I've written previously about using open methods for creating social networks. I still believe this is the way to go. Sites like Facebook are very convenient, but they come and go. People move on when something better comes along. I have this site as a hub for my internet activities. I incorporated XFN ages ago. The problem was that the data was not at my root page. Instead my blogroll appeared on every page of the blog. That caused an issue for a friend who found hundreds of links to his site coming from every possible page on mine. That made it hard for him to track who was linking to him. So I moved the blogroll to a static page about me. That was still not what I really wanted, but whilst I was sorting out my URLs I took the opportunity to set up a proper home page. It's still a bit messy, but it contains a list of sites that represent me in some way and a list of friends. All of these contain XFN data.

I have a few friends who have XFN links on their sites that link to mine. There can just be issues if we do not agree on what is their base site. That generally just stops the links from being properly reciprocal.

In case you don't know XFN, or XHTML Friends Network is a way to embed data in web links that indicates your relationship with the owner of that site. It is not directly human-readable, but can be read by software to map out social networks. Some examples of this are:

• rubhub - Keeps a database of sites it has scanned, allowing you to click around the network. It knows about certain social sites and can display appropriate graphics.
• Plaxo - They have had a reputation for generating forms of spam when updating members' address books, but this looks promising. It gives a basic list of owned sites for a URL, but it doesn't seem to like my site. They provide source code, so maybe I can work out why.
• Google - Provide similar facilities with various options.

A number of social sites are including XFN data to link to homepages and contacts, including last.fm and Twitter.

There is a very good article from last month that goes into lots of detail on this subject.

If you want to join in with this game then drop me a link and we can coordinate our efforts to best effect.

Finally, I am just including a link to my Technorati Profile to get the blog linked with the new URL. This is topical as the link includes XFN data to indicate that it is my profile.