The Tetherless World Weblog

I recently build a proof-of-concept demo on getting Facebook data (public data only) into LOD   their recently announced Graph API. The demo is available at http://sam.tw.rpi.edu/ws/face_lod.html.

It is fairly straightforward to convert the JSON object into RDF and make the URI dereferenceable. Now the data are linkable, but not yet linked to other LOD data.

I did see some issues when I was assigning rdf properties. Here is an example JSON from http://graph.facebook.com/cocacola

{
   "id": "40796308305",
   "name": "Coca-Cola",
   "picture": "http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/object3/1853/100/s40796308305_2334.jpg",
   "link": "http://www.facebook.com/coca-cola",
   "category": "Consumer_products",
   "username": "coca-cola",
   "products": "Coca-Cola is the most popular and biggest-selling soft drink in history, as well as the best-known product in the world.\n\nCreated in Atlanta, Georgia, by Dr. John S. Pemberton, Coca-Cola was first offered as a fountain beverage by mixing Coca-Cola syrup with carbonated water. Coca-Cola was introduced in 1886, patented in 1887, registered as a trademark in 1893 and by 1895 it was being sold in every state and territory in the United States. In 1899, The Coca-Cola Company began franchised bottling operations in the United States.\n\nCoca-Cola might owe its origins to the United States, but its popularity has made it truly universal. Today, you can find Coca-Cola in virtually every part of the world.",
   "fan_count": 5425800
}

1. The JSON file from Facebook is not using the exact Open Graph Protocol terms -below is the mapping

   name  => og:title
   category => og:type
   picture  => og:image
   link  => og:url

2.2 we can reuse FOAF and DCTerms to cover some terms used in Facebook data – below is the mapping

  picture => foaf:depiction
  name => foaf:name
  from => dcterms:source
  id => dcterms:identifier
  created_time => dcterms:created
  updated_time => dcterms:modified
  category => dcterms:type
  link => foaf:homepage

Li Ding@RPI April 28, 2010