Online Service

• CURIE: gmeow:OnlineService
• IRI: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/OnlineService
• Category: class
• Defined by: gmeow:slices/accounts
• Box roles: TBox role (What is this?)

An online service or platform an account is held with — a social network, code forge, email provider, or federated instance. Carries the service's liveness (gmeow:serviceStatus / gmeow:serviceShutdownDate) so historical services (Yahoo 360, Google+) remain first-class with their shutdown recorded.

Structure

Subclass of: gmeow:InformationObject

Practical Pattern

Use gmeow:OnlineService as a specialized kind of gmeow:InformationObject. Add statement metadata or a standpoint when the assertion needs provenance, confidence, or vantage.

Example Snippets

These snippets are generated from canonical slice examples and trimmed to the Turtle blocks where this term appears.

Online Presence

• Source: slices/core/accounts/examples/online-presence.ttl
• Examples catalog: open in catalog#example-slices-core-accounts-examples-online-presence

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example: online accounts, decentralized identity, and P10. An
# agent gmeow:holdsAccount one or more gmeow:OnlineAccounts, each on a
# gmeow:OnlineService. Decentralized identities are first-class: a Mastodon
# account carries its gmeow:activityPubActor URI, a Nostr account its
# gmeow:nostrPubkey and gmeow:nip05 handle. P10 (suppression, never deletion):
# when a service shuts down, its account is kept as gmeow:accountStatusHistorical
# — the record persists, it is not erased.
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/accounts/> .
@prefix xsd:   <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

# --- A live service and a fediverse (ActivityPub) account on it.
ex:mastodon a gmeow:OnlineService ;
    gmeow:name          "mastodon.social"@en ;
    gmeow:serviceStatus gmeow:serviceStatusLive .

Common Companion Terms

gmeow:InformationObject

Usage Advice

Use when

• Use for the platform or service an account lives on — a social network, code forge, email provider, or federated instance — modelled as a first-class object that carries its own liveness and shutdown history.

Avoid when

• Avoid for an individual account on the service (use gmeow:OnlineAccount) and for the agent operating the platform; the service is the platform-object, distinct from any one account held with it.

How to use

• Type the platform as OnlineService, record its liveness with gmeow:serviceStatus and, for a defunct service, gmeow:serviceShutdownDate; link accounts to it with gmeow:accountService so a shut-down service keeps its accounts on record (P10).

Examples

• ex:fosstodon a gmeow:OnlineService; gmeow:serviceStatus gmeow:serviceStatusLive.