What is FOAF about?

The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) is an ontology to create a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

An example

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rdf:RDF xml:lang="en" 
 xmlns:wot="http://xmlns.com/wot/0.1/" 
 xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" 
 xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" 
 xmlns:lang="http://purl.org/net/inkel/rdf/schemas/lang/1.1#" 
 xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#" 
 xmlns:rss="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/" 
 xmlns="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/" 
 xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/" 
 xmlns:wn="http://xmlns.com/wordnet/1.6/" 
 xmlns:air="http://www.megginson.com/exp/ns/airports#" 
 xmlns:contact="http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/pim/contact#" 
 xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
 <foaf:PersonalProfileDocument rdf:about="http://danbri.org/foaf.rdf">
  <wot:assurance rdf:resource="foaf.rdf.asc"/>
  <foaf:primaryTopic rdf:resource="#danbri"/>
 </foaf:PersonalProfileDocument>
 <Person rdf:ID="danbri">
  <foaf:name>Dan Brickley</foaf:name>
  <foaf:nick>danbri</foaf:nick>
  <!-- 1999-2005 :)
    <workplaceHomepage rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/"/>
  -->
  <foaf:jabberID>danbri@jabber.org</foaf:jabberID>
  <foaf:aimChatID>danbri_2002</foaf:aimChatID>
  <foaf:msnChatID>danbri@hotmail.co.uk</foaf:msnChatID>
  <mbox rdf:resource="mailto:danbri@danbri.org"/>
  <!-- Some retired mailboxes ...-->
  <mbox>
   <rdf:Description rdf:about="mailto:danbri@w3.org">
    <dct:isReplacedBy rdf:resource="mailto:danbri@danbri.org"/>
   </rdf:Description>
  </mbox>
  <mbox_sha1sum>6e80d02de4cb3376605a34976e31188bb16180d0</mbox_sha1sum>
  <mbox_sha1sum xml:lang="">6e80d02de4cb3376605a34976e31188bb16180d0</mbox_sha1sum>
  <uranai:bloodtype xmlns:uranai="http://kota.s12.xrea.com/vocab/uranai">A+</uranai:bloodtype>
  <foaf:holdsAccount>
   <foaf:OnlineAccount>
    <foaf:accountServiceHomepage rdf:resource="http://www.skype.com/"/>
    <foaf:accountName>danbrickley</foaf:accountName>
   </foaf:OnlineAccount>
  </foaf:holdsAccount>
  <rdfs:seeAlso rdf:resource="http://mystatus.skype.com/danbrickley.xml"/>
  <foaf:openid rdf:resource="http://danbri.org/"/>
  <rdfs:seeAlso>
   <rss:channel rdf:about="http://del.icio.us/rss/danbri">
    <dc:title>del.icio.us/danbri</dc:title>
    <dc:description>del.icio.us bookmarks as an RSS 1.0 news feed</dc:description>
   </rss:channel>
  </rdfs:seeAlso>
  <lang:masters>en</lang:masters>
  <homepage rdf:resource="http://danbri.org/"/>
  <foaf:dateOfBirth>1972-01-09</foaf:dateOfBirth>
  <foaf:img rdf:resource="http://rdfweb.org/people/danbri/2000/01/01/Image1.gif"/>
  <contact:nearestAirport>
   <wn:Airport air:icao="EGGD" air:iata="BRS"/>
  </contact:nearestAirport>
  <!-- connections to other peoples -->
  <rdfs:seeAlso rdf:resource="http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/discovery/2001/08/codepict/scutterplan.rdf"/>
  <rdfs:seeAlso rdf:resource="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"/>
  <!-- can do brief summary here, or longer/verbose, see below -->
  <knows>
   <Person>
    <mbox rdf:resource="mailto:libby.miller@bristol.ac.uk"/>
    <mbox rdf:resource="mailto:libby@asemantics.com"/>
   </Person>
  </knows>
  <knows>
   <Person rdf:about="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card#i">
    <name>Tim Berners-Lee</name>
    <isPrimaryTopicOf rdf:resource="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee"/>
    <homepage rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/"/>
    <mbox rdf:resource="mailto:timbl@w3.org"/>
    <rdfs:seeAlso rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card"/>
   </Person>
  </knows>
 </Person>
</rdf:RDF>

The complete RDF is at http://danbri.org/foaf.rdf.

References

• The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project, http://www.foaf-project.org/
• FOAF-a-Matic, Create your own FOAF file, http://www.ldodds.com/foaf/foaf-a-matic