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Thank you, Dave Winer (social network not graph)
- pietro 19y agoLots of people sounding like monkeys in the comment section to the post...
- mattmaroon 19y agoThat term is borderline retarded. It's the internet slang equivalent of that cousin of yours who got held back in the fourth grade.
- karzeem 19y agoLike the commenters at Rough Type say, "graph" is just the word for how programmers conceptualize a network (as in graph theory). Winer is right that there's no reason to expose consumers to that kind of jargon, though. The reason that it's popping up is that Facebook has been using it since they launched their platform in May, I suspect with the hope that the term will remain closely associated with them so that when people think social networks (or social graphs, as it happens), they think Facebook.
- natrius 19y agoThere's a good reason for having both terms. "Social network" can mean either a site that lets people socialize with each other or one's actual relationships with other people. It's usually used to mean the former. "Social graph" is used to mean only the latter. "Social networks" are the application. The "social graph" is the data.
- alex_c 19y agoThat's exactly what I was thinking. Seems like an obvious - if somewhat subtle - difference. I don't really see what the fuss is all about.