FOAF - Friend of a Friend

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Introduction

See also Dublin Core, Semantic web and Web 3.0

Friend of a friend (FOAF) is an ontology language used to create machine-readable pages of metadata that describe people, the links between them and the different things that interest them. As a descriptive vocabulary, FOAF uses the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL). Computers use FOAF profiles to find, for example, people working in Europe or to list people in your network. This is done by defining relationships between friends through use of unique identifiers (e.g. e-mail addresses, websites or blogs), and other facts and inter-relationships. The FOAF project, which extends the vocabulary of profiles, is the first semantic application combining RDF with the 'social web'.

Conceptually, the semantic web aims to provide the tools for extensible, flexible standards of description and disambiguation between documents and people. Semantic web technology enables the creation of metadata and associated vocabularies. The semantic web is positioned to make all social web sites interoperable. The idea is that applying semantic web frameworks including SIOC (Semantically Interlinked Online Communities) and FOAF to the social grid will result in a more socially semantic web.

In the final assessment, FOAF will help to describe people and their linkages to social networks in the cloud i.e. without the need for a centralized database. Sir Tim Berners-Lee has defined the semantic web as a Giant Global Graph where relationships between people in a network are more important (and transcend) the networks themselves or documents produced by those within them. He considered the GGG to be on equal grounds with the semantic web stating that "I express my network in a FOAF file, and that is a start of the revolution."

Websites

• Quatuo http://www.quatuo.com

"Quatuo is a service allowing you to create, view, edit, and publish your friend of a friend (aka foaf) profile on the web. You can also use Quatuo to search profiles and find relations between peoples. By putting references to your foaf profiles on your content, you will allow applications like Google to better understand and reference your content."

References