The Social Graph

The term "social graph," as it relates to the Internet, refers to a graph - akin to a mathematical graph - which depicts connections and relationships between Internet users, specifically social media users. In this sense, one could think of a social graph as a map depicting links between different social media - a literal representation of a social network. In simpler terms, a social graph is a graphical representation of collected data which relates the links between different social media and their users. The following gif image, found on Wikipedia's article on the social graph, depicts an example:

This image not only depicts the different natures of the actions ("like," "listen," etc.) and relationships ("friend") which link Adam, Eva, and Kate, it also depicts the different media (Last.fm, Youtube, Peter's photo) on which the graph, and the relationships, are based.

Taken to its logical extreme, a social graph can be conceived as an all-encompassing platform for social media research, establishing links between users of such discrete social media as Facebook, Youtube, Last.fm, Instagram, and Twitter.

The practical - or rather, technological - application of the social graph is exemplified in the Facebook Platform, described as a "software provided by Facebook for third-party developers to create their own applications and services that access data in Facebook." Simply put, this means that the Facebook Platform utilizes Facebook's social graph in an attempt to encourage third-party web developers to produce content which caters directly to Facebook users by accessing their data, thereby integrating that content into the larger "Facebook experience," as it were. Examples of this include third party applications on Facebook, Facebook's ubiquitous "like" and "share" buttons appearing on dozens of different sites across the Internet, as well as the option to log in or register to several sites using one's Facebook login information.

There is a significant economic aspect to social graphs, as well. Companies such as Facebook often monetize the data collected in their social graphs using methods such as database marketing (direct marketing which involves databases of potential costumers, and the personalized promotion of products to these would-be costumers) and social commerce (a form of electronic commerce which focuses on social media as a means by which the buying and selling of products or services can take place). In this way, a sizable social graph - such as that of the Facebook Platform - can be seen as an economic advantage to competitors. Further, social graphs and the data they contain may also be privatized by the companies which claim ownership of them - something of a "trade secret."

In 2010, at Facebook's annual F8 conference, co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about his intention to connect different parts of the Internet with the common thread being Facebook, as part of what he called the "open graph." The idea, in Zuckerberg's own words, was to "take [the separate maps] of the graph and pull them all together," in an effort to "create a Web that's smarter, more social, more personalized, and more semantically aware."

The "open graph protocol," then, can be described as a means by which Facebook has allowed developers to integrate their content into Facebook's own social graph, enabling any integrated webpage or application to become a rich and functional object in the graph, and providing it with the same capabilities as other graph objects (such as newsfeed/stream updates). An example of this is the ability of Facebook users to remotely post that they've finished reading a book through the website/application Goodreads to their Facebook profiles. The "open graph" approach has allowed countless online businesses and applications access to Facebook's massive social graph, which is mutually beneficial for businesses or services with smaller audiences, and Facebook, in being able to expand its social reach - "cast a wider net," so to speak.

The implications of the "open graph," in my opinion, are numerous, chief among which is the possibility of an absolutely integrated social graph, wherein "social media" can be viewed as a single, uniform platform encompassing most, if not all, of the social Web, rather than its current fragmented nature. The idea of the open graph may prospectively open doors towards full collaboration between different, competitive social media platforms - and we may already be seeing the beginning of this now (for example, through the partial synchronization of Facebook and Twitter).

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_graph

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Platform

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/overview/
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-one-social-graph-to-rule-them-all/