Dynamic FOAF management method for social networks in the social web environment

Abstract

Nowadays various researches have been conducted on the utilization of Friend-Of-A-Friend (FOAF) as the foundation of social network services. However, automatic update and dynamic management of FOAF for the social network services are difficult. Hereupon, we propose a novel method to overcome the above problems by applying FOAF and RDF Site Summary (RSS) to OnLine Analytical Processing (OLAP) system. The proposed method generates the OLAP cube by using the collected FOAF and RSS from the web, and then processes the generated OLAP cubes. The implemented result shows that foaf:interest of users has reached an average of 19 % increase in 4 weeks. In proportion to the increased foaf:interest change, the number of foaf:knows of users has grown to an average of 9 %. By using the suggested method, we can provide better services in coping up with the rapid change of user interests with the automatic application of FOAF.