With so many websites to join, users must decide where to invest
significant time in adding their same connections over and over. For
developers, this means it is difficult to build successful web
applications that hinge upon a critical mass of users for content and
interaction. With the Social Graph API, developers can now utilize
public connections their users have already created in other web
services. It makes information about public connections between
people easily available and useful.
Only public data
The API returns web addresses of public pages and publicly declared
connections between them. The API cannot access non-public
information, such as private profile pages or websites accessible to a
limited group of friends.
Based on open standards
We currently index the public Web for XHTML Friends Network (XFN), Friend of a Friend (FOAF)
markup and other publicly declared connections. By supporting open
Web standards for describing connections between people, web sites can
add to the social infrastructure of the web.