[rdfweb-dev] Catching up and moving forward

[Marc Canter]

1. Speaking of mail lists - I've now signed up twice - but still am not
receiving any posts.....  (I know, at this point you're thinking "This
Canter guy - complain, kvetch, complain....) :-)

2.  Allow me to correct myself, Eric isn't writing our own parser, he's
working on intepreting all the results - the right way.  Eric's great -
if there are any others out there who want to help with the project
formerly know as FOAFster - just let me know.

3.  Marc wrote....
	>I'm confused over foaf:group?
    Danbri replied....
      >>Join the club ;)
    Marc offers up some ideas.......

Our world view goes something like this.

We agree that it's IMPERATIVE to have a way of referring to a group of
people as an entity (your example (1).)

But we also see why making sure you work with OWL and having as much
flexibility is important to.  But having more than one way to do
something hasn't stopped you before.  :-)

The way we see the world - there are in fact three "levels" of groups.

	a) The family - the inner group.  The implied nuclear family
(whether they're blood relatives or not), close friends, roommates, etc.
	b) Groups as know mail lists, message boards, closed knit
circles - numbering anywhere from 15-150.  The social scientists will
tell you these are the natural forming entities that predominate society
today.
	c)  Larger WWW kind of groups - what Ryze, MeetUp, etc. are all
about.  In one sense Friendster as well.

So perhaps some sort of moniker or nomenclature to refer to these three
'kinds' of groups?

4.  What I'd like to do about the FOAFster domain is give us some time
(like a week or so....) to present to you what we're doing. If we can't
convince you that THAT is FOAFster - we'll roll over and find another
name.

Needless to say we see it as a P2P kind of social network thingie - too!

And as far as it resembling or associating itself with Friendster - that
might not be a bad thing.  They have a saying in Hollywood "it doesn't
matter what they say about it - just as long as they spell your name
right."

Or better said:

"You should have such problems!"

Friendster is a mating service.  It happens to use a social networking
metaphor, but it's a flash in the pan, which will stabilize out - to
compete with match.com and HotorNot.com.

But the world of social networking and digital identity is far richer in
potential and opportunity than just mating.  So getting a leg up and
associating ourselves with a service which is signing up 12,000 people a
day - is a good way to get our meme out there.  Ride on their shoulders
and usurp the meme..... is what I say!