What is a social network graph?

The six degrees of separation are beginning to converge rather quickly. The current format of Social networks and advertising networks are trying to glean your click through and figure out what the CPA(cost per acquisition) comes out to, which is currently semi-silo'd. Meaning we live in distinct valleys of information that is ripe for the rooting of advertising stream billions. These silos are beginning to change how we connect with the advent of widgets and aps. Web 2.0 is already old news for most of us living in 2007 realtime intraweb. The next level, as discussed by Tim Berners Lee is this third level after (1) the internet phase and (2) the storage of web documents what is being called a social graph for web users to take back control. This current phenomenon, what is loosely being defined as what links relationships between people and/or documents -- "the things documents are about" and how they relate to people who give it meaning. It is easy to agree that nothing is free. E.G. Ads make the world go around. You accepted it on TV and we will accept in our future consumption of video content and any means of social entertainment (err, except for nasty interruptions of our 1-1 phone connections). The hypothesis is that users will demand DVR for web where YOU as the user gets to sort best of social connections and who pays to connect to you. I don't like Nike but will let Puma talk to send me stuff if i had to choose. Although, Wikinomics book says that "relationships are the one thing you cannot commoditize", and yes people harrumphed when gmail scanned your email for things you might like but we were quick to forget and then blindly import our email without flinching to suck their friends into facebook or linkedin, etc and invite them to join the fun. Who the hell reads the fine-print anyway when you sign-up Anyway? Most recently Plaxo Pulse allows you to suck in your favorite social network stuff (flickr, blogger feeds, facebook) and expanding their ap library everyday. The discussion now on the table in the blogosphere is to a create social network media API, as was done with the adopted J2EE standards, to get everybody in tune with the governance rules for usage of these social connections (remember all the info we put in our web docs? remember?). Read Write Web's post does a great job of explaining the concepts around the social graph and their implications with a lot of quality feedback and concerns around who controls the information pipe and goes in deeper with issues surrounding life online. There are some really cool visual looks into these vertical social connections. Graphs can be churned out of almost any kind of one to many mathematical relationship, like data from 9/11 terrorist networks to the Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Networks and everything in between, to have that A-HA moment visit Visual Complexity project dissections set for various social network queries. So the next time you fill out yet another profile be aware that your info is not your own.