A Friendlier Web: FOAF

“When we stand back and look at the Web and at history, the idea of humanity forming a single interconnected Web makes more and more sense" - Dan Brickley, founder of FOAF. Creating a single interconnected web is the goal of Friend of a Friend software (FOAF).

The software’s purpose is to gather self-submitted information about your friends' taste in music, food, vacation spots, etc. which results in making  suggestions as to what you might also like. According to FOAF founders Dan Brickley and Libby Miller: “The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do”.  The entire idea surrounding this concept fascinates me as I see how it can be used for business.

FOAF has become a widely accepted standard vocabulary for representing social networks, and many large social networking websites use it to produce Semantic Web profiles for their users. FOAF uses any information that people say about themselves, and taking key phrases and words to suggest relationships and interests to the individual.  
The usage process of FOAF has taken awhile for me to wrap my mind around. The process begins by creating one or more FOAF files on your Web server and sharing the URLs so software can use the information inside the file. A positive factor of creating the FOAF files is that like the customization of web pages, the creation of FOAF data is within your control. Another benefit that comes with using FOAF is that once the information is posted, users will not feel as bombarded with providing repetitive information about themselves – an issue I can certainly identify with after joining just about every social networking site out there, hence the appeal of FOAF. 
 

While the utilization of FOAF has not yet spread toward main stream websites, the potential is there. For many users, the words “RDF” (Resource Description Framework) or “XML”( Extensible Markup Language) sounds a bit intimidating and may discourage them from exploring the benefits that the software has to offer. But have no fear; tools like the “FOAF-a-Matic” helps users create the coded content. Operating as a Javascript application, the FOAF-a-Matic users are given a specified from that allows them to create a FOAF personal description of themselves. Fields in the designate from ask for a name, email address, and the people you're friends with while using XML and RDF. "FOAF-a-Matic" creator Leigh Dodds says: "This lets software process these descriptions, as part of an automated search engine, and allows for the discovery of information about you and the communities of which you're a member".

In the end, I believe in order for FOAF to gain popularity, it must be marketed in a new way. Since current users seem to like the relationships element of using FOAF, which is comparable to the connections tool via LinkedIn, there needs to be more emphasis on the social aspect. If FOAF was projected to be a convenience to the average social networking user and XML/RDF was explained better, more people may jump on board and take this clever notion to the next level.