NYCPHP Meetup

[inforequest]

Chris Bielanski Cbielanski-at-inta.org |nyphp 04/2004| wrote:

>Joel can you email me offlist and tell me WTH "Foafer" is/does? I'm dropping
>it on the list in case I'm not the only one in the dark.
>
>Thanks,
>Chris Bielanski
>

For those interested, FOAF is "_F_riend _O_f _A_ _F_riend".

First people started "blogging".  Then bloggers started listing their 
friends blogs in a sidebar on their blogs

Since those friends also listed their friends blogs in sidebars of their 
blogs, someone noticed that these friends links on linked blogs were 
actually representative of a "social network". Think like the way Google 
does (links = relationships) and you'll see the potential.

When blog hosting services noticed they were hosting thousands of 
interlinked blogs, they knew they could analyze the internetworking on 
the back end. In order to do it across bloghosts, some standard means 
would be needed. FOAF is the prevailing technology for doing that using XML.

Hope that helps.

-=john
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------John 
Andrews, personal homepage with dancing bears not expected anytime soon.