For the uninitiated, I will first explain what the social graph is and why it is so talked about today. Almost all of us are on some social network today. In that network, we are linked with people we know either because we were class mates or are colleagues or neighbors, etc. Now, try to imagine every person as a node in a graph and if two people are connected on a network, it means an edge or line is drawn between those two nodes in a social graph. One instance of it would be the following picture which illustrates a sample social graph.

As one can very well imagine, the whole world can be said to be a huge social graph. This graph has, for instance, an interesting property called six degrees of separation.

Now when a person has an account in a particular social network like Myspace or Facebook, they have an almost similar social graph in both of these sites. There are then many new social networks or services with social network features springing up all of which require or are based on our social graph. So presently, a user has to create a new profile and re-make all those connections that they already have in other networks to be a part of new network. For instance, if a person wants to join Friendfeed, they need to create new connections that they already have in MySpace. A solution for such a problem has been offered by saying that a user should be able to carry his social graph with him. That is, if each user has an open social graph that any service can access, then all the services that need social networking features would be very easy to implement. Thus, social graphs should be open and owned by the user rather than the social networking site as it is today where user data is not accessible by other services.

It is also understandable that Facebook or MySpace would not want to open up this information, as the social graph is the main reason that people come to these sites. Facebook is a platform which allows many applications to be developed using its social graph. Now if Facebook opens up, all these applications that need such information won’t need to be on Facebook. Presently, a Friendfeed-like application in Facebook has more chances of success rather than Friendfeed’s site, simply because Facebook owns the social network while Friendfeed doesn’t. But if Facebook opens up, it loses this advantage.

There are presently attempts being made to solve this problem. Some of these are:

1) An open non-profit software for handling identity and the social graph that will manage user identity using OpenId. eg. manage the social graph on behalf of users therefore, enabling social applications to bloom.
2) Maybe, its OpenSocial which aims to create common standard APIs on which to build social applications. Note that it solves the above problem in a different way. While there may be many different social networks where users have social graphs, it creates a common, public API for accessing them and hence eases development of social applications. However, after its initial hype and release, response has been a bit underwhelming as I noted in this article.
3) Another attempt is Plaxo Pulse. In their words, it is an online address book which syncs with many other address books like Gmail and Yahoo that I own. You can also read a possible implementation of building an Open Social Graph.

An Open Social Graph that is owned by the user and not any company is needed as it will solve the many problems presently faced by users. Once it comes up, we can expect the bolstering of countless services that depend on the social graph of a user.

Image source: GNESPY.