Social graphing is a relatively new field currently being explored. In relation to the mathematics of social networking it is of growing in importance for web professionals to understand. From analysis of connections, and significance of those connections, you can extrapolate tons of useful data. One thing is for sure in the upcoming years: privacy is going to be under fire, and this time we aren’t just talking about cookies.

I operate this site purely out of hobby and interest of the subject.

For those on a time budget,

1. Zuckerberg uses term ’social graph’ while announcing the new Facebook Platform, and it becomes a buzzword.

2. The term has more than a few outspoken critics, but people continue using it.

3. I am using this website for a community of open minded people to be able to track and discuss Social Graphing. I find it important and I am not afraid of new phrases.

4. Imagine this site as a filter for all your social graphing news and information. I am setting up systems to bring the topic of social graphing and it’s related studies to this domain.

For those interested in more,

Social Graphing, a term made famous by Mark Zuckerberg, has been a topic of controversy as of late.It is a topic that must be at least discussed, although I go forward with trepidation using the term ’social graph’. Mainly due to folks like Dave Winer (a veritable icon) who wrote an article entitled How to avoid sounding like a monkey.

David writes,

Graphs are useful for modeling stuff that goes on in computers. They are also part of a field of math called combinatorics that’s related to statistics, and also related to a highly theoretical area of math called topology.

Now if you showed that diagram to most educated people, they probably would call it a network, and before we talked about social graphs we called them social networks, and you know what — they’re exactly the same thing, and social network is a much less confusing term, so why don’t we just stick with it? (Answer: we should, imho.) So if you don’t want to sound like an idiot, call a social graph a social network and stand up for your right to understand technology, and make the techies actually do some useful stuff instead of making simple stuff sound complicated.

One day later, Josh Catone of ReadWriteWeb published a post entitled Is it Time to Retire the “Social Graph”? which debated the usage of the term. He cited both Winer, and Scoble’s article David Winer says I sound like a Monkey:

Social graph may be a valuable way to talk about this stuff with mathematicians, but it is still a poor choice as a marketing term. I think it’s time we retire it (at least in anything that isn’t targeted toward computer scientists) and return to saying social network. How about it?

All of these semantics and professional bloggers aside, social graphing is a term that I believe is here to stay (and grow) into the future. This site is here for people who are interested in talking about the social graph, its mathematical applications, and its marketing applications.

You are welcome to get involved.

As my good friend Toussant says- Peace and BBQ,

John