Talk:Social graph

Redirect
Back in July I edited this article to redirect to Social network as a "social graph" doesn't seem to mean anything different from "social network". The recent edits add one sentence explaining what a "social graph" is (which doesn't seem to be anything different from a "social network"), and a paragraph on what graphs are (and a misleading one at that; a graph is a mathematical structure, though there may be ADTs that correspond to implementations of an interface corresponding to a machine representation of graphs). Thus I think it's still best if this page redirects to Social network. SparsityProblem 16:44, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Agree. Nauseating how Fakebook drives its marketing campaigns through Wikipedia; "social graph" is a word pair coined specifically for their "open graph" product that aims to get web page owners to participate in building FB's search database without payment (other than chance to drool after the XYZ million/billion potential visitors). I'd very much appreciate a non-Open-Graph-related definition of the term; if there is none, redirect to Social_network_(disambiguation) or Open Graph (that actually redirects to Facebook platform). No reason a company should get preferred Wikipedia pages for its product's separate features or product-specific jargon. --Sigmundur (talk) 06:06, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
 * also, take a look at the "Did you know?"-box on this talk page. Doesn't that disgust you? Does Talk:Operating_system have a "A fact from Operating system appeared on did you know as follows: 'did you know almost everyone on the planet uses Microsoft's Windows operating system? The whole world, that's a lot of people!'"? --Sigmundur (talk) 06:10, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't disagree with an exception
Social Graph is a currently popular term and should be recognized for what it is rather than sub-sorbed into the Social Network page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Coolblueskies (talk • contribs) 16:20, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Can you explain what the difference is between a social graph and a social network? Better yet, add an explanation of that to the article, since it doesn't currently describe what a "social graph" is in any way that makes it different from a social network. SparsityProblem 20:57, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Since graphs can be directed or undirected, why not use the dominant term with a mention of the secondary term in the lead paragraph? Also, the article Network theory says it deals with the "study of graphs". mordel (talk) 19:26, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

== This page should stand on its own because Social Graph is a special concept promoted by Facebook and is different from other incidences of social networking.//FengWenFengWen (talk) 12:51, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Social graph vs. social network, again
I find the current revision of this article to be so incoherent as to verge on patent nonsense. In theoretical computer science, the terms "network" and "graph" are interchangeable (see Network theory.) The article fails to make any persuasive or even coherent argument that the notion of a "social graph" differs from the notion of a "social network". What's more, it provides no reliable sources for the assertions it does make (blog posts are not reliable sources).

I support removing all the text from this article and redirecting to Social network. Would anyone like to either argue why not, or improve the article so that it does demonstrate that "social graph" is a real term that has a meaning distinct from "social network"? SparsityProblem (talk) 20:44, 20 January 2008 (UTC)


 * There is no distinction even in the news article that the definition is linked to: "A term Facebook popularized to describe its social network, the social graph essentially refers to "the global mapping of everybody and how they're related.". The article should be merged with Social network and "social graph" should be mentioned in the intro as a term used by FB. -Pgan002 (talk)

Don't agree. Definition is a personal opinion.
Dunno who wrote the existing definition, but can't agree to it.

A social graph is how social networks are represented (and implemented). Period.

No fancy words needed such as binary spectra conception or what not.

This section must be re-written by an actual subject matter expert.

ceo —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cenriqueortiz (talk • contribs) 18:25, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The contention that Mark Zuckerberg first used the term Social Graph is based on what?
Brad Fitzpatrick and Alex Iskold both used the expression "Social Graph" years before Mark Zuckerberg used it, and they were referring to the same thing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atonal cinema (talk • contribs) 22:47, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

"Internet Company"
I just removed this, because it had to be the most redundant fact ever. If you're already linking to Google when mentioning them, it's ridiculous to then link 'the internet company' to an explanation because 1) you just linked to an article about Google, 2) everybody knows they're a company that works on services for the internet, and 3) "internet company" isn't even a single article.

