Social Network Portability:
Is the Semantic Web Ready?
ESWC2008 Panel
Alexandre Passant - http://apassant.net
LaLIC, Université Paris-Sorbonne

Technology is there
• Ontologies for social networks and data portability
• FOAF and SIOC
• Both are lightweight vocabularies that can be used
easily for developers, transparently by end-users
• FOAF
• People, identity properties, social networks
• SIOC
• User account, social media contributions, actions

FOAF + SIOC = Semantics
for Data Portability
By John Breslin

Applications are there
• Producing data
• Exporters for major social software platforms
(WordPress, Drupal ...), “legacy” data (IRC, Mailing
Lists ...) and Web 2.0 services (twitter, flickr ...)
• Most important: Consuming data
• Revyu, foafmap, FOAFGear, SparqlPress, xOperator ...
• SIOC browsers, WP importer, Sindice Widget ...
• Still need a killer app ?

Integrating distributed
social networks
• FOAFGear - http://apassant.net/home/2008/01/foafgear

Semantic-Web
microblogging
• SMOB - http://smob.sioc-project.org

But ...
• Data privacy and term of services
• We are experimenting on real users, do not break
(too many) rules
• Identity fragmentation
• Some people explicitly use various social websites to
fragment their identity, networks and related data. IFP-
based reasoning breaks this by unifying one’s triples
• We must take care of this and find solutions
• Or users will see the Semantic Web as Big Brother
and most efforts in this field will be lost