| FOAF | |
|---|---|
| Friend of a friend | |
 FOAF logo | |
| Abbreviation | FOAF |
| Status | Published |
| Year started | 2000; 26 years ago (2000) |
| First published | June 3, 2005; 20 years ago (2005-06-03) |
| Latest version | 0.99 January 14, 2014; 12 years ago (2014-01-14) |
| Series | Namespace Document |
| Authors | Dan Brickley, Libby Miller |
| Base standards | RDF,OWL |
| Domain | Semantic Web |
| License | CC BY 1.0 |
| Website | xmlns |
FOAF (an acronym offriend of a friend) is amachine-readableontology describingpersons, their activities and their relations to other people and objects. Anyone can use FOAF to describe themselves. FOAF allows groups of people to describesocial networks without the need for a centralised database.
FOAF is a descriptive vocabulary expressed using theResource Description Framework (RDF) and theWeb Ontology Language (OWL). Computers may use these FOAF profiles to find, for example, all people living in Europe, or to list all people both you and a friend of yours know.[1][2] This is accomplished by defining relationships between people. Each profile has a unique identifier (such as the person'se-mail addresses, internationaltelephone number,Facebook account name, aJabber ID, or aURI of the homepage or weblog of the person), which is used when defining these relationships.
The FOAF project, which defines and extends the vocabulary of a FOAF profile, was started in 2000 by Libby Miller and Dan Brickley. It can be considered the firstSocial Semantic Web application,[citation needed] in that it combinesRDF technology with 'social web' concerns.[clarification needed]
Tim Berners-Lee, in a 2007 essay, redefined thesemantic web concept into theGiant Global Graph (GGG), where relationships transcend networks and documents. He considers the GGG to be on equal ground with theInternet and theWorld Wide Web, stating that "I express my network in a FOAF file, and that is a start of the revolution."[3]
FOAF is one of the key components of theWebID specifications, in particular for the WebID+TLS protocol, which was formerly known as FOAF+SSL.[citation needed]
Although it is a relatively simple use-case and standard, FOAF has had limited adoption on the web. For example, theLive Journal andDeadJournal blogging sites support FOAF profiles for all their members,[4]My Opera community supported FOAF profiles for members as well as groups. FOAF support is present onIdenti.ca,FriendFeed,WordPress andTypePad services.[5]
Yandex blog search platform supports search over FOAF profile information.[6] Prominent client-side FOAF support was available inSafari[7] web browser before RSS support was removed in Safari 6 and in the Semantic Radar[8] plugin forFirefox browser.Semantic MediaWiki, thesemantic annotation andlinked data extension ofMediaWiki supports mapping properties to external ontologies, including FOAF which is enabled by default.
There are also modules or plugins to support FOAF profiles or FOAF+SSL authorization for programming languages,[9][10] as well as forcontent management systems.[11]
The following FOAF profile (written inTurtle format) states that James Wales is the name of the person described here. His e-mail address, homepage and depiction areweb resources, which means that each can be described using RDF as well. He has Wikimedia as an interest, and knows Angela Beesley (which is the name of a 'Person' resource).
@prefixrdf:<http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>.@prefixrdfs:<http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>.@prefixfoaf:<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>.<#JW>afoaf:Person;foaf:name"James Wales";foaf:mbox<mailto:jwales@bomis.com>;foaf:homepage<http://www.jameswales.com>;foaf:nick"Jimbo";foaf:depiction<http://www.jameswales.com/aus_img_small.jpg>;foaf:interest<http://www.wikimedia.org>;foaf:knows[afoaf:Person;foaf:name"Angela Beesley"].<http://www.wikimedia.org>rdfs:label"Wikimedia".
| Version | Date | NamespaceURI | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unsupported: 0.98 | August 9, 2010 | http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/ | |
| Latest version:0.99 | January 14, 2014[12] | http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/ | Current version Paddington Edition |
Legend: Unsupported Supported Latest version Preview version Future version | |||