FOAFRDF

FOAFRDF is the RDF-based encoding of the FOAF (Friend of a Friend) vocabulary. The FOAF ontology provides a standard, machine-readable model for describing people, their online identities, and social relationships, and FOAFRDF refers to representations of that model in RDF. Core classes include foaf:Person and foaf:Agent; properties cover names (foaf:name), contact details (foaf:mbox, foaf:phone), online presence (foaf:homepage, foaf:primaryTopic), and social links (foaf:knows). The vocabulary also supports other attributes such as foaf:openid and foaf:onlineAccount for linking identity across services.

RDF serializations such as RDF/XML, Turtle, and N-Triples are used to serialize FOAFRDF documents. This enables linking profiles across datasets on the Linked Data Web. A FOAFRDF profile describes an individual as a foaf:Person with a foaf:name and one or more foaf:mbox values, and may include foaf:knows relationships to other foaf:Person resources. FOAFRDF can also express organizational agents, online accounts, and other properties via the extended FOAF vocabulary.

History and context: FOAF originated in the early 2000s as part of the Semantic Web and Linked Data movement, created by Dan Brickley and Libby Miller. FOAFRDF is the RDF realization of that vocabulary and is used in personal data projects and open data initiatives to publish and interchange profile data. While influential in early Linked Data experiments, FOAFRDF has had limited uptake in major platforms and is often complemented or superseded by other identity and schema vocabularies. Privacy considerations are important when publishing FOAFRDF data because it encodes personal relationships and contact details. See also FOAF, RDF, and Linked Data.