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Volodymyr Pavlyshyn
Volodymyr Pavlyshyn

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Targeted Personal Knowledge Graphs in Professional Networks. From Hunters to DAO and beyond

Nostr is about Social Networks. What came first to your mind when we mention social Network? A lot of folks compare NOSTR-based apps with Twitter, but Twitter is a far away from a social movement.
The biggest social network of mine is not Twitter or Mastodon. nop even not facebook. It is LinkedIN

It is not about Twitter

Twitter was launched around 2006, but before it was.
SixDegrees.com (1997): As mentioned, it was the first to allow users to create profiles and friend lists.

LiveJournal (1999): Allowed users to keep a blog, journal, or diary and also make connections.

Friendster (2002): One of the first to use the term "social network," it allowed users to connect with friends, post pictures, and share content.

Hi5 (2003): Popular in Latin America and Southeast Asia, it allowed users to create profiles, connect with friends, and share photos and videos.

LinkedIn (2003): Focused on professional networking, it allowed users to connect with colleagues and other professionals.

MySpace (2003): Allowed users to create profiles, have a list of friends, and share music and other media. It was particularly popular among musicians and artists.

Orkut (2004): Developed by Google, it was popular in Brazil and India.

Facebook (2004): Initially limited to Harvard students, it quickly expanded and became the dominant social network.

I was earlier adopter of a Live Journal and always was about a long-form content.

Future of targeted social networks

On targeted, i mean social network of people with a common interest and goals with some passion and topics that unite them or maybe it is a place where you could find folks that were extreamly hard to find in a facebook like posts with food , cats, and boobs.
First sucessful and long lived targeted social network for me wa LinkedIn

From Hunters , Middle Ages, Guilds to LinkedIn and DAO
People get together around profession and mastery from earlier beginning. I think hunters was the first tribal guild )). It is not only about a job search it is also about mastery of skills and proud and status and showing who you are.
I know a lot of folks have linkedIn but root of problems there is not a topic of social media it is more around corporate culture that heavily shaped social media. It should be different.

Linkedin got Evil?!

It is a classical story. The project was started with good intentions and goals, but it is somebody else business that is eager to make money.
In general, it is a 2 simple strategies

  • lock users data in a platform
  • Limit access to this data and make money on top of it. Now millions of profiles are locked in prison with limits to connect and search. Recruiters struggle the most. if linkedin kill you profile it is practically the end of your entire recruiter career.

I am not looking for a job

Nowadays, we have industries and professions that depend completely on platforms like Linked In because we haven't invented a Google for people or let's say google for professionals and the best that we have is LinkedIn, Xing, Monster, Stepstone focus on the broken idea of a job search. Your job is a subset of your activities, skills and interests. I am a YouTuber and nostr enthusiast that keen on decentralized tech and open technology and open source. I am a tea lover and keen on cognitive science, psychology and philosophy and all these stills and interests contribute to my professional profile and form my bubbles of people.
I am looking for

  • people
  • interesting challenges
  • Confirmation of my skill
  • confirmation of my knowledge and achievements from a network
  • verifiable skills I do not want to go to yet another interview in my life. Big dream - i give you my profile based on a verified data point, and we could chat about our common values. I tried to prove that I knew JS or design patterns over and over and over again. It is not about content, it is about relation !! We don't see a forest among the trees...

Targeted Social Graph

We over-focused on content, but the real asset of social media that is often misunderstood by people is a social graph. Your connections matter a lot. Your connections and audience could say more about you than your content. We simply do not have tools today that allow to express our connections in a meaningful way. On Linked In, you have the option to connect or follow, but human relations is way more complex even in professional areas. it is all about portable social Graphics and portable audiences. Work relations or skill relations is more about what you do for others.
Interoperability is a cornerstone of any protocol so we need to find a way to describe our relations in interoperablele way . Semantic web made a few attempts to do

"Friend of Friends" (FoF)

First try to make a portable social graph was made by semantic web folks. In a semantic web we have a concept of anthology.
An ontology is essentially a formal specification of a conceptualization. In simpler terms, it's a way to define the types, properties, and interrelationships of the entities that exist for a particular domain. In the context of the semantic web, ontologies are often expressed in languages like RDF (Resource Description Framework), OWL (Web Ontology Language), or Turtle.
The concept of a "Friend of Friends" (FoF) ontology is often used in the context of semantic web technologies, social networking, and data modeling. The idea is to create a structured representation of social networks, where relationships like "friendship" can be formally defined and queried. This is particularly useful for applications that require a deep understanding of social connections, such as recommendation systems, targeted advertising, or social analytics.
Problem hear - we have limited relation descriptions so you simply mimic i know this person link

"Description of a Career" (DOAC) and Resume RDF

"Description of a Career" (DOAC) ontology, the focus would be on capturing various aspects of an individual's professional life. This could include:

Basic Information: Name, contact details, and other personal identifiers.
Skills: A list of skills the individual possesses, possibly categorized by domain (e.g., programming, management).
Qualifications: Academic background, certifications, and other formal qualifications.
Work Experience: Past roles, responsibilities, and achievements.
Projects: Specific projects worked on, along with the role played and technologies used.
Endorsements: Recommendations or endorsements from colleagues, supervisors, or other professional contacts.
Goals: Career objectives and future plans.
We are still not there
Resume RDF do a similar job but still does pure job in a space of relations. Some ontologies define your work relations in terms of organization structure. We need relations in the context of skills and what person do. Like we made a web3 app together. We run a cool event etc. Something that gives understanding of what you do for other people with other people

NOSTR Context

Nostr has one big supper power - All events are signed. It means it is an end verifiable, immutable, and temper proof. We almost there we already have a backbone of social features that could be enriched by more powerful relations

NOSTR missed social graph features

Now you see a problem. A list of followers is not enough. We need to find together a better way to describe an interaction experience with other people in the context of skills, knowledge, interests, and what they do for the community and us.
Don't be a stranger! You could tell much more about your relation to a person.

NOSTR missed events

As far as NOSTR protocol go with a idea of kinds of events it is turn to a hard path of extending a protocol with particular human activities.
One area is a people's lifetime events

  • job or project
  • achievement
  • Completion of task for DAO
  • skill and skill recommendation

One more potential feature - maybe I want to follow selective events from a person only related to some types of activities

The DAO friendly

DAO will change the way we work in the near future. For some of my friends, it is already a reality. It is hard to build a reputation in a highly anonymous environment. I see a big undiscovered potential of Target Social Graphs powered by NOSTR for a talent and partners search. But it will be a topic for next article

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