Why FOAF Sucks
From LordMattWiki
Hi, this page looks silly no doubt, that's because it was imported from a wiki with different syntax pending: a good edit n fix
FOAF (Friend of a Friend) is, in theory, one of the coolest things ever, ever, ever...
In deed here is more info on the subject: wikipedia:FOAF & google:FOAF
However in practice it goes straight to the Stuff that sucks (but shouldn't) list with a score of -1 on the things that rule scale.
FOAF is an XML specification for social networking. see this Lord Matt Blog entry, and possibly this one too for more.
It's not that FOAF itself stinks but that any really usefull application or GUI for FOAF is rubbish.
The most famouse of all is the [[1]] which simply requires that I publish the names and email addresses of all my friends. Well bollocks to that! I'll not allow spammers access to my address book so easily. If they want that they'll have to write the best ever virus bar none in all of time and space.
What is needed is a blog-a-like interface that creates a fully flexable etc etc website with a fully FOAF etc etc output, perhaps a foaf community site like friendster but actually functional.
[edit] Links
FOAF has all this //stuff// going for it and still it sucks.
- The FOAF Project
- FOAF Specification
- RDFweb hosts the FOAF wiki
- FOAFexplorer HTML based FOAF Browser
- FOAF+DOAC Project Homepage
- Advanced FOAF Explorer another XHTML based FOAF Browser
- FOAFnaut SVG based FOAF Browser
- FoaFSpace FOAF search engine
- FOAF-a-matic Page to generate FOAF Descriptions
- XHTML Friends Network is a similar system for tracking social relationship among webloggers.
