Some assignments for Social Graph Foo Camp is my latest at Linux Jounal. The camp starts today. Some bottom lines…
| Social systems are as old as humanity, and among the most complex and subtle topics of human existence. To call a Twitter following or a Friend list on Facebook a “social network” is a simplification and a distortion. Same goes for the social graph, so far. |
| It’s early in the path of progress here. We have much to learn as well as much to do. |
| …And by Monday I hope to see a new Social Graph entry on Wikipedia: one that any civilian, and not just geeks, will understand. |
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What would increase clarity? Getting rid of the phrase ‘social graph’ would be a good start. It means sweet F.A. as far as I’m concerned and serves no purpose except to help spread ambiguous waffle. Case in point: ‘OpenSocial’. It’s a widget platform, but the way that the bloggers covered it you’d think it was the second coming.
I have seen no use of the phrase ‘social graph’ where simply replacing it with ‘social network’ would have reduced the meaning a jot. When I see someone use the phrase ‘social graph’, I tend to think “what are they trying to obscure from view?” It’s a marker for dishonesty in a way that actually describing the technology (microformats, FOAF, RSS, OpenID, APIs, widget platforms etc.) isn’t.
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