Categories
Semantics

Facebook graph API, open social network & linked data

I am very excited about the recent announcement of Facebook: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api . It is very close to what I imagined writing the linkedPIM specification. I have some remarks though:

  • semantics still need to be better captured, using JSON does not solve anything – I would use an OWL model to define the standard
  • the model will need to be extended, another argument for using RDF/OWL
  • Facebook seems to be preparing for competing with linkedin, which is very natural imho I base this assumption on example dataset:
  • "work": [
    {
    "employer": {
    "id": 20531316728,
    "name": "Facebook"
    },
    "position": {
    "id": 111595812193665,
    "name": "Director, Product"
    },
    "start_date": "2009-08"
    },

  • profile model is really poor, it should be much more like in the address book (telephones etc) – base it on the vcard
  • they still try to keep the social web in frame of their own portal. it would be better to claim ownership of a protocol and semantic model which every portal can use (become the main layer in the service architecture)

P.S. The old “Chinese” curse is fulfilled. We are living in exciting times.