Querying the Social Graph

[melvincarvalho]

Is there any way of querying the index of the social graph?

For example can I search for "bradfitz" and have it return me nodes in
the social graph, which I can then use as entry points for the SGAPI?

SWSE does not a bad job of this: http://tr.im/bradfitzfoaf

Is there any way of making the google index more accessible?

[Brad Fitzpatrick]

Actually, such an index doesn't exist, so it can't really be made more accessible.  :-)

A search by name (or at least username ... the sgn ident= value) could be nice, though.

[Giovanni Tummarello]

Not to want to do ads,

but i feel like mentioning that if you do need one such index you
might want to try Sindice (http://sindice.com) , my main project at
the DERI institute (http://deri.ie)

http://sindice.com/search?q=brad+fitzpatrick&qt=term

this is just a text query, but the advanced search allows to look into
specific fields of microformats, RDf, RDFa etc.
we're happy to help in the forum there if needed.

Unlike SWSE we only support a simplified query lenguage, but as a plus
we index new things everyday and we're very responsive (20 minutes) to
"pings" from external sources.

Giovanni

[Dan Brickley]

resending now I've told Google Groups I'm dan...@danbri.org rather than
danbr...@gmail.com for this group. Hmm, I can think of at least three
ways Google already know that they're both me. A strange constraint!

On 6/4/09 15:48, Dan Brickley wrote:

> On 6/4/09 15:28, Brad Fitzpatrick wrote:
>> Actually, such an index doesn't exist, so it can't really be made more
>> accessible. :-)
>>
>> A search by name (or at least username ... the sgn ident= value) could
>> be nice, though.
>

> There's always the main search index, although I'm not clear whether
> we're supposed to use the JSON APIs in a non-Ajax context. Or for that
> matter, Yahoo's SearchMonkey/BOSS would do the job: run a textual query
> on the name / nickname, and get back candidate URLs to probe the SGAPI
> with.
>
> eg.
> curl -e http://example.com
> 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&q=bradfitz'
>
> (via http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/documentation/#fonje )
>
> This works great for people whose nickname brings their URL to the top
> of the search rankings; not clear how well it works for most folk.
>
> cheers,
>
> Dan
>
> --
> http://danbri.org/

[Martin Atkins]

I had some success mashing up the Google Search API with the Social
Graph API to make this little toy app:
http://martin.atkins.me.uk/peoplesearch/#bradfitz

As you will certainly see there's a bug in my person clustering code
that causes people to get listed multiple times in some case, but the
basic principle is to do a normal web search and then put all of the
results into the Social Graph API and see what comes back.

This does of course rely on the fact that Google Search currently has an
(arguably unreasonable) bias towards social web geeks. They might fix it
at some point so that actual important people come first in the results,
which will break this. :)

(It's amusing that I actually killed my Google Search ranking by moving
my blog so now I fail to come back in a search for my own name in my own
app. But I'm not too upset, since there are far more interesting people
called Martin Atkins.)

[Brad Fitzpatrick]

On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 9:53 AM, Martin Atkins <ma...@degeneration.co.uk> wrote:

melvincarvalho wrote:
> Is there any way of querying the index of the social graph?
>
> For example can I search for "bradfitz" and have it return me nodes in
> the social graph, which I can then use as entry points for the SGAPI?
>
> SWSE does not a bad job of this: http://tr.im/bradfitzfoaf
>
> Is there any way of making the google index more accessible?

I had some success mashing up the Google Search API with the Social
Graph API to make this little toy app:
    http://martin.atkins.me.uk/peoplesearch/#bradfitz

This reminded me again to make a list of interesting users of the SGAPI.  I started such a list here:

http://groups.google.com/group/social-graph-api/web/users

Anybody, feel free to add to it!

- Brad

[Joseph Smarr]

Added a note about Plaxo's usage of SGAPI. :) Thanks, js

[Melvin Carvalho]

Thanks, I'm thinking about what I can build to combine SGAPI, Sindice
and SWSE (and perhaps others? trueknowlede api? )

Perhaps some kind of crude reputation system that will try and lookup
a URI/nick/name/email/etc. and see if it is 'known' in the social
graph

In the meantime, I added danbri's ubiquity foaf command:

http://danbri.org/2008/ubisg/bradfitz.com.png

>
> - Brad
>
> >
>