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FOAF vs. XFNSubmitted by robataka on Thu, 12/22/2005 - 16:43.
Well, that title is a bit misleading perhaps. I have been looking at the foaf thingie in the edit form for a user's I have been only vaguely aware of FOAF(Friend Of A Friend) having seen it around before but have never really looked at it closely.
Okay, that's easy enough to understand. So the next question is what good is it? For what is it used? Again, the FOAF Project page to the rescue. There is a link labeled FAQ on the site, which in reality is a link to aIBM's site and an article by
The concept of FOAF becomes very interesting when thinking in context of "social networking". For a while, "social networks" were all the rage. But they were closed systems, that in order to join required an "invitation" to somebody already subscribed to that network. The development of an /xml/rdf vocabulary that is open and free allows you do implement similar concepts but under your control and not limited to any specific "social network". The article is well worth the read if you are interested in this type of thing.
However, being a wide reader of various blogs, and having implemented Wordpress for some
There is a little more detailed introduction here. So what are the differences? Not I should note that RealNEO supports FOAF, but not as far as I can tell XFN. So perhaps its not worth worrying about.
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I think FOAF is very important
I think one of the real opportunities of building our regional social network is leveraging a common FOAF profile - developing a regional standard of what data will be collected and shared as the common FOAF file. If all sites are configured for the same FOAF profile, that data can then be shared. That, I believe, will ultimately be in LDAP. Is that what you see?
re: I think FOAF is very important
Norm,
Your comment suggests many thing in that very short comment.
To make the assumption, that seems to be indicated, that you were asking if
I saw LDAP as the final "solution". The short answer is maybe, maybe not.
XFN and FOAF are attempting to address one problem area where as LDAP is
addressing another. LDAP, which stands for Light Directory Access Protocol
is basically just that, a directory service in a client-server architecture.
So LDAP says who is Norm Roulet(he is a member of realneo with this email, title, etc).
XFN and FOAF, however, while they also contain those elements, rather focus on
describing the relationship between people, e.g. Norm of Realneo is a friend of
robataka of realneo. LDAP is much more static, basically due to the fact that it
is an implementation of X.500 directory protocol. The end user has very little control
over the content. XFN and FOAF, on the other hand, are almost exclusively (under ideal
circumstances) under the control of the end-user. For example, the XFN site says this:
So you can see that as they stand today, while they are related, they are addressing different problem areas.
But I also think your comment hints at some other things which need to be fleshed out. In particular,
the keywords being "our", "opportunity", "regional", and "social networking". Each of these are
critical to define. Without definining these, the discussion of technology is really irrelevant other
than personal interest.
Here are the questions we need to answer:
Who is "we" to which "our" refers?
What is the opportunity? Or rather, what is the problem we are trying to solve?
How does regionalism affect the solution and/or the problem? Regionalism as opposed to what?
How does "social networking" address the problem?