This video demonstrates how the Murmurations protocol and the Murmurations WordPress Aggregator Plugin can be used to build maps from decentralised data.
The demo focuses on how data from profiles which are hosted at their primary URL supersedes data from profiles hosted at third party URLs. This feature of Murmurations is especially powerful for map builders who want to create maps which do not go out of date – and who want to enable people to update their own profiles.
By using Murmurations to create decentralised maps (instead of centralised data stores, that require people to log-in to update their info for every map on which they are featured), map builders can seed their maps with multiple profiles, which will be automatically superseded by more authoritative profiles, which are hosted at their primary URL.
For example, Google might not be happy if someone create a Murmurations profile about them with the description “these folks are EVIL!” which was featured on multiple maps around the web. But instead of having to contact the owner of every map, or having to create an account and log in to change their profile description on every map on which they are featured – all they would need to do is create their own Murmurations profile, upload it to their primary URL (e.g. Google.com/murmurations.json) and submit the URL to the Index. Then, all the maps on which they are featured would pick up that the profile hosted at google.com was more authoritative than any others – and replace the “EVIL” description accordingly.