Hey all, I realize I've been a bit quite since I started this group a few weeks ago, but now have a bunch of cool things to share that we've been working on and thinking about. Check out the post (http:// www.sixapart.com/about/news/2007/09/were_opening_th.html) and I'm happy to discuss it here. :)
On Sep 20, 11:04 pm, David Recordon <drecor...@sixapart.com> wrote:
> Hey all, > I realize I've been a bit quite since I started this group a few > weeks ago, but now have a bunch of cool things to share that we've > been working on and thinking about. Check out the post (http://www.sixapart.com/about/news/2007/09/were_opening_th.html) and I'm > happy to discuss it here. :)
> Cheers, > --David
Hi David
Enjoyed reading your post. The new prototype looks excellent - really looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with next. The thing that interested me the most was your comment:
> It is good to be able to find out what is already public about you on the Internet
What do you think the current approaches to this might be?
One other comment:
> blog your thoughts with the tag or category "socialgraph"
I would advise caution against encouraging this term. I read Brad Fitzpatrick's (excellent) essay on the subject, but if you look at the term social graph, from his wikipedia link, it actually points to "Social Network". Anyone that has studied Graph Theory to a sufficiently high level will be able to tell you that a graph is actually a special type of network, where the links are always bi directional. We should be cautious about redefining Graph Theory definitions.
Anyway, your screencast was fascinating, what interests me is your thoughts on discovery of information for a given digital identity (URI?). Do you think XFN will become the main standard?
> Enjoyed reading your post. The new prototype looks excellent - really > looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with next. The thing > that interested me the most was your comment:
>> It is good to be able to find out what is already public about you >> on the Internet
> What do you think the current approaches to this might be?
Obviously there are the traditional search engines as well as more specific sites such as Spock or Rapleaf. I think what becomes really important is being able to have tools which put the user in control, versus just aggregating all of this data and making it world viewable by default -- especially when working with email addresses. I instead envision a tool where I user can use OpenID to login (thus proving ownership over a node) and then being able to walk their graph and explore it found via open markup technologies like XFN and FOAF.
>> blog your thoughts with the tag or category "socialgraph"
> I would advise caution against encouraging this term. I read Brad > Fitzpatrick's (excellent) essay on the subject, but if you look at the > term social graph, from his wikipedia link, it actually points to > "Social Network". Anyone that has studied Graph Theory to a > sufficiently high level will be able to tell you that a graph is > actually a special type of network, where the links are always bi > directional. We should be cautious about redefining Graph Theory > definitions.
Any thoughts on a better tag?
> Anyway, your screencast was fascinating, what interests me is your > thoughts on discovery of information for a given digital identity > (URI?). Do you think XFN will become the main standard?
I don't think there will really be one main standard. There are a lot of different types of data to represent, varying security settings, etc. I do think that both Microformats and FOAF solve important parts of these problems though would also like to see some sort of hybrid FOAF, XFN, hCard format which is easy to represent in JSON, YAML, and XML.
> > Enjoyed reading your post. The new prototype looks excellent - really > > looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with next. The thing > > that interested me the most was your comment:
> >> It is good to be able to find out what is already public about you > >> on the Internet
> > What do you think the current approaches to this might be?
> Obviously there are the traditional search engines as well as more > specific sites such as Spock or Rapleaf. I think what becomes really > important is being able to have tools which put the user in control, > versus just aggregating all of this data and making it world viewable > by default -- especially when working with email addresses. I > instead envision a tool where I user can use OpenID to login (thus > proving ownership over a node) and then being able to walk their > graph and explore it found via open markup technologies like XFN and > FOAF.
> >> blog your thoughts with the tag or category "socialgraph"
> > I would advise caution against encouraging this term. I read Brad > > Fitzpatrick's (excellent) essay on the subject, but if you look at the > > term social graph, from his wikipedia link, it actually points to > > "Social Network". Anyone that has studied Graph Theory to a > > sufficiently high level will be able to tell you that a graph is > > actually a special type of network, where the links are always bi > > directional. We should be cautious about redefining Graph Theory > > definitions.
> Any thoughts on a better tag?
> > Anyway, your screencast was fascinating, what interests me is your > > thoughts on discovery of information for a given digital identity > > (URI?). Do you think XFN will become the main standard?
> I don't think there will really be one main standard. There are a > lot of different types of data to represent, varying security > settings, etc. I do think that both Microformats and FOAF solve > important parts of these problems though would also like to see some > sort of hybrid FOAF, XFN, hCard format which is easy to represent in > JSON, YAML, and XML.
melvster wrote: > ... >> blog your thoughts with the tag or category "socialgraph"
> I would advise caution against encouraging this term. I read Brad > Fitzpatrick's (excellent) essay on the subject, but if you look at the > term social graph, from his wikipedia link, it actually points to > "Social Network". Anyone that has studied Graph Theory to a > sufficiently high level will be able to tell you that a graph is > actually a special type of network, where the links are always bi > directional. We should be cautious about redefining Graph Theory > definitions.
Not to nitpick, but mathemaical graphs include graphs with either directed or undirected edges. I'm fairly sure I've studied the theory to a sufficiently high level, and my understanding agrees with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory]. I don't think social graph is at all inappropriate.
> melvster wrote: > > ... > >> blog your thoughts with the tag or category "socialgraph"
> > I would advise caution against encouraging this term. I read Brad > > Fitzpatrick's (excellent) essay on the subject, but if you look at the > > term social graph, from his wikipedia link, it actually points to > > "Social Network". Anyone that has studied Graph Theory to a > > sufficiently high level will be able to tell you that a graph is > > actually a special type of network, where the links are always bi > > directional. We should be cautious about redefining Graph Theory > > definitions.
> Not to nitpick, but mathemaical graphs include graphs with either > directed or undirected edges. I'm fairly sure I've studied the theory > to a sufficiently high level, and my understanding agrees with > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory]. I don't think social graph > is at all inappropriate.
Very good point. When the adjacency matrix is non symmetric, we can have an undirected graph. Im used to the term graph to mean bidirectional as this is where most of the theory gets interesting (clique finding, eigenvectors etc.). But technically you're absolutely right. I guess what I wanted to highlight is that network and graph are techical terms with specific meaning, and rich theory, that could be pretty valuable to this kind of conversation. I think the concept of network (a network being a graph with weighted edges) will become more interesting as the question goes from "Is person A a friend of person B" (yes/no = graph) to "What is the relationship between person A and person B" (score = network).
So I take by my ealier comment, socialgraph seems a reasonable tag, however I like the emphasis that people have placed on an open system, as it strikes me that this will be the long term solution.
> Plasticmind wrote: >>> Any thoughts on a better tag?
Open Social Networks (OSN)
- isn't specific to a particular model, the way 'graph' is, but still sufficiently precise - allows for a variety of protocols, as will probably be the case - suggests that there's not necessarily one big MOASN (Mother of All Social Networks) - includes the 'open' - leaves room for OSNP (OSN protocols), OSNS (OSN Software) etc
While I'm writing, this seems like a good time to suggest revisiting the 'Semantic Social Network' (SSN) http://www.downes.ca/post/46
Which gives us OSSN (Open Semantic Social Network), which is where we want to get in the end.
