Like 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 n

Like 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.