Social graph

This article is about relationships in social networks. For the term that encompasses all relationships between individuals in the world or the World Wide Web, see Social network.
A drawing of a graph in which each person is represented by a dot called a node and the friendship relationship is represented by a line called an edge
This animation shows the different types of relations between social objects. User Eva is a friend of Adam and Kate, though Adam and Kate are not friends themselves. Peter's photo was "liked" by many users, including Eva. Also Eva listened to the Last.fm radio and watched the video from YouTube.

The social graph is a graph that represents social relations between entities. In short, it is a model or representation of a social network, where the word graph has been taken from graph theory. The social graph has been referred to as "the global mapping of everybody and how they're related".[1]

The term was used as early as 1964, albeit in the context of isoglosses.[2] Leo Apostel uses the term in the context here in 1978.[3] The concept was originally called sociogram.

The term was popularized at the Facebook F8 conference on May 24, 2007, when it was used to explain how the newly introduced Facebook Platform would take advantage of the relationships between individuals to offer a richer online experience.[4] The definition has been expanded to refer to a social graph of all Internet users.

Since explaining the concept of the social graph, Mark Zuckerberg, one of the founders 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 put to use on websites outside Facebook's control.[5]

  1. ^ "Facebook: One Social Graph to Rule Them All?". CBS News. Retrieved July 11, 2010.
  2. ^ "Graphic Representation of Social Isoglosses". Anthropological Linguistics. Volume 6. Issue 4. Horne, Kibbey M. February 1964.
  3. ^ Apostel, Leo (1978). "The Elementary Theory of Collective Action" (PDF). Philosophica, (Volume 21). Archived from the original (PDF) on November 10, 2021.
  4. ^ "Facebook Unveils Platform for Developers of Social Applications". Facebook. Retrieved July 11, 2010.
  5. ^ "Facebook's Zuckerberg uncorks the social graph". ZDNet. Retrieved July 11, 2010.