FOAF: Friend Of A Friend Vocabulary

The Friend Of A Friend (FOAF) project is aiming at creating a language that uses both XML and RDF to define a language that can describe the relationships between people and resources in a machine readable format. This works by individuals defining their own FOAF definitions and the exposing the URL of this FOAF file so that others can access and use the data. Exposing the FOAF files allows for a FOAF aggregator to consume multiple FOAF files from multiple individuals and by merging the data can define a complete community of interest.

For a basic description of how FOAF works have a read of Edd Dumbill's article on the IBM DeveloperWorks site. For more detail go to the FOAF home page.

Links:
FOAF home page
DeveloperWorks Introduction to FOAF article