Surprise, surprise, it's been languishing while I try to figure out some things. First is what empty role it's supposed to be filling that hasn't already been implemented elsewhere. There's a very interesting article here about the "Semantic Social Network", which means that both humans AND computers can understand the connections between people.
An example of this is RSS, which a computer can easily parse and manipulate in any way it likes. It's also a distribution mechanism that people can easily comprehend. This offers a whole host of advantages over, say, a static page on Geocities.
A computer will only be able to walk away with an understanding of the most explicit page elements, like the links. (How Google and other search engines work.) It won't have any idea that it has different sections for Bigfoot, cryptozology and animal sounds -- because the data is unstructured.
Let's add a little structure
RSS also provides a way of adding metadata to content; some blogging software lets you add categories or keywords to your posts, in addition to standard metadata elements like post date/time, author, URL, etc. For J. Vaughn's bigfoot page, you're left to sort that sort of information out for yourself.
There's another kind of structured data format that I'd like to look at, called 'FOAF' ("Friend of a friend"). It's a static XML file that is linked on your home page or blog that describes you and not just the content of your page. It holds profile information like where you live and who you are, but more importantly it provides a structured list of people you know, collaborate with, and whose blogs you read. I's like creating a profile in a social networking service (like Friendster or any of the others), but associating it with your personal web page. With tools like the FoaF Explorer, you can browse people's networks of contacts and personal information -- and so can a computer program.
So this is why I've been stalling on Starfish -- I think there may be better, simpler ways of leveraging information that's already present on blogs. Instead of creating another layer OVER what people already use, they might be inclined to try it and keep using if it's something simple they can just plug into their current pages.
People, after all, want to keep their personal pages. They have dominion there and can make them as pretty or as garish as they like. They can fill it with whatever content at whatever time or can distribute it however widely they care to.
Besides, there are already lots of sites that try to create "FriendBlogs" a la LiveJournal (e.g. Funchain) or interest-based groups (Memestreams, Eurekster). My guess is that all might be interesting to try, but the novelty will quickly fade and users will return to old habits. There's a service called Rojo trying to combine many of these things, which is kind of what I had in mind for Starfish, but on a grander scale. See this for more. (Unfortunately the trial is invite only.)
FOAF Me
So I've set up a FOAF description on this site in the meantime and I'd encourage you to do the same. The best place to start is "FOAF-a-matic", be sure to add the link tag to your blog template -- the directions spell it out.
I haven't even touched on the nifty things like autodiscovery that things like RSS and FOAF help support. Maybe I'll write a little more about that later.
Other Links
Click to the clique
Foaf Project
Posted by eric at January 26, 2005 09:04 AM