Friend of a Friend, an early semantic web vocabulary for describing people, their relationships, and social networks. Also used as internet slang for a person known indirectly through mutual connections.
Acronym from 'Friend of a Friend,' coined in 1990s social network theory, formalized as web ontology standard in 2000s. Reflects mathematical concept of network distance and human tendency to reference indirect social connections.
FOAF was created before Facebook existed, representing early attempts to map human relationships digitally. The 'six degrees of separation' theory suggests everyone is connected through FOAF chains, and FOAF vocabularies tried to make these invisible social networks visible and machine-readable.
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