So I trust this minor edit will stand. Quite frankly, this article still needs a LOT more work by some people who actually have the knowledge to speak on the purpose and commercial importance / viability of social graphs and their underlying concepts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aaronshupp (talk • contribs) 05:56, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Comparison to sociograph
"A social graph is a sociogram which depicts all personal relations - typically not more than 100 per person."

I don't quite understand this line. Most people have more than 100 Facebook friends. And the line says "all".

85.97.63.65 (talk) 18:12, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Changed the undescriptive "graph" picture into facebook infobox
In the article, every ref is either to Facebook site, or a news item about Facebook. So it's more honest to as openly as possible let the reader know we're talking about Facebook here, not "social graphs" in any "scientific" sense. Here's Graph API https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/ which is all "social graph" in this article's sense is. And it's 100% Facebook. Please don't try to mask this as something with more general relevance. --Sigmundur (talk) 09:14, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I must have been missing on some Facebook conference talks, because somehow the re-defining of terms to fit the FB bubble world keeps annoying me, no matter how I try to straighten up this article. Some of stuff like "social areas of graph theory" is just non-sense. Graph theory is a discipline of mathematics, it has no "social areas" other than coffee rooms at the department (maybe you count restrooms too?). Get serious. This whole article should be renamed "Facebook Graph API" that it is about. --Sigmundur (talk) 09:27, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Merge with Facebook?
This article looks like it just doesn't stand on its own. It's only about Facebook, so why not merge there? --Sigmundur (talk) 08:22, 22 July 2012 (UTC)


 * A social graph really applies to any social network, especially online ones. It's not specific to Facebook, but Facebook's is by far the most well known, so it's featured a bit too prominently in this article. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  17:30, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Merge with Social network
A merge tag was recently added to the article Social network without any talk page entry or tag back to this article. If there is no discussion on the Talk:Social_network page in the next 7 days, I will remove the tag. If this article needs to merged with something other than Facebook, I would suggest the appropriate merger would be Social networking service. Meclee (talk) 03:29, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

The change of social graph in the event that Microsoft merged with LinkedIn
--XiaoPAN TPT (talk) 15:56, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

My question is: After Microsoft acquired Linkedin, what are the potentials of Linkedin's social graph to be exploited in the future?

LinkedIn has more than 433 million users in the world and 105 million active users, and it has the biggest professional social graph in the world. The professional social graph is quite different from a private social graph(e.g. Facebook), it is much more stable and there is much more valuable information. Microsoft is a company which focus on the office service, the target clients overlap much with LinkedIn. By acquiring LinkedIn, Microsoft will realise the ineraction between professional network and the office software. The prospectives will be very exciting.

--Liuzhida (talk) 11:51, 27 June 2017 (UTC) LinkedIn's uniqueness lies in its unique business model: through a free service for users, build a professional social platform, and then create different applications in this platform. The first and most effective application is the recruitment solution for our business. By merging with LinkedIn, Microsoft can get its already-built social graph and the database.

--XiaoPAN TPT (talk) 11:54, 27 June 2017 (UTC) I agree. And I think the data from LinkedIn in much more reliable than any other social network platforms (like Facebook)

Unsourced primacy claim
I have removed this claim about who allegedly pioneered the concept (which had been added by an anonymous editor here):


 * One of the earliest known forms of the social graph was created in 2002 by Harvard student Philippe Bouzaglou in a paper published on the Harvard Department of Economics website. The paper replicated the Kevin Bacon Game using Harvard students and for the first time, gave an overview of an entire social graph, allowing the analysis of the characteristics of the network using graph theory. This paper was written for a seminar that was attended by Dustin Moskovitz who later became a Facebook co-founder.

This needs a solid reference and is very likely faulty original research - social network theory, including the study of graphs made of social connections between humans, predates Mr. Bouzaglou's student paper by many years.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:38, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

..Thanks. Bellagio99 (talk) 22:40, 14 July 2018 (UTC)