Real World Semantics

FOAF vs. vCards

Tantek Çelik wonders what FOAF gets you over plain old vCards, an ages old technology that is already implemented in most e-mail clients, address books and cellphones and is still doing its job:

(...) the biggest irony I see about FOAF is its name, which stands for "Friend of a Friend", and yet the technology has nothing to do with "friends". Like Jonas said, it's simply vCard recast in RDF, except for the "knows" relationship, which itself is quite meaningless (quite ironic for a Semantic Web effort), as it provides no more meaning than a plain hyperlink.

More on FOAF vs. vCards from Jonas, who came up with the thought in the first place.