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Social Graph: Concepts and Issues - ReadWriteWeb

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build a system that can scale

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we want to be in control

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next generation of the Social Web

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What is the API?

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What is the Social Graph? Who owns it?

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common API

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do what's in the best interest of their business

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system which is secure

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n the ideal scenario, we would like to spend the least amount of time logging in, configuring, telling the system what we like. We want to use the network to connect and to communicate.

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allow the users themselves to do it.

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a need for an API or a service that would broker the information between social networks

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a read/write database for storing people's attention

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Brad Fitzpatrick recently wrote an elegant and important post about the Social Graph, a term used by Facebook to describe their social network. In his post, Fitzpatrick defines "social graph" as "the global mapping of everybody and how they're related". He went on to outline the problems with it, as well as a broad set of goals going forward.

One problem is that currently you need to have different logins for different social networks. Another issue is portability and ownership of an individual's information, explicitly and implicitly revealed while using social networks. As was recently asserted in the Social Bill Of Rights and as has been advocated for a while by Attention Trust Principles, users want to own their personal information - including their chunk of the Social Graph.

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In his post, Fitzpatrick defines "social graph" as "the global mapping of everybody and how they're related".

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The problems are all interconnected - what makes up a Social Graph, how it is treated by social networks, what the APIs and standards are, as well as who owns the information. In his post Brad discussed a vision of an open, public asset - controlled by the people and used (and complied with) by the social networks. Can this vision be realized? While this is certainly a complex problem, if there is any time when this vision can become reality - the time is now.

In this post we will take a broad look at the definitions and issues with the Social Graph; and explore some ways in which the standards and laws can actualize.

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In this post we will take a broad look at the definitions and issues with the Social Graph; and explore some ways in which the standards and laws can actualize.

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One problem is that currently you need to have different logins for different social networks. Another issue is portability and ownership of an individual's information, explicitly and implicitly revealed while using social networks.

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Our society spawns one gigantic social graph. In this graph, each one of us is a node. There is an explicit connection, if we know each other.

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Facebook

Sociologists have been studying these graphs for decades. Famously, the social networks have a so called Small World property - more widely known as the Six Degrees of Separation. This is both an anecdotal and scientific observation that we all are connected to each other - no more than six people away. The secret? It's because this is how human networks form - dense clusters are inter connected by shortcuts.

A simple way to think about it is this: your friends know each other, and with time, they meet each other. If at least one person in a group meets someone from a remote part of the world, the whole group is now connected to another part of the world. You can learn more about the fascinating science of Smart World Networks from a book by Columbia Professor Duncan Watts - Six Degrees, The Science of Connected Age.

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1. People Identity Each one of us participates in multiple networks, but we want to be identified as the same person in all of them. Brad describes this as a multiple login nightmare. He calls for having a way to map IDs onto each other, via Node Equivalence:

"Given a single node, say "brad on LiveJournal", return all equivalent nodes: "brad" on LiveJournal, "bradfitz" on Vox, and 4caa1d6f6203d21705a00a7aca86203e82a9cf7a (my FOAF mbox_sha1sum)."

2. Type of Relationships The links between people in social networks are of different types. Crudely, different types of relationships are a friend, a co-worker, a family member. There are more fine grained relationships defined in Facebook (see picture above) and Spock, which uses tags to identify how people are related.

3. Relationships Identity Similar to having node equivalence, there is an issue of edge equivalence. Although, this issue is more complicated. If two people are connected in one social network, should they automatically be connected in all of them? Consider an example of a LinkedIn and Shelfari. Just because two people work together does not mean that they share the same book interests. However, the crux of the issue is not that - it is actually discoverability. As Brad pointed out, there needs to be a way for a new user who joins a network to be able to find friends who are already using that network.

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Type of Relationships

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Crudely, different types of relationships are a friend, a co-worker, a family member.

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are a friend, a co-worker, a family member

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The Social Graph API

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Conclusion

Brad has started a fascinating discussion. What is the Social Graph? Who owns it? What is the API? All of these questions are likely to shape the evolution of the next generation of the Social Web.

On the surface the issues are clear and simple, but what is also clear is that it will take a lot of work to get a working solution. The challenges are conceptual, technical, political, business and educational. A lot of minds need to converge for the Social Graph, as described by Brad, to happen. Traditionally the tech industry has been able to come though on critical standards that benefit people. Let's hope that this will be the case here as well.

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In the ideal scenario, we would like to spend the least amount of time logging in, configuring, telling the system what we like. We want to use the network to connect and to communicate. More importantly, we want to not just feel that we are in control, we want to be in control of our personal information. Just like we choose who to make friends with, we want to decide how our friendship information is used. We think of a social network as a service that has our eyeballs and can advertise to us, in exchange for connecting us to people we want to connect to. And as with any service, we want to control our information.

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If at least one person in a group meets someone from a remote part of the world, the whole group is now connected to another part of the world.

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the best way to take a stand is to form an organization. Organizations have a much better track record of dealing with corporations than single individuals. The organization can put forth a set of rules and standards and then work with companies to implement them.

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Brad explicitly described a need for an API or a service that would broker the information between social networks. He envisions an open source base database which accepts information from multiple social networks, then provides it to end-users via UI or API - as well as allows users to authorize other social networks to find the information.

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Indeed, the problem of attention and the social graph are related, since the social graph can be thought of an aspect of attention.

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The first technical challenge with this approach is to build a system that can scale. The second important problem is building a system which is secure.

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Assuming that both challenges can be met, the next major issue is getting companies to use this API. Why would Facebook export their information into this new database? Clearly, it would not.

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2. Type of Relationships The links between people in social networks are of different types. Crudely, different types of relationships are a friend, a co-worker, a family member.

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3. Relationships Identity Similar to having node equivalence, there is an issue of edge equivalence. Although, this issue is more complicated. If two people are connected in one social network, should they automatically be connected in all of them?

Highlighted by eyalnow

However, the crux of the issue is not that - it is actually discoverability. As Brad pointed out, there needs to be a way for a new user who joins a network to be able to find friends who are already using that network.

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Privacy and ownership of information are at the core of the social graph issues. Much like there is a conflict of interest around attention information between online retailers and users, there is a mismatch between what individuals and companies want from social networks.

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But as individuals, we do not care about either young or old networks. We care about ease of use and privacy.

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