The Future of Social Networks: The Need for Semantics

The Future of Social Networks on the Internet: The Need for Semantics John Breslin, Stefan Decker [email_address] http://sw.deri.org/~jbreslin/ BarCamp Galway 22 nd September 2007

We all live in a social network…
… of friends, family, workmates, fellow students, acquaintances, etc.
Stanley Milgram
“ Six degrees of separation”

Online social networking services (SNS)
Idea behind SNSs is to make these real-world relationships explicitly defined online
SNSs allow a user to create and maintain an online network of close friends or business associates for social and professional reasons :
Friendships and relationships, offline meetings, curiosity about others, business opportunities, job hunting
Usual features of SNSs :
Network of friends (inner circle), person surfing from friends to friends-of-friends, private messaging, discussion forums, events management, blogging and commenting, media uploading
From the beginning, the Internet was a medium for connecting not only machines but people

Social networks have exploded…
The 10 most popular domains ~= 40% percent of all page views on the Web (Compete, November 2006)
Nearly half of those views were from the social networking services MySpace and Facebook – wow!
And that’s just in the top 10…
Money, money, money:
Friendster – $13M VC
Tribe – $6.3M VC
LinkedIn – $4.7M VC
Bebo – $15M VC
MySpace – Sold for $580M
Friends Reunited – Sold for £120M
Facebook – Purported $1B Y! offer

But…
Fundamental problems block their potential to access the full range of available content and networked people online
There is a need to build semantic social networking into the fabric of the next-generation Internet itself:
Interconnecting both content and people in a meaningful way

First issue
Need interesting objects to draw you back to keep on using social networking services
* Source: Jyri Engestrom, “Object-Centered Sociality”, Reboot 7

Many social networking services are boring… * Source: Jyri Engestrom, “Object-Centered Sociality”, Reboot 7

Object-centred sociality can provide meaning
Users connected via a common object, e.g., their job, university, hobbies, a date…
“ Another tradition of theorizing offers an explanation of why Russell linked out, and why so many YASNS ultimately fail.”
“ According to this theory, people don’t just connect to each other. They connect through a shared object.”
* Source: Jyri Engestrom, “Why Some Social Networks Work…”

Object-centred sociality can provide meaning (2)
“ When a service fails to offer the users a way to create new objects of sociality, they turn the connecting itself into an object [LinkedIn].”
“ Good services allow people to create social objects that add value.”
Flickr = photos
del.icio.us = bookmarks
Blogs = discussion posts
* Source: Jyri Engestrom, “Why Some Social Networks Work…”

… can connect us to other people
Video annotations
Chats
Photos
Micro-blogs
OSN profiles
Bookmarks
…
Everything we make and do…

Second issue
We all have too many separate profiles and sets of contacts on disconnected social networking services

Social network portability and reusability
Need distributed social networks and reusable profiles
Users may have many identities and sets of friends on different social networks, where each identity was created from scratch
Allow user to import existing profile and contacts, using a single global identity with different views (e.g., via FOAF, hCard, OpenID, etc.)
See also:
http://groups.google.com/group/social-network-portability/
http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/
http://danbri.org/words/2007/09/13/194

The Semantic Web can help
Sir Tim Berners-Lee et al., Scientific American, 2001:
“ An extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.”
The Semantic Web can provide the required representation mechanisms for connecting disparate social networks:
It links people and objects to store and represent the heterogeneous ties that bind us to each other
Serves as a useful platform for linking and for performing operations on diverse person- and object-related data gathered from heterogeneous social networking sites

The Semantic Web can help (2)
By using agreed-upon Semantic Web formats to describe people, content objects and the connections that bind them all together , SNSs can interoperate by appealing to common semantics
Developers are already using Semantic Web technologies to augment the ways in which they create, reuse, and link content on social networking and media sites (using FOAF, SIOC, etc.)
Facebook to FOAF : http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~mrowe/foafgenerator.html
In the other direction, object-centered social networks can serve as rich data sources for Semantic Web applications

Friend-of-a-Friend (FOAF)
FOAF is an ontology for describing people and the relationships that exist between them
Can be integrated with any other SW vocabularies
Some SNSs with FOAF exports:
People can also create their own FOAF document and link to it from their homepage
FOAF documents usually contain personal info, links to friends, and other related resources

Integrating social networks with FOAF Common formats, unique URIs * Source: Sheila Kinsella, Applications of Social Network Analysis 2007

A distributed social network with FOAF
Can use FOAF to describe social networks across a number of services
Picture shows data from both boards.ie and my hand-coded FOAF file

Disconnected social media sites can connect using Semantic Web technology

Some more social networking trends for discussion
SNS methods simulate real-life social interaction :
People meet others through something they have in common, not by randomly approaching each other
Better interaction methods with friends à la Second Life
Individuals are revealing more and more information on SNS and other social software sites
Personal privacy issues, where sensitive information is revealed
Advertisers and marketers can gain better understanding from customer behavioural patterns:
Analysing masses of SNS info, “clouds” showing the overall picture
United States NSA using social network analysis technologies for homeland security
Also using “automated intelligence profiling” based on unreliable info

The Future of Social Networks: The Need for Semantics

by John Breslin

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