Facebook has been talking about the “Social Graph” lately in defense of its latest “extending” of user supplied information to increasingly public views.  A site called Inside Facebook has demonstrated that the Facebook API makes status updates (previously assumed to be available only to FB friends) to any site that can leverage the API.   This has prompted people to start asking “So what exactly is Facebook talking about when they speak of this “Social Graph”.

The simplest definition I have heard is that it is the “graph” which connects one’s friends to their friends,  one’s friend’s “likes”,  etc.  This allows people to see ,  for instance on Pandora,  what music is “liked” by one’s friends.

It seems to me that this is a crucial bit of insight into engagement on the Web:  that what our “friends” like is a good bet to interest us as well.  Like Amazon’s “People who bought X also bought Y”.   This comes very close to what I have, in thepast,  spoken of as “Theology of Databases”.  If the Church information curators can discover a”social graph” for their people,  they have a way to “match up” people according to their interests (specifically,  their theological interests) ,  and pull into that mix the music, politics, books, and TV/Movie interests/preferences to help people find that group of friends that represent for them the best curators of church related issues, resources,  and communities.

This is an idea that occurred to me ,  in that place many have found to be an idea germinating place:  the shower.