The social graph is a term coined by scientists working in the social areas of graph theory

Graph theory

In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of graphs, mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects from a certain collection. A "graph" in this context refers to a collection of vertices or 'nodes' and a collection of edges that connect pairs of...

. It has been described as "the global mapping of everybody and how they're related". The term was popularized at the Facebook f8 conference on May 24, 2007, when it was used to explain that the Facebook Platform

Facebook Platform

The Facebook Platform provides a set of APIs and tools which enable third-party developers to integrate with the "open graph" — whether through applications on Facebook.com or external websites and devices...

, which was introduced at the same time, would benefit from the social graph by taking advantage of the relationships between individuals, that Facebook provides, to offer a richer online experience. The definition has been expanded to refer to a social graph of all Internet users.

A graph

Graph (mathematics)

In mathematics, a graph is an abstract representation of a set of objects where some pairs of the objects are connected by links. The interconnected objects are represented by mathematical abstractions called vertices, and the links that connect some pairs of vertices are called edges...

 is an abstract concept used in discrete mathematics

Discrete mathematics

Discrete mathematics is the study of mathematical structures that are fundamentally discrete rather than continuous. In contrast to real numbers that have the property of varying "smoothly", the objects studied in discrete mathematics – such as integers, graphs, and statements in logic – do not...

; the social graph describes the relationships between individuals online, as opposed to the concept of a social network

Social network

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...

, which describes relationships in the real world. The two concepts are very similar, but some minor differences do exist. For example, the social graph is digital, and more importantly, it is defined explicitly by all connections involved. Since explaining the concept of the social graph, Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-creating the social networking site Facebook, of which he is chief executive and president...

, founder of Facebook, has often touted Facebook's goal of offering the website's social graph to other websites so that a user's relationships can be made aware and put to use on websites outside of Facebook's control.

A social graph is a sociogram

Sociogram

A sociogram is a graphic representation of social links that a person has. It is a graph drawing that plots the structure of interpersonal relations in a group situation.- Overview :...

 which depicts all personal relations - typically not more than 100 per person.

Issues

Several issues have come forward regarding the existing implementation of the social graph, particularly the one owned by Facebook. For example, currently, a social networking service is unaware of the relationships forged between individuals on a different service. This creates an online experience that is not seamless, and instead provides for a fragmented experience due to the lack of an openly available graph between services. In addition, existing services define relationships differently.

, the largest social graph in the world is Facebook's, which contains the largest number of defined relationships between the largest number of people among all websites due to the fact that it is the most widely used social networking service in the world. Concern has focused on the fact that Facebook's social graph is owned by the company and is not shared with other services, giving it a major advantage over other services and disallowing its users to take their graph with them to other services if they wish to do so, such as when a user is dissatisfied with Facebook. Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 has attempted to offer a solution to this problem by creating the Social Graph API, released in January 2008, which allows websites to draw publicly available information about a person to form a portable identity of the individual, in order to represent a user's online identity. Facebook introduced its own Graph API at the 2010 f8 conference. Both companies monetise collected data sets through direct marketing

Direct marketing

Direct marketing is a channel-agnostic form of advertising that allows businesses and nonprofits to communicate straight to the customer, with advertising techniques such as mobile messaging, email, interactive consumer websites, online display ads, fliers, catalog distribution, promotional...

 and social commerce

Social commerce

Social commerce is a subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions, to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services....

.

Open Graph

Facebook's Graph API allows websites to draw information about more objects than simply people, including photos, events, and pages, and their relationships between each other. This expands the social graph concept to more than just relationships between individuals and instead applies it to virtual non-human objects between individuals, as well.

External links

• Graph API at Facebook
  Facebook
  Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
  
  
• Social Graph API at Google
  Google
  Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...