OWG is an open, permissionless and sufficiently decentralized protocol for connecting people and their work.
Like other internet-scale protocols (email, RSS, etc), OWG is built to support many different clients and applications that want to plug into its graph of people, their work, their connections, experiences, and a lot more.
OWG is built initially by Backdrop Labs, a software company building software for the OWG protocol, but will progressively open up to more developers and contributors over time.
There are entire product categories that can be built on such an open graph for work. They range from professional networks, to matchmaking tools, productivity and collaboration tools, spam protection, and much more. What they all have in common is that they leverage work-related data to surface more and better opportunities for people.
The first product built on OWG is Backdrop. Backdrop is an invite-only network for people building and creating at the frontiers of the internet.
It means that users on the protocol will always be able to move their identity and data between applications, and developers will always be able to build new applications.
In the context of a work graph, sufficiently decentralization means not having to trust a centralized entity to maintain three key pieces:
Everyone should be able to read that data for any valid identity.
The core team will release more information for developers soon, but likely for 2023 our focus will stay on building Backdrop, the first client powered by this data and protocol.
External development on the OWG will be welcome and permissionless once we open up APIs (planned for Q2/2023), but the core will offer limited support to developers in these early days.
As Backdrop grows and becomes established, we will shift our focus more and more towards improving the developer experience on the protocol and opening up for a wider range of applications and products.