Thoughts on the Social Graph

Jamie found an excellent story about the trouble with social graphs. The author discusses the proliferation of social networking websites, the annoying problems this creates, and proposes an open solution to much of the problem. Essentially he is talking about an API for all those relationship systems not under the control of any single commercial entity, coupled with a shared login system. Had things like this been popularized a half a decade ago, we'd be looking at a different internet.

Comments

Re:Yawn.

[mdwh2]

TFA says: A centralized "owner" of the social graph is bad for the Internet.

It seems to be talking about a system where anyone can run their own server according to the open standard APIs, and hence will not be centralised.

Although he's right that people are tired of readding friends on each network, one flaw is that "friend" has different meanings. On some, it's simply "This person is my friend". On some like Facebook, it also means they can see information about you that others might not. On LiveJournal however (which was created by the author of this article), it goes far beyond simply "friend"; it indicates which journals you want to read, and who can see your "friends only" entries. So conceivably, who I want as a friend on Facebook isn't necessarily the same as who I want as a "friend" on LJ.

Now theoretically this can be handled in that "people whose journals I want to read" could be a subset of anyone I list as my friend (i.e., you have an option for each friend whether you read their entries, whether they can read yours, or whatever is specific for that site). But that's more hassle for individual users.

It already exists - FOAF

[Colin Smith]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOAF_(software)

Vendor lockin is the reason it isn't simple to migrate across all the sites.

Re:All you need to know on the subject is:

[aftk2]

Ummm... Linkedin? It's been pretty important for a number of people I know..