Portable Social Networks: Take Your Friends with You

[pauldwaite]

Notice: This is a discussion thread for comments about the SitePoint article, Portable Social Networks: Take Your Friends with You.
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> Milgram hypothesised (and later proved through experimentation) that you are linked by no more than five people to any other person on the planet

I’m fairly sure that the number of people linking you to “anyone else” was an average, not a maximum, and that the experiment was carried out in North America, not the world.

[brothercake]

Real human relationships are a million times more complex than "friend" or "not friend". XFN lacks the granularity to make it relevant, because it's not possible to describe relationships in anything approaching accurate terms (quite apart from the fact that it doesn't allow the description of negative relationships)

In any case, I don't necessarily want everyone I know to know how I think of them, either explicitly or by omission.

All of which, IMHO, makes XFN useless.

[Nikki]

You don't mention FOAF, which as it is being promoted by Tim Berners-Lee will soon become a major player
http://www.foaf-project.org/

[Hartmann]

(quite apart from the fact that it doesn't allow the description of negative relationships)

Does anyone actually keep track of the people they don't like?

Social networks are great for loosely coupled people.

[Simon Mackie]

Nikki, FOAF is mentioned in the article (admittedly just once, with no explanation!)