Week 6

The foaf-a-matic web site you visited in exercise 6.3a suggests that you can post the foaf.rdf code generated onto your website somewhere where it is publically accessible. It says that if you do, then programs that utilise the foaf RDF may readily access it.

Discuss why you might or why you might not make such a foaf file available to the world at large? Using readings from this week and other items you may have researched for yourself about ‘Social Graph’, discuss the pros and cons of this kind of personal data interlinking.

When I first glanced at this page I thought it was quite revealing in the sense that there is information on there that I would not normally give out to complete strangers and I would not want strangers having access to. But then I realised the only bit of information on this page that a stranger could not find on my Facebook or Twitter page is my phone number. However my Facebook page is set up with the security that strangers cannot access my information unless they are friends with me so my information still remains quite private. So the down side to a page like this foaf-a-matic site, in my opinion, it’s not something that I think is really that fashionable when there is information available in other methods. And if the information got into the wrong hands then there could be trouble.

However, the good side of being able to use this type of information and make it publicly accessible could be popular for anyone who wants to make themselves a public figure. Someone wanting to promote their services or business could use such a method to get their information out to the public, which is a much faster and easier way than actually handing out flyers or business cards to get their name and services out there to people.