I will blog yet again on this topic,  which I have written about before,  and I am accustomed to being greeted with the Web version of CRICKETS.  That’s OK.  “Social Graph” really hasn’t made the rounds into lay usage,  or even programming usage in most circles.  But the Social Graph as I am using it,  refers to the “Connectivity” data taxonomies and relational data that Facebook has written into its database backend,  and this gives Facebook the social power that has driven its success.  It learns through connections and Likes and apps used by users the kinds of things that bring people together.  For me,  this is a key theological issue for Church online systems.  I would even say that it is crucial to online community.

It works like this:  Facebook users have certain base profile bits,  such as Name, City, Sex, Age,  and Schools and Workplaces,  and even “Relationship Status”.  The activity of the user then adds more information to that profile:  The “Likes” the user has clicked on certain news items, other Facebook Pages (many of those created by companies and organizations and celebrities). Users can also indicate interest in books, movies, TV shows, Music,  and also show this by liking items related to those media or personalities.  Unique combinations of user interests are usable data to enable users who share certain profile items in common to find each other,  sometimes going as far as “Recommending” someone or some Facebook page based on other things those users have “Liked” or indicated by visiting Pages or News Feeds frequently.

Facebook is quite good at this “Social Graph” activity and representing that in database form,  which grows more powerful as it grows larger and one could say that it “learns” from those growing patterns.  Just as _____’s Law indicates,  the value of the network grows as the number of nodes increases.  As people and interests are added to the database,  the ability to predict user  interests and thus offer product or entertainment that is relevant (and actually , in many cases,  useful to that user).  This increases the value of the Social Graph to advertisers, as they are able to target much more specific audiences.

Now that database taxonomy ,  as smart as it can be,  is immensely empowered by the knowledge of the inventors of that taxonomy.  Theological communities are diverse as a category ,  each with distinct differences and variations in terminology and usage,  and so the “members” or adherents of the various theological groups are the best equipped to build the taxonomies in the data which represent the categorical hierarchy which each group understands naturally within their own culture of discourse.  A less effective system might assume that a user with indicators of religious interest  might consider “religious themed movies” to be the preferred choice in entertainment,  but that is most likely only within the subset of religious users who are evangelical or fundamentalist.  More liberal or moderate theological communities may well extend their values into areas which overlap various “‘secular” philosophical and social values (I say secular in quotes because some of the assumption that one is secular if one expresses or articulates values that do not overtly refer to what is typical or “obviously” religious (like use the word God or refer to a creator or deity).

In other cases,  theological concepts are rendered in quite distinct forms depending on the interpretive style of the content  of a tradition,  such as in the area of eschatology.  In many conservative evangelical circles,  this usually involves “end times” discussions and distinct interpretations and readings of “Biblical prophecy”.  In other theological strata,  eschatology has an entirely different emphasis and reads the Biblical apocalyptic literature quite differently.  So a Christian who is interested in the prophet Jeremiah might be mistakenly placed in a category with an evangelical crowd since Jeremiah is an Old Testament prophet and that means “end times” to a lot of “Left Behind” fans.   But my class on Jeremiah by Old Testament professor Kelly at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1980 was very different from that approach,  and often harshly critiqued the “Left Behind” notion of the Biblical Prophetic literature.  Instead,  Jeremiah spoke directly to HIS time,  and not to some future rapture event and the 7 year tribulation (you see,  I studied all that stuff and read Hal Lindsey and those writers).  Even the invoking of the school name “Southern Baptist Theological Seminary” would need a database with enough information (or “smarts”) to know that the Seminary’s theological history is sharply divided into pre-Mohler and Mohler-era days, the latter moving sharply right from the earlier widely diverse theological student body and faculty.

This kind of conversation about databases that are “theologically savvy”  (ie. enriched with context and taxonomies that enable a system to correctly associate a particular user,  due to their expressed interests and lists of favorites and books he/she is reading, etc. ,  with a particular theological community.  This would be a wonderful extension of the Facebook Social Graph.  It would be better able to accurately pair users with kindred theological souls.  And be better able to be a powerful suggestion engine for churches to enable and resource powerful online community apps.