Social graph

[4] The definition has been expanded to refer to a social graph of all Internet users.

[5] Several issues have come forward regarding the existing implementation of the social graph owned by Facebook.

Google has attempted to offer a solution to this problem by creating the Social Graph API, released in January 2008,[8] which allows websites to draw publicly available information about a person to form a portable identity of the individual, in order to represent a user's online identity.

Both companies monetise collected data sets through direct marketing and social commerce.

[12] Facebook's Graph API allows websites to draw information about more objects than simply people, including photos, events, and pages, and their relationships between each other.

A drawing of a graph in which each person is represented by a dot called a node and the friendship relationship is represented by a line called an edge
This animation shows the different types of relations between social objects. User Eva is a friend of Adam and Kate , though Adam and Kate are not friends themselves. Peter's photo was "liked" by many users, including Eva . Also Eva listened to the Last.fm radio and watched the video from YouTube .