The Social Graph is a model that depicts the relationships among individuals in social networks. This concept, popularized by Facebook[2] in 2007, is not limited to people but also includes other objects such as photos, events, and pages, expanding the concept to non-human elements. This model is widely utilized in social network[1] analysis, social commerce, and marketing. However, it’s not without its challenges. There are concerns over the ownership and monetization of social graph data, and issues like lack of seamless experience across various platforms. Despite Google[3] retiring its Social Graph API[4] in 2012, Facebook’s Social Graph continues to be a significant dataset, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg aiming for wider sharing of the data. Related concepts include sociomapping, sociometry, and anthropological linguistics.
Les social graph est un graph that represents social relations between entities. In short, it is a model or representation of a social network, where the word graph has been taken from graph theory. The social graph has been referred to as "the global mapping of everybody and how they're related".
The term was used as early as 1964, albeit in the context of isoglosses. Leo Apostel uses the term in the context here in 1978. The concept was originally called sociogram.
The term was popularized at the Facebook F8 conference on May 24, 2007, when it was used to explain how the newly introduced Plate-forme Facebook would take advantage of the relationships between individuals to offer a richer online experience. The definition has been expanded to refer to a social graph of all Internet users.
Since explaining the concept of the social graph, Mark Zuckerberg, one of the founders of Facebook, has often touted Facebook's goal of offering the website's social graph to other websites so that a user's relationships can be put to use on websites outside Facebook's control.