Re-chartered to maintain existing specifications and potentially adopt new deliverables from incubation.

Resources​

Specifications Under Maintenance​

The charter targeted updated Recommendations for Q3 2026. So far only WebSub has been republished (as a Recommendation dated 2 June 2026); the others are unchanged since 2017–2018 (see Status below):

  1. ActivityPub
  2. Activity Streams (Core)
  3. Activity Vocabulary
  4. WebSub
  5. Webmention
  6. Micropub
  7. Linked Data Notifications

Tentative Deliverables​

LOLA (Live Online Account Portability) — May be adopted as a Recommendation-track specification depending on incubation progress and implementer interest. At the 2 October 2026 meeting the CG draft was described as "ready to finalize", with the task force paused because implementers aren't implementing it yet.

Status (October 2026)​

Maintenance work is underway: accepted errata are being folded into the ActivityPub Editor's Draft (e.g. removal of the C2S null partial-update language, February 2026; shared-inbox delivery wording clarified, October 2026). The published 2018 ActivityPub and 2017 Activity Streams Recommendations are unchanged so far (only WebSub has a 2026 edition) — the charter's Q3 2026 target for updated, backwards-compatible Recommendations has slipped, and the WG is aiming to publish a draft around TPAC 2026. Follow progress in the WG meeting notes. For a dated summary of live Editor's Draft changes and task-force status, see the Spec Status Tracker.

Coordination​

Social Web CG, DID WG, JSON-LD WG, IETF (OAuth, HTTP Message Signatures), IndieWeb community

Getting Involved​

Join SWICG​

  1. Visit the SWICG W3C page
  2. Sign up (requires free W3C account)
  3. Subscribe to the mailing list
  4. Join the meetings — dates and times are on the SocialCG calendar; in 2026 the CG and WG meet jointly, alternating with WG test-suite calls
  5. Participate in GitHub

Join SWWG​

  • W3C Members can nominate participants
  • Invited Experts can apply through W3C
  • Community Contributors via CLA

Other Ways​

  • SocialHub Forum — Discussions
  • Task Forces — Join specific topics
  • Test Suites — Contribute to testing
  • Implementation Reports — Document implementations

See Also​